Google's Research Director Created This Hilarious Spoof Website

But Norvig, who previously led Google's search algorithms team and was head of computational sciences at the NASA Ames Research Center, is also a funny guy.

And so, when he decided to teach himself "some HTML5 web design," he built and photographed many Lego people doing many science-y things, and the Lego Institute for Lego Investigation was born.

The LI2 website made us laugh out loud, so we asked Norvig why he created it. He told us:

1. Lego announced the "Research Institute" kit; that sounded cool.
2. My various friends had new research institutes (like Paul Allen's AI2); that sounded like fun.
3. My daughter says it is because I am a new empty nester -- she's off to college and she says I had to replace her with a whole institute of imaginary friends.
4. I wanted to learn some HTML5 web design, but didn't want to tackle anything larger than one page for my first attempt.

Here are some of our favorite jokes on the site:

LI2 is into a lot of things:

The LI2 partners with industry (Stark) and academia (Hogwarts).

The L12 is more than an equal opportunity employer, it only hires people of color (yellow).