] In the famous sketch from the TV show "Monty Python's
] Flying Circus," the actor John Cleese had many ways of
] saying a parrot was dead, among them, "This parrot is no
] more," "He's expired and gone to meet his maker," and
] "His metabolic processes are now history."

] Now, using several methods, including statistical
] techniques borrowed from gene analysis, two researchers
] have created a program that can automatically generate
] paraphrases of English sentences.

This article focuses on applying this technology to news stories, but the product of the research could be applied to many language related tasks.