> I can only read it as a joke -- the title is almost 'poop'

Don't be so sure!

POOP is the accepted term for Perl Object-Oriented Persistence - without any trace of irony, as far as I have ever been able to tell.

Actually, I have an impression that I relate very good to most of things Perl, I use it very often for small programs. I believe that most serious Perl people have a sense of humor, if you know what I mean. And exactly because of that bias, I've first believed that the article absolutely must be a very successful joke, and didn't understand why Rob isn't sure. Only after seeing the rest of the material, I wasn't sure myself. Maybe somebody should actually ask the authors.

Do read the paper! Note that I would consider an elegant solution this (string literals replaced with the names of them):

    static void judge()
    {
        String s = System.getProperty( p );
        if ( s.equals( t11 ) || s.equals( t12 ) ) {
            return m1;
        } else if ( s.equals( t21 ) || s.equals( t22 ) ) {
            return m2;
        }
        return m3;
    }

    public static void pjudge()
        { System.out.println( judge() ); }

Then read what they produced instead.