[tpm] A tad too subtle for me

[Indy Singh]

Close. I just googled it:

Source:
http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Formal_Languages

Megan is standing at the podium of the 10th Annual Symposium on Formal Languages (as per the banner behind her). Cueball crashes in through a glass pane and shouts "GRAMMAR!" and dashes off. Megan remains at the podium looking perplexed.
This is a reference to the phrase context-free grammar, which is a technical term used in formal language theory. The play on words is that Cueball does not provide any context for his statement.


Indy Singh
IndigoSTAR Software -- www.indigostar.com

From: J. Bobby Lopez 
Sent: Saturday, August 04, 2012 5:52 PM
To: Fulko Hew 
Cc: Unix Unanimous ; Toronto PerlMongers 
Subject: Re: [tpm] A tad too subtle for me

I have a feeling it has something to do with context-sensitive grammer (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Context-sensitive_grammar) and formal languages, and possibly that we (the audience) are the context.

That's my best guess.

-Bobby


On Sat, Aug 4, 2012 at 4:21 PM, Fulko Hew <fulko.hew at gmail.com> wrote:




  On Sat, Aug 4, 2012 at 4:15 PM, <arocker at vex.net> wrote:


    Did anybody get the joke in Friday's http://xkcd.com/1090/ xkcd?


  Not sure, but a mouseover revealed the following hidden caption/titlte...
  Does it help you? because it didn't help me.
   

[audience looks around]  'What just happened?' 'There must be some context we're missing.'
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