March 15, 2007
A Periodic Check on Your Sanity
In keeping with a psychology theme of this site and to help people who want to improve their minds, live longer, become well rounded, and have already memorized pi to two-hundred places, here is a new challenge--memorize the periodic table of the chemcial elements! Your friends will all be impressed when you use this at parties.
Well, it's not as hard as you think if you had a teacher like this sick professor, songwriter, and satirist Tom Lehrer, who wrote a song about the periodic table to the tune of Gilbert and Sullivan's "Major General's Song". Here's The Elements. Be sure to listen to it and learn.
If you enjoyed that and other songs from that site, you may like Lehrer's perfomance to a college math class: Tom Lehrer Video
Despite his politics, I've enjoyed the humor of this guy. In fact, I discovered that his philosophy is much like that of tolerant and caring left-wing people today, as evidenced by his quote:
I know that there are people who do not love their fellow man, and I hate people like that!Posted by Woody M. at March 15, 2007 12:00 PM | TrackBack
Wow Woody, I've always been a fan of Lehrer, he is one of the very few that does what he does and does it so well.
Good Find(s)
Posted by GM at March 15, 2007 01:49 PM
I know that there are people who do not love their fellow man, and I hate people like that!
That line, of course, was from his introduction to the song National Brotherhood Week from the album That Was the Year that Was.
I must have listened to that album hundreds of time growing up and could probably still sing most of the 14 songs on that album from memory today if you asked me to. For all I know, my mom still has that album stashed away somwhere.
Another of the songs on the album was New Math, which I was surprised he didn't play on the video. Bur then again, since he was performing for a college class, perhaps he considered that song too elementary.
Tom's songs are stuffed with delightful word play, plus loony rhymes that stick in your mind forever.
Posted by civil truth at March 15, 2007 07:34 PM
CT, if you go to the link in the post above labeled "Tom Lehrer Video", you will see him singing "New Math" to a college math class. If it takes a while to load, just click on one of the other more familiear formats to the left of the video for a faster load. I had the "new math" in high school, which quickly became the old math when the teachers couldn't teach it and parents couldn't help.
For your enjoyment, here are others:
Here are Lehrer's physics songs.
Songs & More Songs By Tom Lehrer - a link that has partial clips of all of his albums and songs.
There's another good site that I lost, but I'll be sure to share it if I find it.
Lehrer is one of the few liberals that I can enjoy. He's from the old school.
Posted by Woody at March 16, 2007 08:09 AM
Tom had a love of language and a sense of humor. When the New Left took over, they purged humor from the left. The rest, as they say, is history.
Posted by civil truth at March 16, 2007 02:28 PM
