MetaFilter posts tagged with tomlehrer

Tom Lehrer has some work to do...

darkstar — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 16:07:20 -0800

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have been able to confirm the production of the superheavy element 114, ten years after a group in Russia, at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, first claimed to have made it. The search for 114 has long been a key part of the quest for nuclear science’s hoped-for Island of Stability.

(Experience is especially long at Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley – not least because Glenn Seaborg discovered plutonium here early in 1941.)

The Periodic Table will continue to refer to the element by its IUPAC systematic element name, ununquadium, until agreement is made on a final "trivial" name for the element. Previously on MeFi: Element 112. Tom Lehrer's classic song, "The Elements".

Bob Claster interviews comedians

Kattullus — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 10:13:42 -0800

Bob Claster was a DJ on KCRW in Los Angeles. In the 80's he had a comedy show called Funny Stuff and he would interview comedians. He has many of these interviews online as mp3s. He interviewed Tom Lehrer, Douglas Adams, Danny Arnold (a.k.a. Barney Miller), Peter Cook, Terry Jones, two interviews with John Cleese, one solo and another with Michael Palin, Emo Philips, Billy Connolly, Mort Sahl, Quentin Crisp, "Brother Theodore" Gottlieb, June Foray and Bill Scott (a.k.a. Rocky and Bullwinkle and an epic five-part interview with Stan Freberg, the subject of my last post.

A merry "Bah, Humbug!" to us all

JHarris — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 18:24:05 -0800

Robert E. Howard-themed fantasy blog The Cimmerian posts a different take on a holiday classic.
Mystery Science Theater presents A Child's Christmas in Space, A Patrick Swazye Christmas, Merry Christmas (If That's Okay), a critique of Christmas movies and shows, and a little yuletide hysteria.
Tom Lehrer: "A Christmas Carol"
Futurama: The Elves' Christmas Song
Finally, there's The Colbert Report's book-burning Yule Log, both on the web and downloadable for Windows and Macintosh.

A year or so I linked the Escape Pod's recording of "In The Late December" here. It still fits. So does "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Fish-Men." (But this link is to the World of Warcraft version.)

Just sing out a Te Deum when you see that ICBM

griphus — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 17:40:17 -0800

Expanding on a previous post about Tom Lehrer, and in what is becoming a grand tradition of single link YouTube posts about him, 6funswede and YouTube present the entirety of An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer.

Pete Seeger condemns Stalin...

Jahaza — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 00:13:48 -0800

The pleasant but hagiographical Pete Seeger: The Power of Song (production company website w/ trailer) is playing in New York and Los Angeles. The movie is entirely uncritical... prompting this response by Ron Radosh who is interviewed in the film, but whose critical comments were left out. But most interesting is this followup article by Radosh describing Seeger's response and a new song against Stalin. The filmmaker comes out worst in Radosh's account... The closest the movie comes to criticism is when George Pataki (interviewed about RiverKeeper) says something about who he and Seeger didn't always agree politically. The film could at least have talked about the folk song "movement" critically in the way Tom Lehrer did:

One type of song that has come into increasing prominence in recent months is the folk-song of protest. You have to admire people who sing these songs. It takes a certain amount of courage to get up in a coffee-house or a college auditorium and come out in favor of the things that everybody else in the audience is against like peace and justice and brotherhood and so on. The nicest thing about a protest song is that it makes you feel so good.

The New York times has a more skeptical take than Radosh, reporting on earlier apologies by Seeger, but missing the point by emphasizing Seeger's writings rather than his music... which is of course Seeger's art, and not being clear that the NY Sun articles didn't say Seeger had never repudiated Stalin. Since seeing the movie I've had "Bring em Home" stuck in my head. Watch Seeger sing it on youtube. And Bruce Springsteen reinterpret it. I wasn't able to find a link to the new celebrity version (including among others Ani DeFranco) used in the movie's credits.

single link youtube of tom lehrer

criticalbill — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 10:02:20 -0800

It's a (Dressed-up) Single Link YouTube Post because you've already had the 13-minute long video of maths songs; you've already had the long newspaper interviews; you've even had the animated version (not to mention a few you shouldn't bother with); but have you, I ask, have you had Tom Lehrer in his heyday, singing "Werner von Braun"?

There may be many more but they haven't been dis-coh-vahd

Zed_Lopez — Thu, 01 May 2003 00:26:27 -0800

There may be many more but they haven't been dis-coh-vahd As of 1959, the news of 102 elements had come to Harvard (a modern remake would have to cram in 13 more.) There's more than one way to look at them, like spiral, rotating, illustrated, sub-atomic, symmetric, or forward-looking. Been there? Done That? Get the t-shirt.

Tom Lehrer: Is He Still Alive?

wendell — Sat, 01 Mar 2003 22:43:50 -0800

"I don't want to satirise George Bush and his puppeteers, I want to vaporise them." The unsubtle words of legendary musical satirist Tom Lehrer in a new interview for an Australian newspaper. (The interviewer notes: "he quickly adds: 'And that's not funny.'"...several paragraphs later.) The man who gave us "The Vatican Rag" and "The Masochism Tango", not to mention the recently MeFi-ed "The Elements", before being mostly quiet for 30-some years (His last interview I found on the web was with The Onion in '00) sounds off on the sorry state of satire, plus a look at his 'controversial' Australian tour in 1960, and some words about America's space program that a lot of y'all ain't gonna like...

MiguelCardoso — Wed, 23 Oct 2002 09:05:21 -0800

Tom Lehrer Sings The Periodic Table. [Flash required]

Kafkaesque — Thu, 26 Jul 2001 22:09:28 -0800

Tom Lehrer Retires – Tom Lehrer has finally hung it up as a math lecturer at my alma mater, UC Santa Cruz. I couldn't find a web link specifically about that, but thought it was OK to use a link about the man himself. My Banana Slug Bulletin said he retired so it must be true.

plinth — Mon, 13 Mar 2000 06:59:51 -0800

There's always room for Jell-O! Most people don't know that Tom Lehrer is the co-inventor of the vodka Jell-O shot