Nonsense

:''If you are looking for "nonsense" as used in Wikipedia, see Wikipedia:Patent nonsense.'' Nonsense is an utterance or written text in what appears to be a human language or other symbolic system, that does not in fact carry any identifiable meaning. == Distinguishing sense from nonsense == While Emily Dickinson wrote that: :''Much madness is divinest Sense'' ::''To the discerning Eye. . . '' The problem lies in the discernment. Distinguishing meaningful utterances from nonsense is not a trivial task. Confronted with a lengthy text in an unknown writing system, how does one determine whether those characters in fact contained a meaningful text, or were simply set using the equivalent of printer's pi or a ''lorem ipsum'' style text? The problem is important in cryptography and other intelligence agency fields, where it is important to distinguish Signal (information theory) from noise (physics). Cryptanalysis have devised algorithms for this purpose, to determine whether a given text is in fact nonsense or not. These algorithms typically analyse the presence of repetitions and redundancy in a text; in meaningful texts, certain frequently used words -- for example, ''the'', ''is'', and ''and'' in a text in the English language -- will occur over and over again. A random scattering of letters, punctuation marks, and spaces will not exhibit these regularities. Zipf's law attempts to state this analysis in the language of mathematics. By contrast, cryptographers typically seek to make their ciphertexts resemble random distributions, to avoid tell-tale repetitions and patterns that may give an opening for cryptanalysis. == Teaching machines to talk nonsense == It is far harder for cryptographers to deal with the presence or absence of meaning in a text in which the level of redundancy and repetition is ''higher'' than found in natural languages: for example, in the mysterious text of the Voynich Manuscript. Some have attempted to create text that in fact carries no meaning, but still complies with the regularities predicted by Zipf's law. The Markov chain technique is one such method. This has occasionally been put into the service of surrealism jokes; the pseudo Usenet poster Mark V Shaney posted texts generated by a Markov chain algorithm, and frequently launched flaming wars with his unfathomable screeds. The Markov chain technique is one method that has been used to generate texts by algorithm and randomizing techniques that seem meaningful. Another could be called the Mad Libs method: it involves the creation of templates for various sentence structures, and filling in the blanks with noun phrases or verb phrases; these phrase generation procedures can be looped to add recursion and give the output the appearance of greater complexity and sophistication. ''Racter'' was a computer program that generated nonsense texts by this method; unfortunately, ''Racter's'' book, ''The Policeman's Beard is Half Constructed'', proved to have been the product of heavy human editing of the output of the program. == Literary nonsense == The phrase "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously" was coined by Noam Chomsky as an example of nonsense. The individual words make sense, and are arranged according to proper grammar, yet the result is still nonsense. The inspiration for this attempt at creating verbal nonsense came from the idea of contradiction and irrelevant or immaterial characteristics (an idea cannot have a dimension of color, green or otherwise), both of which would be sure to make a phrase meaningless. The phrase "the square root of Tuesday" operates on the latter principle. This principle is behind the inscrutability of the koan "What is the sound of one hand clapping?", as one hand would supposedly require another hand to complete the definition of clapping. Still, the human will to find meaning is strong; ''green ideas'' might be ideas associated with a Green party in politics, and ''colorless green ideas'' criticises some of them as uninspiring. For some, the human impulse to find meaning in what is actually random or nonsensical is what makes people find luck in coincidence, or believe in omens and divination. The dreamlike language of James Joyce's "novel" ''Finnegans Wake'' sheds light on nonsense in a similar way; full of portmanteau words, it ''appears'' to be pregnant with multiple layers of meaning, but in many passages it is difficult to say whether any one person's interpretation of a text is the "intended" or "correct" one. There may in fact be no such interpretation. === Nonsense verse === Nonsense verse represents a long tradition; its best known exponent is Edward Lear, author of ''The Owl and the Pussycat'' and hundreds of limerick (poetry)s. But according to Douglas R. Hofstadter, the crowning achievement in a nonsense limerick goes: :''There once was a man of St Bees'' :''Who was stung in the hand by a wasp;'' :''When asked, "Does it hurt?"'' :''He replied, "Yes, it does,'' :''I'm so glad it wasn't a hornet."'' A "limerick" that does not rhyme and is not humour, which makes it funny. The above limerick was actually a parody of Lear's limericks by W. S. Gilbert. Nonsense verse represents a tradition older than Lear; the nursery rhyme ''Hey Diddle Diddle'' is also a sort of nonsense verse. There are also some things which ''appear'' to nonsense verse, but actually are not, such as the popular 40's song "Mairzey Doats".[http://www.dennislivingston.com/jl_mairzy.htm] Lines of nonsense frequently figure in the refrains of folksongs. Nonsense riddles and knock-knock jokes are seen often. Lewis Carroll, seeking a nonsense riddle, once posed the question ''How is a raven like a writing desk?'' But someone answered him, ''Because Edgar Allan Poe wrote on both.'' However there are different answers. In the field of Art, the Dada movement created nonsense art as an expression of disaffection with art and a society that seemed unavoidably addicted to the insanity of war. == The philosophy of nonsense == Philosophically, nonsense masquerading as sense is the gist of the charges of pseudoscience and pseudophilosophy. Karl Popper's notion of falsifiability is an attempt to create an axiom for distinguishing sense from nonsense in the field of science; its validity remains controversial in the philosophy of science. == See also == *Wikipedia:Patent nonsense *Wikipedia:Bad jokes and other deleted nonsense *Wit *Humor *Gibberish *Gobbledygook *Tall tale *Fiction *Language game *Vacuous truth *Discordianism — Nonsense as Salvation *Dada — nonsense as art

Nonsense

== Henry Lee Lucas ==

Henry Lee Lucas wore a hat. Sometimes he would take the hat off and hit people with it. It was a hard hat. Also sometimes he would kill people. He was a Floridian. I think he had brain problems. These problems stemmed from microwave radiation that leaked from cell phone towers. They made his brain cry and go crazy. Then he started to hear voices. The voices told him to kill his mother and father. He killed them. These voices also told him to invest in General Motors. He lost all his money in the great depression. Henry Lee Lucas is sometimes called �the great unifier� because he was the president during reconstruction of the south during the Civil War. Like Abraham Lincoln. But he was shot. Lucas was instrumental in bringing the north back into the confederacy after they lost the war. Henry Lee Lucas had a mother. A mother named Erbigina or Claudius. Sometimes Erbigina or Claudius would beat him. Sometimes she would not. Henry Lee Lucas was perplexed by this and this is why he grew up to be a statistician. He liked to calculate probability. He later remarked �It is difficult to calculate probability when being hit in the head with a broom.� Henry Lee Lucas lived by the railroad tracks. Railroads were an important method of transportation in the 1600s. They were faster than horsebuggy. Horsebuggy was dangerous. It is not fun to ride horsebuggy! Henry Lee Lucas was a ninja. It takes dedication to become a ninja. Ninja do not like hamburgers. Hamburgers disrupt their chi. That is �ninja speak� for giving them gas. This one time a ninja ate a full plate of hamburgers in a ninja dare. He exploded. It is not the way of the ninja. In conclusion Henry Lee Lucas as was not a nice man. He killed people. Also he had a retarded friend named Otis that also killed people. They say �people who kill people have friends who kill people� and it is true. Otis drew a scary picture of a demon mask. It looked like a child drew it. It is because he was retarded.

While I suspect that the above text is a fine example, I'm not sure that the article on nonsense is improved by it. -- User:Ihcoyc 16:29, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Nonsense

#REDIRECT Wikipedia:Patent nonsense

Nonsense

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