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Friday, April 22, 2011

The Madness of Hector Hammond

When I first read this panel, Hector Hammond's idea seemed like sheer madness. Even if you could somehow figure out how to put all the words in the right order to predict the future, what about words coined in the future, such as "Internet?" Oh, wait...each individual letter exists as its own entry in any dictionary, so "stringing the words together in the right order" would include sentences like "In 1994 the Oxford Dictionary will add a new word spelled with the letters I, n, t, e, r, n, e, t. The Internet is a series of computer networks..." etc. Wow! All of a sudden this plan doesn't seem to crazy after all.

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