Around the time this website was made, I was building an application for a big company in Spain that was to run as a Java applet and required the code to be signed.
They did not yet have their own certificates so I had to make my own CA during testing and sign the code, and I wanted to make sure that they did not forget to switch to their certificates later, so instead of signing the code with my name which some bureaucrat might decide to not bother changing, the code was signed by Britney Spears.
They noticed it, got the joke and made sure to switch certificates for the release. Everything went well thanks to Britney.
I love the idea of this but the mention of Hedy Lamarr could be confused as parody too when she was in fact an incredibly intelligent engineer and physicist.
It's only impressive if you've become accustomed to the unfortunate trend of forced obsolescence and the desire of many to justify useless recurring "maintenance" busywork. Basic HTML and CSS will always work.
I think the challenge is also caring enough to keep paying money to host a site for no clear purpose or gain. And moving hosting providers since guessing hostgator didn't exist back then. Based on the modified times on some assets on the site I'd guess it was last moved in Oct 2015. So glad they kept it up!
Meanwhile Dolph Lundgren has an actual MA in Chemical Engineering. It's a pity we can't get him to do something like this in earnest to teach engineering concepts.
From Wikipedia "...Lundgren received a degree in chemical engineering from the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in the early 1980s and a master's degree in chemical
engineering from the
University of Sydney in 1982...."
I thought .ac was the Academic TLD, and was wondering how this domain was registered, but it is just a ccTLD (2 letter, so has to be). .ac just happens to be the academic second level TLD of choice for many countries.
Apparently, you could have gotten a .edu before 2001 without being an accredited institution in the US.
From the same era of the internet I recall a site called the "Large Hardon Collider" making fun of the very common subtle typo. IIRC it had a light blue background and crude (in more ways than one) pencil diagrams. I can't find it now and I wonder if anyone else remembers it?
"In the last section, we looked at the p-n junction. More efficient recombination of electron-hole pairs can be acheived by incorporation of a thin layer of semiconductor material, either p or n type semiconductor with a smaller energy gap than the cladding layers, to form a double heterostructure. (More on this in the future). As the active layer thickness in a double heterostructure becomes close to the De-Broglie wavelength (about 10nm for semiconductor laser devices) quantum effects become apparent."
There used to be a series of network posts by the "Router God". They went missing, and someone resurrected a bunch of them. Sadly, the article "7 of 9 on OSPF" has left us for good.
An attempt was made in the section "Band Structure and Effective Mass" of the chapter "Basic Semiconductor Physics" to tie the two disparate subjects together.
It’s called absurdity. It’s funny because it’s obviously not true, and also funny because of the undertones that it’s a clever way to get horny teenagers to study physics who really just want to see the photos.
You are being pedantic, but I’ll play along. Absurd has multiple meanings. It can mean nonsensical, but it can also mean utterly ridiculous or silly. Under those other meanings I believe the pop-star-physics-professor still qualifies.
It sounds pedantic, but "absurd" is fundamentally different from "rare". A lot of baggage comes from flagging something as absurd, instead of just unexpected or uncommon. Winning the lottery isn't absurd, having 3 pairs of some chromosome isn't either, and being a successful pop singer with an academic background isn't either, it's just rare.
Everyone knows Alanis Morissette is a master electrician. That's why she has one hand in her pocket, while the other is probing a circuit.
Anyway, it's kind of Ironic [1] that the dude from Queen is an astrophysicist, and Britney Spears is writing Semiconductor Physics tutorials. Something something music and math.
At the time she was ground zero for all of pop culture and pretty much every single man’s crush. When that website came out it was funny because we were all looking at pictures of Britney anyway so may as well learn some physics at the same time.
Btw, she really went downhill once she fell out of popularity. I think she has a life put back together finally but she got a raw deal. I’m rooting for her.
Others have pointed it out, but it’s the juxtaposition of the fact that she’s definitely not an expert in this subject with a lesson in the subject.
There’s some subtle bits to the humor depending on how charitable you’re feeling. It might just be absurdist, as in “Blackbeard’s guide to astrobiology”, or it may be more mean spirited and playing on a belief that she is not intelligent.
TL;DR - the joke formula is just:
subject=…
person_not_familiar_with_subject=…
joke=“${person_not_familiar_with_subject}’s guide to {subject}“
And the amount of implied cruelty in the comparison is variable.
If I share the OP's objections, which I think I do, the problem isn't with the joke attempt itself, it's with the execution. The joke isn't tied in to the content at all, it's literally just the title, and nothing else.
If the author had tied song references into the text, for example, that would make it a much better execution.
Before anyone has a lighthearted Sunday night moment of humor sharing: you probably don't want to link to this site in your employer's Slack watercooler channel.
Different people might deconstruct the humor of the site's gimmick different ways. Some innocuous, some not.
But no need to do any literary analysis and critical thinking this time, because...
Today most people will immediately realize that something like the "Booble" search form on that page is probably a bad idea for a welcoming modern work environment.
(Related: for the same less-welcoming reason, it's maybe not a great idea on HN.)
They did not yet have their own certificates so I had to make my own CA during testing and sign the code, and I wanted to make sure that they did not forget to switch to their certificates later, so instead of signing the code with my name which some bureaucrat might decide to not bother changing, the code was signed by Britney Spears.
They noticed it, got the joke and made sure to switch certificates for the release. Everything went well thanks to Britney.
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