Doug Zongker
As a UW CSE Ph.D. student more than a decade ago, Doug Zongker (now a Google engineer) first delivered his now-famous parody of unintelligible scientific presentations: “Chicken Chicken Chicken: Chicken Chicken.” (No video of the presentation exists, but the 2002 slides are still on the web here, as is the companion paper here.)
Attention increased in 2007, when Doug presented the work at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Fortunately, cameras were present to capture the moment, here.
Now, the dance radio station of Seattle’s Nathan Hale High School, C89.5, has picked up the mantle. C89.5 is actually really good. They have twice as many listeners as KEXP and just won a “Best Dance Station” industry award. Apparently they were the first to start playing Lady Gaga and even got her to do a concert at Nathan Hale.
Karl Koscher
Of course, a long time ago the Seattle Schools largely de-funded the station, so C89.5 now does semiannual pledge drives. During their most recent pledge drive, they had a new “day sponsorship” option: for $1,000 individuals could get their message, up to 50 words in length, played throughout the day.
Current UW CSE Ph.D. student Karl Koscher sent them this tweet: “If I had $1,000 to spend I’d totally be a day sponsor and have all 50 words be ‘chicken'”. (One of their DJs/instructors has a thing for farm animals …)
They thought it was hilarious, and apparently one of Karl’s friends did as well – without Karl’s knowledge, the friend plunked down the $1,000 to make it happen.
So last Friday, “Chicken Chicken Chicken: Chicken Chicken” took to the airwaves and the Internet on C89.5, here.
Repeat after me …
Landmark contributions to science live forever. “That’s why we do what we do.”