The orchestra swirls and swells, then fades. Applause rises and falls. A bespectacled man on stage begins to speak, slowly, motioning his hands to emphasize his point. "The duck says quack," he says with all the earnestness the world can contain. Trust me, he says with his eyes, this is important. Cut to someone in the audience nodding approval.

So begins "Ducks Go Quack, Chickens Say Cluck," the new episode in The Onion's spoof on TED Talks. It's the third in the series that currently includes "Loudness Equals Power" and "Compost-Fueled Cars: Wouldn't That Be Great?"

Haha, good titles, right?

If you suspect the parody is too thin or unrealistic, then I would like to point you to the actual TED Talks "How To Tie Your Shoes," "How To Use One Paper Towel," and "In Praise of Slowness." Seriously!

The room-filling smugness, the obnoxious back-slapping of privileged people, the self-aggrandizing "change the world" rhetoric, the "big idea" bullshit — TED might seem too easy to parody, but it deserves it.

Ducks go quack. Chickens say fuuuuuuuuuuuuu.