It's a good time to be alive

I'm happy this evening. Is it the endorphins drifting through my blood after another run? Is it the slight reduction in the sweltering heat today? Is it that I have dry feet? Or could it be tomorrow's public holiday?

No. Better than that: there's a new social network.

Playing with language

Today I was looking at Get TEDPad, where a chap has run some statistical analysis against transcripts of the first five hundred or so TED lectures, and figured out how to generate snippets of new, non-existent TED speeches that sound either convincing and good quality English, or (when he switches it to the dark side) good quality English spoken by an idiot obsessed by whatever the New York Times tells him is important at this particular moment in time.