Reading, and understanding, an algorithm is hard at the best of times. Adding a funny story makes it triply so. I'm currently trying to read a Haskell paper where the authors seem more interested in impressing us with their shakespeare allusions than actually explaining the thing and I'm starting to wish the journal had rejected it.
The dry style of journals evolved that way for a reason.
"The dry style of journals evolved that way for a reason."
Because neither the authors of most scientific papers nor the editors of most scientific journals and conference proceedings can write well?
Now, Paxos and the Byzantine Generals thing are probably examples of Lamport going too far in the other, impressed-with-his-own-wittiness direction, but I've had many more problems understanding papers in the dry style, where gibberish seems to be accepted if it's in the right form. (And I'm looking at you, Flaviu Cristian.)
Have you ever been to a conference? A platform presentation, or someone standing in front of a poster explaining their research, is approximately 1000 times easier to understand than the paper they write a year later where they have to satisfy reviewers with a "dry" style.
The dry style of journals evolved that way for a reason.