One Cool Thing

I was watching Nova last week-mainly because the host is a very cool guy. Don't know him? His name is Neil deGrasse Tyson. He's an astrophysicist, a scientist and the Director of the Hayden Planetarium. And right now, he's the host of Nova Science Now. Last week's show was very cool. It had man-made diamonds and the creator of the auto-tune (something that could fix even my voice although I think it's bad for people who do it professionally) but to me, the most interesting part was a profile of Luis Van Ahn-professor of Computer Science at Carnegie-Mellon and all -around genius. He created Recaptcha, a program designed to thwart autobots and spam. You've seen when you sign up for lists or go to buy something-at that rectangle that has words drawn out and difficult to read. Human beings can read them but autobots cannot.But you know what happens every time you type in one of those words? You're helping to digitize 140 years of the New York Times.
If you don't like the Times, this is a problem. But I LOVE the Times and I think is is just so cool-using one program to solve one problem and also help in a tedious task. Good job, Dr Von Ahn. And thank you, because those stretched out words have puzzled me for awhile. Why Tilson? Why gallifraumy? Why tree frog?
Now I know.