Emacs is a text editor that is installed on most Unix-like computers. It has a long history and a devoted following, and contains unusually many bizarre jokes for a piece of ostensibly serious software.
One of these is the doctor
command, which implements the famous ELIZA algorithm: a primitive but surprisingly convincing simulation of a Rogerian psychotherapist.
Another used to be the yow
command, which would print a quotation from the 70s underground comic strip Zippy the Pinhead. These quotations are typically strange non-sequiturs.
So perhaps it is inevitable that someone had the idea of combining the two, creating the command psychoanalyze-pinhead
, which runs the yow
command and feeds its output to the doctor
command, creating an unending stream of random nonsense alternating with formulaic responses that appear to be taking the nonsense seriously. This is amusing the first time.
More recently, concerns over copyright led to the removal from Emacs of the list of Zippy the Pinhead quotations. The list was replaced by the single entry:
Legally-imposed CULTURE-reduction is CABBAGE-BRAINED!
as a weak sort of protest, I suppose.
So now, if you psychoanalyze-pinhead
, the poor mechanical doctor is obliged to respond to the endlessly repeated lament that Legally-imposed CULTURE-reduction is CABBAGE-BRAINED
. One of her responses is to say
Is it because of some problems in your childhood that you say legally imposed culture reduction is cabbage brained?
(And I did think that perhaps this might be a pertinent question to address to the author of the replacement sentence, whoever that may be.)