2012-10-30
Original: 2012-10-30 on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Transcript
Title bar: TRUE WEINERSMITH TALES.
Panel 1 (a woman with dark hair):
Woman: I had this idea that all political speech could be improved.
Woman: But you changed everything so that the nouns to "nurble." You could still follow everything.
Narration: One of my Twitter followers, Jeff Lee, posted a quick and dirty program: the political speech nurbler.
Code block (the nurbler program):
<?php
//
// Extremely quick-and-dirty political speech nurbler (changes everything except nouns to
// suggested by Zach Weinersmith (https://twitter.com/ZachWeiner/status/261840134218063...
//
// Requires PHP, and part-of-speech.txt from the "Part of Speech Database", available at
// http://wordlist.sourceforge.net
//
// Usage: php nurbler.php input-file
//
if ($argc != 2) exit("Usage: php {$argv[0]} input-file\n");
if (!file_exists($argv[1])) exit("Error: could not find {$argv[1]}\n");
$part = array();
$pos = file("part-of-speech.txt");
foreach ($pos as $line) {
if (preg_match("/([^\t]*)\t(.*)$/", $line, $parts )) {
$part[trim(strtolower($parts[1]))] = $parts[2];
}
}
$infile = implode("", file("sotu.txt"));
while ($infile) {
if (preg_match("/([\w]*)(\W*)/", $infile, $matches )) {
echo nurble($matches[1]) . $matches[2];
$infile = trim( substr( $infile, strlen($matches[1])+strlen($matches[2])));
}
}
function nurble( $what ) {
global $part;
$check = trim(strtolower($what));
if (!isset($part[$check])) return "nurble"; // better to nurble unknown words.
return (strpos($part[$check], "N") !== 0) ? "nurble" : strtoupper($what);
}
Narration: Unlike most of my ideas, this one worked BETTER than expected. Here's a nurbled passage from the 2012 State of the Union:
Nurbled passage (only the retained nouns are shown in caps; everything else became "nurble"): ... TESTAMENT ... COURAGE, SELFLESSNESS ... TEAMWORK ... AMBITION ... FOCUS ... MISSION ... HAND ... WORK ... EXAMPLE ... COUNTRY ... WORLD ... PEOPLE ... GENERATION ... TECH ... FUTURE ... ENERGY ... SECURITY ... PROSPERITY ... WORLD ... ECONOMY ... WORK ... RESPONSIBILITY ... WORLD ... GENERATION ... HOME ... COMBAT ... ECONOMY ... CLASS ... WORLD ... GRANDFATHER ... PATTON'S ARMY ... CHANCE ... GI BILL ... GRANDMOTHER ... BOMBER ASSEMBLY LINE ... PORT ... OPTIMISM ... FAITH ... DEPRESSION ... FASCISM ... SUCCESS ... SHARE ...
Narration: Perhaps nurbling would be a good test of the information density of a speech.
Final panels:
Politician (at podium): Mr. President! We nurbled your speech and it still contained 45 non-nurbled words!
Narration: After all, you can cut the font entirely from two nouns per sentence if you're wasting about 70% of your time.
Aide: Let's nurble ten of those. I want it to play in Peoria.
Votey:
A man with glasses: You nurble nurble nurble idiocy.
Another man (cigarette in mouth): Nurble you!
Panel 1 (a woman with dark hair):
Woman: I had this idea that all political speech could be improved.
Woman: But you changed everything so that the nouns to "nurble." You could still follow everything.
Narration: One of my Twitter followers, Jeff Lee, posted a quick and dirty program: the political speech nurbler.
Code block (the nurbler program):
<?php
//
// Extremely quick-and-dirty political speech nurbler (changes everything except nouns to
// suggested by Zach Weinersmith (https://twitter.com/ZachWeiner/status/261840134218063...
//
// Requires PHP, and part-of-speech.txt from the "Part of Speech Database", available at
// http://wordlist.sourceforge.net
//
// Usage: php nurbler.php input-file
//
if ($argc != 2) exit("Usage: php {$argv[0]} input-file\n");
if (!file_exists($argv[1])) exit("Error: could not find {$argv[1]}\n");
$part = array();
$pos = file("part-of-speech.txt");
foreach ($pos as $line) {
if (preg_match("/([^\t]*)\t(.*)$/", $line, $parts )) {
$part[trim(strtolower($parts[1]))] = $parts[2];
}
}
$infile = implode("", file("sotu.txt"));
while ($infile) {
if (preg_match("/([\w]*)(\W*)/", $infile, $matches )) {
echo nurble($matches[1]) . $matches[2];
$infile = trim( substr( $infile, strlen($matches[1])+strlen($matches[2])));
}
}
function nurble( $what ) {
global $part;
$check = trim(strtolower($what));
if (!isset($part[$check])) return "nurble"; // better to nurble unknown words.
return (strpos($part[$check], "N") !== 0) ? "nurble" : strtoupper($what);
}
Narration: Unlike most of my ideas, this one worked BETTER than expected. Here's a nurbled passage from the 2012 State of the Union:
Nurbled passage (only the retained nouns are shown in caps; everything else became "nurble"): ... TESTAMENT ... COURAGE, SELFLESSNESS ... TEAMWORK ... AMBITION ... FOCUS ... MISSION ... HAND ... WORK ... EXAMPLE ... COUNTRY ... WORLD ... PEOPLE ... GENERATION ... TECH ... FUTURE ... ENERGY ... SECURITY ... PROSPERITY ... WORLD ... ECONOMY ... WORK ... RESPONSIBILITY ... WORLD ... GENERATION ... HOME ... COMBAT ... ECONOMY ... CLASS ... WORLD ... GRANDFATHER ... PATTON'S ARMY ... CHANCE ... GI BILL ... GRANDMOTHER ... BOMBER ASSEMBLY LINE ... PORT ... OPTIMISM ... FAITH ... DEPRESSION ... FASCISM ... SUCCESS ... SHARE ...
Narration: Perhaps nurbling would be a good test of the information density of a speech.
Final panels:
Politician (at podium): Mr. President! We nurbled your speech and it still contained 45 non-nurbled words!
Narration: After all, you can cut the font entirely from two nouns per sentence if you're wasting about 70% of your time.
Aide: Let's nurble ten of those. I want it to play in Peoria.
Votey:
A man with glasses: You nurble nurble nurble idiocy.
Another man (cigarette in mouth): Nurble you!
Alt text
A tall SMBC comic titled "True Weinersmith Tales." In the first panel a dark-haired woman explains her idea that political speech could be improved by replacing all the non-noun words with the word "nurble" while still leaving the meaning followable. A caption notes that a Twitter follower, Jeff Lee, wrote a quick-and-dirty program called the political speech nurbler. The comic then shows a long block of PHP source code for the nurbler script, which loads a part-of-speech database, reads the State of the Union text, and replaces every word that isn't a noun with the word "nurble." A caption says it worked better than expected and presents a nurbled passage from the 2012 State of the Union: nearly every word is the word "nurble," with only scattered nouns left intact in capitals (testament, courage, teamwork, ambition, country, world, generation, energy, prosperity, grandfather, GI Bill, bomber assembly line, Depression, fascism, etc.). A caption suggests nurbling could test a speech's information density. In the final two panels, an aide at a podium tells the President, "We nurbled your speech and it still contained 45 non-nurbled words!" and a caption jokes you could cut most of it. The President says, "Let's nurble ten of those. I want it to play in Peoria." The votey (bonus panel) shows two men arguing: a bespectacled man says "You nurble nurble nurble idiocy," and a man with a cigarette retorts, "Nurble you!"
Transcribed by Claude Opus 4.8.