I, Tom Lehrer, individually and as trustee of the Tom Lehrer Trust 2007, hereby grant the following permissions:
All copyrights to lyrics or music written or composed by me have been permanently and irrevocably relinquished, and therefore such songs are now in the public domain. All of my songs that have never been copyrighted, having been available for free for so long, are now also in the public domain. In other words, I have abandoned, surrendered and disclaimed all right, title and interest in and to my work and have injected any and all copyrights into the public domain.
The permission granted includes all lyrics which I have written to music by others, although the music to such parodies, if copyrighted by their composers, are of course not included without permission of their copyright owners. The translated songs on this website may be found on YouTube in their original languages.
Performing and recording rights to all of my songs are included in this permission. Translation rights are also included.
In particular, permission is hereby granted to anyone to set any of these lyrics to their own music, or to set any of this music to their own lyrics, and to publish or perform their parodies or distortions of these songs without payment or fear of legal action.
Some recording, movie, and television rights to songs written by me are merely licensed non-exclusively by me to recording, movie, or TV companies. All such rights are now released herewith and therefore do not require any permission from me or from Maelstrom Music, which is merely me in another hat, nor from the recording, movie, or TV companies involved.
In short, I no longer retain any rights to any of my songs.
So help yourselves, and don’t send me any money.
NOTICE:
THIS WEBSITE WILL BE SHUT DOWN AT SOME DATE IN THE NOT TOO DISTANT FUTURE, SO IF YOU WANT TO DOWNLOAD ANYTHING, DON’T WAIT TOO LONG.
It’s sad that these things will eventually be lost to centralization and digital aging. Make physical copies as well. How long does the USB standard last?
Think about the music that has been lost to time/death/natural disaster/RIAA
> As a souvenir for [his graduate student friends], Lehrer decided in 1953 to make a record of the songs he had written at Harvard. He recorded Songs by Tom Lehrer in one session at Trans Radio studios in Boston on a 10-inch LP.. bought the rights to the record from Trans Radio, and began selling it by mail order.. By 1954.. he had sold 10,000 records.. By the end of the decade, he had sold 370,000 records.
Sounds like maybe he self-published: "All such rights are now released herewith and therefore do not require any permission from me or from Maelstrom Music, which is merely me in another hat"
This is only true for pure administration deals which are extremely rare. The usual co-publishing deals, as well as full publishing and 360 deals give up some ownership of the songs.
As sad as today is, the one ray of sunshine here is that Tom Lehrer’s obit was written so long ago (and saved for the day it would be needed), that no one updated it with the subsequent revelation that his work at the Atomic Energy Commission was actually a cover story for his far more sensitive work at the fledgling National Security Agency.
Seeing the New York Times publish wrong out-of-date information has been funny since Judith Miller.
GEO: As a mathematician did you ever make any brilliant discoveries?
TOM LEHRER: Oh,nonono. I have no desire to extend the frontier of human knowledge; retract them, if anything. I like to teach it and I like to think about it, but that's about it.
I loved Lehrer growing up- my parents had his record "That Was the Week That Was" which I think is his finest work. Anyway, when I went to college (UCSC), I took his 'Nature of Math' course, which was quite enjoyable. He was a great presenter, I learned all sorts of neat stuff like the the quartic factoring challenge and the pigeonhole principle/birthday paradox (at the time, I didn't know much about hash tables and didn't make the connection).
I almost ended up TA'ing his class the next year but I had to focus on my undergraduate thesis instead. I would have loved to get to know him better, as his sense of humor was incredible.
I also had Ralph Abraham- a chaos theory guy and psychonaut who taught hist class (Nature of Math) in a natural amphitheater- at points, I could almost picture him wearing a toga, lecturing us on greek math.
Tom Lehrer has been my go-to source of acerbic wit and brilliant satire since I first encountered him when attending the Norwegian University of Tecnology and Science; a group I joined there held Lehrer in high esteem and I, too, was blown away by how timeless a lot of his songs were; a lot of satire ages very quickly, but chances are my unborn grandchildren will laugh hysterically to 'Who's Next?' or 'Wernher von Braun' after doing the mid-21st century equivalent of googling to find out who WvB was, of course.
Godspeed, Tom. This has been a rough week - three of the heroes of my formative years have checked out of existence - Lehrer, Ozzy and author Ingvar Ambjørnsen. Sigh. Who's next?
Ha, that’s funny! I got my PhD from NTNU, but never actually noticed that in English it becomes NUTS… NTNU is a Norwegian acronym for Norges teknisk-naturvitenskapelige universitet.
Back in the day when the Internet was still full of whimsy, the computer club at my alma mater had acquired nuts.edu.
I still have a T-shirt somewhere proudly sporting the domain name under the NTNU (Norwegian abbreviation for Norwegian University of Tecnology and Science) logo, slightly modified - the real logo is a circle bounded by a rounded square; the T-shirt has a hazelnut standing in for the circle.
> Reflecting on his bicoastal life in a 1981 interview for Newsday, he said he planned to keep his Massachusetts home “until my brain turns completely to Jell-O, at which time I will of course move to California full time.”
To think he is only a couple years younger than Mel Brooks.
> Lehrer once stated that he invented the Jello shot during this time, as a means of circumventing the base's ban on alcoholic beverages.[18]
18. Boulware, Jack (April 19, 2000). "That Was the Wit That Was". SF Weekly. Archived from the original on November 28, 2018. Retrieved November 27, 2018.
Today is probably a good day to make Jell-O without alcohol, for the kids, though I might have some explaining to do.
Some years ago they asked me to have Jell-O, and - thinking of Lehrer - I replied that it's adult only, as you make it with alcohol. Much to my surprise that explanation stuck - and they never had Jell-O so far.
"In German, oder Englisch, I know how to count down Und I'm learning Chinese!" - as relevant as ever. Maybe less so German and more matrix multiplication
A fairly intellectual audience, in the 50s and 60s when the space race was big news and von Braun's Nazi past was recent history? I'd guess a majority.
In "An Evening Waster With Tom Lehrer" he chats a little between songs and tells a short story about someone who becomes a doctor: "He soon became a specialist, specializing in diseases of the rich. He was therefore able to retire at an early age".
"Diseases of the rich" has always seemed like a useful metaphor for one way to decide on what product you are going to build. Does it heal a "disease" of the "rich"?
His comments between songs are at least as funny as the songs themselves. For many years I thought that recordings only existed of those comments for An Evening Wasted and That Was The Year That Was. Then I discovered The Remains of Tom Lehrer, a 3 CD set that includes, not only the original Songs By Tom Lehrer (straight off the 10 inch LP), but also a live recording of the same songs from a concert, with comments between the songs! (This set also has studio recordings of the songs from An Evening Wasted, done before the live concert recording.)
Just to give a taste, before he even plays the first song in the concert version of Songs By Tom Lehrer, he gives a biographical introduction of himself, as though he were a toastmaster or an impresario. Here's how it starts (at least as much as I can capture it with just typing):
"Endowed by nature with perhaps the most glorious baritone voice ever to be heard on an American stage since the memorable concert debut in 1835 of Millard Fillmore; endowed also with twelve incredibly agile fingers..."
For a software person, you should heal a "disease" of the many if you want to maximise money, as they scale better than almost anything else. But for a doctor, who can only treat a limited number of patients, you should spend your time treating rich patients if you want to maximise money.
Depends on willingness to pay - Even if your cost per customer is 0 maximising profit would mean that it’s better (for you) to sell 10 licences for £1,000,000 a pop to rich customers who really need the service rather than 500,000 licences for £1. It’s a shame because those 500,000 miss out on your product even though it would cost you nothing if they were to use it. This is where price segmentation comes into play - maybe you can still charge those 10 big customers the full whack, while providing benefit to the 500,000.
> With Tom Lehrer's passing, I suppose this is a moment to share the story of the prank he played on the National Security Agency, and how it went undiscovered for nearly 60 years....
When I was growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, my father loved Tom Lehrer - had all his records. My brother and I joked about the “sliding down the razor blade of life” lyric a lot.
We all know the Daniel Radcliffe story, right?
(He performed The Elements from memory on a UK talk show, which was allegedly what got him hired to play Weird Al in his 'biopic' - https://youtu.be/rSAaiYKF0cs?si=MRbiCH20VMCCcnuz )
Lehrer taught me, at a young age, that the “division” between music and mathematics was completely arbitrary, that you can be interested in both, and indeed there is significant overlap.
Truly a gift of a person, we were fortunate to have him for nearly a century.
When I did my maths degree in the UK in the early 00s it was quite popular to do a “Maths and Music” degree that was equally split between the two. I’ve also been a musician all my life so one more sample point!
I used his songs as examples in a web audio project a few months ago - as others have mentioned Lehrer generously put all his music in the public domain making it perfect for use in other projects.
Originally I was going to use one of his albums but I found that his humor still hits hard after all these years, to the extent that I thought the songs would detract from my project. In the end I just used my three favorite song: The Elements, We Will All Go Together When We Go, and the absolutely brutal takedown of Werher Von Braun.
Ironically, the V2 program was a net detriment to the Reich. It consumed vast resources that would have been far better spent on conventional weapons. The V2's problem was it was hopelessly inaccurate (the guidance system was a clock and a gyroscope) and did only insignificant damage to the Allied war machine.
The V1 was more cost effective - not because the V1 did much damage, but because it diverted a great deal of British effort at trying to shoot them down and blow up their launch sites. The Germans eventually figured the latter out, and built lots of fake launch sites for the RAF to uselessly destroy.
Missiles only became effective due to better targeting or nuclear warheads.
Isn't a clock and a gyroscope precisely two things that are needed for the missile to know where it is at all times? Like, it can then know where it isn't by subtracting where it is from where it isn't, or where it isn't from where it is, to get the positional deviation. Combine that with the clock deviation, it can get the velocity and acceleration and then use all three information to generate corrective commands.
In principle, yes. That's called inertial navigation and while it works, for a while, the errors involved are big enough that without a feedback loop you'll be happy if it lands anywhere near the target area. And with the size of the payloads of the day 'near' isn't nearly precise enough. So these were only usable as a terror weapon. Unfortunately, not much seems to have changed in 80 years in spite of our ability to target much more precisely.
Yes. Interestingly, Willy Messerschmidt was imprisoned for a couple years after the war, Ernst Heinkel was tried but not imprisoned.
Von Braun was not because Russia had also captured a number of rocket scientists, the US rocket technology was way behind, and von Braun was needed to get the US rocket program going.
Modern liquid fuel rocket engines can directly trace their evolution back to the V2.
I grew up with a tape of Tom Leher songs and memorized the periodic table of elements song in middle school, which has mostly stuck with me. I loved his sense of humor - what a wonderful soul.
He was a math professor, a secret government cryptographer, a comedian in technically challenging musical-theater forms, and reportedly the inventor of the Jell-O shot.
> Playfully doing something difficult, whether useful or not, that is hacking. (...) It is hard to write a simple definition of something as varied as hacking, but I think what these activities have in common is playfulness, cleverness, and exploration. Thus, hacking means exploring the limits of what is possible, in a spirit of playful cleverness. Activities that display playful cleverness have "hack value".
However:
> The concept of hacking excludes wit and art as such. The people who began to speak of their activities as "hacking" were familiar with wit and art, and with the names of the various fields of those; they were also doing something else, something different, for which they came up with the name "hacking". Thus, composing a funny joke or a beautiful piece of music may well involve playful cleverness, but a joke as such and a piece of music as such are not hacks, however funny or beautiful they may be. However, if the piece is a palindrome, we can say it is a hack as well as music; if the piece is vacuous, we can say it is a hack on music.
(So I think The Elements qualifies, if barely.)
And with respect to
> Hackers typically had little respect for the silly rules that administrators like to impose, so they looked for ways around.
> A rumor has circulated for years that in the 1950s, Lehrer invented the Jell-O shot, a cup of flavored gelatin infused with booze, which has now become a frat-house favorite. He throws his head back and laughs.
> "That's amazing how that got around! What happened was, I was in the Army for two years, and we were having a Christmas party on the naval base where I was working in Washington, D.C. The rules said no alcoholic beverages were allowed. And we wanted to have a little party, so this friend and I spent an evening experimenting with Jell-O. It wasn't a beverage," he says with a shrug.
> "And we finally decided that orange Jell-O and vodka was the best. We tried gin and vodka and various flavors and stuff -- of course you can't sample too much. So we went over to her apartment and we made all these little cups and we thought I would bring them in, hoping that the Marine guard would say, 'OK, what's in there?' And we'd say, 'Jell-O.' and then he'd say, 'Oh, OK.' But no, he didn't even ask. So it worked. I recommend it. Orange Jell-O."
I find that his bodily gestures and facial expressions greatly add to his performance, yet I can find most of his songs in audio format only? Does anyone know if there are more recordings available, apart from the concert in denmark?
Did he have a song "when you're dead" about when you learn that someone is alive that you thought was dead? Because google ai thinks that he did but I can't find it...
"If, after hearing my songs, just one human being is inspired to say something nasty to a friend, or perhaps to strike a loved one, it will all have been worth the while."
https://tomlehrersongs.com/
I, Tom Lehrer, individually and as trustee of the Tom Lehrer Trust 2007, hereby grant the following permissions: All copyrights to lyrics or music written or composed by me have been permanently and irrevocably relinquished, and therefore such songs are now in the public domain. All of my songs that have never been copyrighted, having been available for free for so long, are now also in the public domain. In other words, I have abandoned, surrendered and disclaimed all right, title and interest in and to my work and have injected any and all copyrights into the public domain.
The permission granted includes all lyrics which I have written to music by others, although the music to such parodies, if copyrighted by their composers, are of course not included without permission of their copyright owners. The translated songs on this website may be found on YouTube in their original languages. Performing and recording rights to all of my songs are included in this permission. Translation rights are also included.
In particular, permission is hereby granted to anyone to set any of these lyrics to their own music, or to set any of this music to their own lyrics, and to publish or perform their parodies or distortions of these songs without payment or fear of legal action.
Some recording, movie, and television rights to songs written by me are merely licensed non-exclusively by me to recording, movie, or TV companies. All such rights are now released herewith and therefore do not require any permission from me or from Maelstrom Music, which is merely me in another hat, nor from the recording, movie, or TV companies involved.
In short, I no longer retain any rights to any of my songs.
So help yourselves, and don’t send me any money.
NOTICE: THIS WEBSITE WILL BE SHUT DOWN AT SOME DATE IN THE NOT TOO DISTANT FUTURE, SO IF YOU WANT TO DOWNLOAD ANYTHING, DON’T WAIT TOO LONG.
Tom Lehrer November 26, 2022
I made a git archive of everything a little over a year ago: https://github.com/jcalvinowens/tomlehrer-archive
You can help out by hosting a copy somewhere!
Doing the lords work…
It’s sad that these things will eventually be lost to centralization and digital aging. Make physical copies as well. How long does the USB standard last?
Think about the music that has been lost to time/death/natural disaster/RIAA
> How long does the USB standard last?
It will last approximately forever. See how we can still use all the Commodore 64 hardware and software thanks to enthusiasts.
> How long does the USB standard last?
Until the next update./s
That was… abundantly clear.
We are thankful.
That’s awesome, more people should do this
Aren't his songs owned by a label? Did he really keep all the rights, so he was able to do what the text above says?
If not, do we know which subset of his work is free?
EDIT:
His Wikipedia page lists the following labels:
- TransRadio
- Lehrer
- Reprise/Warner Bros.
- Rhino/Atlantic
- Shout! Factory
- Needlejuice Records
His sheet music was published by Crown Publishers Inc.
His public domain dedication is a noble gesture, but legally it probably doesn't mean much.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24833683#24834514
> As a souvenir for [his graduate student friends], Lehrer decided in 1953 to make a record of the songs he had written at Harvard. He recorded Songs by Tom Lehrer in one session at Trans Radio studios in Boston on a 10-inch LP.. bought the rights to the record from Trans Radio, and began selling it by mail order.. By 1954.. he had sold 10,000 records.. By the end of the decade, he had sold 370,000 records.
Sounds like maybe he self-published: "All such rights are now released herewith and therefore do not require any permission from me or from Maelstrom Music, which is merely me in another hat"
Songs are never owned by labels, only recordings.
The songs aka compositions/lyrics may be controlled by publishers
This is only true for pure administration deals which are extremely rare. The usual co-publishing deals, as well as full publishing and 360 deals give up some ownership of the songs.
His work was self-published.
As sad as today is, the one ray of sunshine here is that Tom Lehrer’s obit was written so long ago (and saved for the day it would be needed), that no one updated it with the subsequent revelation that his work at the Atomic Energy Commission was actually a cover story for his far more sensitive work at the fledgling National Security Agency.
Seeing the New York Times publish wrong out-of-date information has been funny since Judith Miller.
It was written so long ago that the primary author himself died two years ago.
I like to think Lehrer would have appreciated the irony of being predeceased by his obituary’s author.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40439810#40460118
Source?
I loved Lehrer growing up- my parents had his record "That Was the Week That Was" which I think is his finest work. Anyway, when I went to college (UCSC), I took his 'Nature of Math' course, which was quite enjoyable. He was a great presenter, I learned all sorts of neat stuff like the the quartic factoring challenge and the pigeonhole principle/birthday paradox (at the time, I didn't know much about hash tables and didn't make the connection).
I almost ended up TA'ing his class the next year but I had to focus on my undergraduate thesis instead. I would have loved to get to know him better, as his sense of humor was incredible.
I also had Ralph Abraham- a chaos theory guy and psychonaut who taught hist class (Nature of Math) in a natural amphitheater- at points, I could almost picture him wearing a toga, lecturing us on greek math.
> the pigeonhole principle/birthday paradox (at the time, I didn't know much about hash tables and didn't make the connection).
I wouldn't say there's a ton to connect. Hash collisions are expected and you don't rehash as soon as the first one occurs.
> I wouldn't say there's a ton to connect.
What's the point of your rude post? OP already knows this. In fact, they learned it from Tom Lehrer.
"Why did Tom Lehrer swap fame for obscurity?" (2024), 170 comments, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40439810
"Tom Lehrer releases song lyrics to public domain" (2020), 130 comments, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24833683
"Tom Lehrer at 90: a life of scientific satire" (2018), 80 comments, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16774608
Thanks! Macroexpanded:
Tom Lehrer and Santa Cruz: the trail of one of America's premier satirists - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40986181 - July 2024 (26 comments)
Why did Tom Lehrer swap fame for obscurity? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40439810 - May 2024 (170 comments)
Tom Lehrer DAT Recordings - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38778749 - Dec 2023 (2 comments)
That's Mathematics – Tom Lehrer Songs - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38471908 - Nov 2023 (1 comment)
Tom Lehrer puts all music and lyrics in public domain - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34038206 - Dec 2022 (1 comment)
Looking for Tom Lehrer, Comedy's Mysterious Genius - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34034896 - Dec 2022 (1 comment)
Tom Lehrer has released all of his songs into the public domain - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34024968 - Dec 2022 (130 comments)
Tom Lehrer – We Will All Go Together When We Go - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30509279 - March 2022 (2 comments)
Tom Lehrer – So Long, Mom (A Song for World War III, 1967) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30496103 - Feb 2022 (1 comment)
Tom Lehrer Puts His Music into the Public Domain - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24882384 - Oct 2020 (1 comment)
Tom Lehrer releases song lyrics to public domain - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24833683 - Oct 2020 (132 comments)
Tom Lehrer's Mathematical Songs (1951) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24279151 - Aug 2020 (44 comments)
Tom Lehrer’s memorable “Revue” session - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18036813 - Sept 2018 (6 comments)
Tom Lehrer at 90: a life of scientific satire - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16774608 - April 2018 (83 comments)
Looking for Tom Lehrer, Comedy's Mysterious Genius - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10684409 - Dec 2015 (3 comments)
Tom Lehrer - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10675682 - Dec 2015 (32 comments)
Tom Lehrer's last (math) class (2001) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1914399 - Nov 2010 (1 comment)
You almost get the sense he had a few fans around here!
Tom Lehrer has been my go-to source of acerbic wit and brilliant satire since I first encountered him when attending the Norwegian University of Tecnology and Science; a group I joined there held Lehrer in high esteem and I, too, was blown away by how timeless a lot of his songs were; a lot of satire ages very quickly, but chances are my unborn grandchildren will laugh hysterically to 'Who's Next?' or 'Wernher von Braun' after doing the mid-21st century equivalent of googling to find out who WvB was, of course.
Godspeed, Tom. This has been a rough week - three of the heroes of my formative years have checked out of existence - Lehrer, Ozzy and author Ingvar Ambjørnsen. Sigh. Who's next?
One wonders how seriously this tribute should be taken given that the educational institution referenced has the acronym NUTS.
Ha, that’s funny! I got my PhD from NTNU, but never actually noticed that in English it becomes NUTS… NTNU is a Norwegian acronym for Norges teknisk-naturvitenskapelige universitet.
Back in the day when the Internet was still full of whimsy, the computer club at my alma mater had acquired nuts.edu.
I still have a T-shirt somewhere proudly sporting the domain name under the NTNU (Norwegian abbreviation for Norwegian University of Tecnology and Science) logo, slightly modified - the real logo is a circle bounded by a rounded square; the T-shirt has a hazelnut standing in for the circle.
They have officially nade their acronym NUST to avoid the nutty one. E.g https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2014/may-britt-mo...
Wait until you hear about what the institute is called in the translation of Monday Begins on Saturday
What a wonderful soul.
> Reflecting on his bicoastal life in a 1981 interview for Newsday, he said he planned to keep his Massachusetts home “until my brain turns completely to Jell-O, at which time I will of course move to California full time.”
To think he is only a couple years younger than Mel Brooks.
Speaking of Jell-O: I have heard, and perhaps this is apocryphal, that Tom Lehrer was the inventor of the Jell-O shot.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Lehrer
> Lehrer once stated that he invented the Jello shot during this time, as a means of circumventing the base's ban on alcoholic beverages.[18]
18. Boulware, Jack (April 19, 2000). "That Was the Wit That Was". SF Weekly. Archived from the original on November 28, 2018. Retrieved November 27, 2018.
https://web.archive.org/web/20181128164739/https://archives....
Full text at https://web.archive.org/web/20211025111743/https://archives.... for the time being. Save your copy while the Archive still exists!
Today is probably a good day to make Jell-O without alcohol, for the kids, though I might have some explaining to do.
Some years ago they asked me to have Jell-O, and - thinking of Lehrer - I replied that it's adult only, as you make it with alcohol. Much to my surprise that explanation stuck - and they never had Jell-O so far.
He's a great guy, his wikiquote page is a treasure https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Tom_Lehrer
"In German, oder Englisch, I know how to count down Und I'm learning Chinese!" - as relevant as ever. Maybe less so German and more matrix multiplication
"'Nazi Schmazi' says Werner von Braun" is an amazing joke
It had me in stitches when I first heard and I really wondered how big a fraction of his audience got that one.
A fairly intellectual audience, in the 50s and 60s when the space race was big news and von Braun's Nazi past was recent history? I'd guess a majority.
Is there a specific joke in "Nazi Schmazi" besides the general idea that he wasn't picky about what regime he worked for?
Yiddish
Do you mean it sounds like it could be a Yiddish word? Because it doesn't seem to be an actual Yiddish (or German) word, as far as I can tell.
Ah, I am so used to that as a general wordplay pattern that I didn't think about the origin, good point!
Once the rockets go up, who cares where they come down? That’s not my department.
"who cares where ze come down"
.. important to get the German english right!
"National Brotherhood Week" is another great one.
In "An Evening Waster With Tom Lehrer" he chats a little between songs and tells a short story about someone who becomes a doctor: "He soon became a specialist, specializing in diseases of the rich. He was therefore able to retire at an early age".
"Diseases of the rich" has always seemed like a useful metaphor for one way to decide on what product you are going to build. Does it heal a "disease" of the "rich"?
> he chats a little between songs
His comments between songs are at least as funny as the songs themselves. For many years I thought that recordings only existed of those comments for An Evening Wasted and That Was The Year That Was. Then I discovered The Remains of Tom Lehrer, a 3 CD set that includes, not only the original Songs By Tom Lehrer (straight off the 10 inch LP), but also a live recording of the same songs from a concert, with comments between the songs! (This set also has studio recordings of the songs from An Evening Wasted, done before the live concert recording.)
Just to give a taste, before he even plays the first song in the concert version of Songs By Tom Lehrer, he gives a biographical introduction of himself, as though he were a toastmaster or an impresario. Here's how it starts (at least as much as I can capture it with just typing):
"Endowed by nature with perhaps the most glorious baritone voice ever to be heard on an American stage since the memorable concert debut in 1835 of Millard Fillmore; endowed also with twelve incredibly agile fingers..."
For a software person, you should heal a "disease" of the many if you want to maximise money, as they scale better than almost anything else. But for a doctor, who can only treat a limited number of patients, you should spend your time treating rich patients if you want to maximise money.
Depends on willingness to pay - Even if your cost per customer is 0 maximising profit would mean that it’s better (for you) to sell 10 licences for £1,000,000 a pop to rich customers who really need the service rather than 500,000 licences for £1. It’s a shame because those 500,000 miss out on your product even though it would cost you nothing if they were to use it. This is where price segmentation comes into play - maybe you can still charge those 10 big customers the full whack, while providing benefit to the 500,000.
idk, in the age of social media I'd argue that most of the money being made on the internet is being made inducing diseases of the many
RIP Mr. Lehrer.
I'd only heard of him from a song of his, "Poisoning pigeons in the park", that has been available on DECtalk since way back.
Searching for this, I just found another of his, "I got it from Agnes", that has also been adapted for DECtalk. Similar dark humor!
https://chordify.net/chords/i-got-it-from-agnes-by-tom-lehre...
Lehrer performed it charmingly on Parkinson:
https://youtu.be/R6qFG0uop9k
> With Tom Lehrer's passing, I suppose this is a moment to share the story of the prank he played on the National Security Agency, and how it went undiscovered for nearly 60 years....
https://bsky.app/profile/opalescentopal.bsky.social/post/3lu...
I hadn't known about this. Priceless!
I feel the AI safety community has not made enough of Lehrer’s masterpiece on the topic:
https://youtu.be/frAEmhqdLFs?si=DYsY5Juco-kJ5eWD
I assure you we sing it sometimes!
We sung it at solstice
I never would have thought that he was still alive. Until reading the article, I don't think I ever saw a picture of him in color.
Same. I would have guessed he died years ago. Loved his satire.
Always liked his "Werner Von Braun":
https://youtu.be/QEJ9HrZq7Ro?si=RDu536cWahc2Oct7
When I was growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, my father loved Tom Lehrer - had all his records. My brother and I joked about the “sliding down the razor blade of life” lyric a lot.
He gave a lovely little performance in the late 1990s to celebrate one of his fellow mathematicians:
https://youtu.be/zxFCQplZgKI
97 years, wow! I guess he waited to go together with everyone else, and just couldn’t wait any more :)
I was hoping for him to survive TWO deaths of political satire
We will all go together when we go
https://youtu.be/frAEmhqdLFs?si=iJqkfAUqkHHkkwP2
Richard Severo, the author of this obituary, died two years ago!
I loved his wacky songs. He made poisoning pigeons in the park and nuclear proliferation funny.
“ Who needs a hobby like tennis or philately? I've got a hobby: rereading Lady Chatterley”
I first heard him when I was 13: it was mind blowing. Can’t wait to show my kids
We all know the Daniel Radcliffe story, right? (He performed The Elements from memory on a UK talk show, which was allegedly what got him hired to play Weird Al in his 'biopic' - https://youtu.be/rSAaiYKF0cs?si=MRbiCH20VMCCcnuz )
As a scientist, I appreciate his attempt; but as a musician I can't help thinking that he has a horrible sense of pitch.
I'll always remember him for playing the piano acceptably.
Lehrer taught me, at a young age, that the “division” between music and mathematics was completely arbitrary, that you can be interested in both, and indeed there is significant overlap.
Truly a gift of a person, we were fortunate to have him for nearly a century.
When I did my maths degree in the UK in the early 00s it was quite popular to do a “Maths and Music” degree that was equally split between the two. I’ve also been a musician all my life so one more sample point!
May he rest in peace. In memoriam, this hourlong recording of a concert in Copenhagen is a joy to watch: https://youtu.be/QHPmRJIoc2k
Some of the most clever songs i've ever heard, and a good person too. RIP.
I used his songs as examples in a web audio project a few months ago - as others have mentioned Lehrer generously put all his music in the public domain making it perfect for use in other projects.
Originally I was going to use one of his albums but I found that his humor still hits hard after all these years, to the extent that I thought the songs would detract from my project. In the end I just used my three favorite song: The Elements, We Will All Go Together When We Go, and the absolutely brutal takedown of Werher Von Braun.
That wasn't just a takedown of Werner von Bruan but of every scientist that checked their ethics at the door of the laboratory.
Ironically, the V2 program was a net detriment to the Reich. It consumed vast resources that would have been far better spent on conventional weapons. The V2's problem was it was hopelessly inaccurate (the guidance system was a clock and a gyroscope) and did only insignificant damage to the Allied war machine.
The V1 was more cost effective - not because the V1 did much damage, but because it diverted a great deal of British effort at trying to shoot them down and blow up their launch sites. The Germans eventually figured the latter out, and built lots of fake launch sites for the RAF to uselessly destroy.
Missiles only became effective due to better targeting or nuclear warheads.
Isn't a clock and a gyroscope precisely two things that are needed for the missile to know where it is at all times? Like, it can then know where it isn't by subtracting where it is from where it isn't, or where it isn't from where it is, to get the positional deviation. Combine that with the clock deviation, it can get the velocity and acceleration and then use all three information to generate corrective commands.
In principle, yes. That's called inertial navigation and while it works, for a while, the errors involved are big enough that without a feedback loop you'll be happy if it lands anywhere near the target area. And with the size of the payloads of the day 'near' isn't nearly precise enough. So these were only usable as a terror weapon. Unfortunately, not much seems to have changed in 80 years in spite of our ability to target much more precisely.
Yes but not precisely. There is an uncertainty that is difficult to remove.
However, if you combine it with modern image recognition and you know your target it will be probably enough
Intentions matter.
Yes. Interestingly, Willy Messerschmidt was imprisoned for a couple years after the war, Ernst Heinkel was tried but not imprisoned.
Von Braun was not because Russia had also captured a number of rocket scientists, the US rocket technology was way behind, and von Braun was needed to get the US rocket program going.
Modern liquid fuel rocket engines can directly trace their evolution back to the V2.
Typo: Bruan -> Braun.
I grew up with a tape of Tom Leher songs and memorized the periodic table of elements song in middle school, which has mostly stuck with me. I loved his sense of humor - what a wonderful soul.
Of course so many more have subsequently been discaaaaavered.
But most were done at Berkeley so I hope they then told Haaarvard.
Is it to much to ask for a black bar? For reasons I can't articulate I've always considered him a hacker in spirit.
He was a math professor, a secret government cryptographer, a comedian in technically challenging musical-theater forms, and reportedly the inventor of the Jell-O shot.
Stallman says in https://stallman.org/articles/on-hacking.html:
> Playfully doing something difficult, whether useful or not, that is hacking. (...) It is hard to write a simple definition of something as varied as hacking, but I think what these activities have in common is playfulness, cleverness, and exploration. Thus, hacking means exploring the limits of what is possible, in a spirit of playful cleverness. Activities that display playful cleverness have "hack value".
However:
> The concept of hacking excludes wit and art as such. The people who began to speak of their activities as "hacking" were familiar with wit and art, and with the names of the various fields of those; they were also doing something else, something different, for which they came up with the name "hacking". Thus, composing a funny joke or a beautiful piece of music may well involve playful cleverness, but a joke as such and a piece of music as such are not hacks, however funny or beautiful they may be. However, if the piece is a palindrome, we can say it is a hack as well as music; if the piece is vacuous, we can say it is a hack on music.
(So I think The Elements qualifies, if barely.)
And with respect to
> Hackers typically had little respect for the silly rules that administrators like to impose, so they looked for ways around.
perhaps we should mention mention the origin story of the Jell-O shot from https://web.archive.org/web/20211025111743/https://archives....:
> A rumor has circulated for years that in the 1950s, Lehrer invented the Jell-O shot, a cup of flavored gelatin infused with booze, which has now become a frat-house favorite. He throws his head back and laughs.
> "That's amazing how that got around! What happened was, I was in the Army for two years, and we were having a Christmas party on the naval base where I was working in Washington, D.C. The rules said no alcoholic beverages were allowed. And we wanted to have a little party, so this friend and I spent an evening experimenting with Jell-O. It wasn't a beverage," he says with a shrug.
> "And we finally decided that orange Jell-O and vodka was the best. We tried gin and vodka and various flavors and stuff -- of course you can't sample too much. So we went over to her apartment and we made all these little cups and we thought I would bring them in, hoping that the Marine guard would say, 'OK, what's in there?' And we'd say, 'Jell-O.' and then he'd say, 'Oh, OK.' But no, he didn't even ask. So it worked. I recommend it. Orange Jell-O."
So, yeah. Definitely a hacker.
We need Tom Lehrer more now, in these times, that ever!
He somewhat famously observed that his work as a political satirist became obsolete when Kissinger received the Nobel Peace Prize.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Lehrer
I like this tribute page if him https://www.casualhacker.net/tom.lehrer/
And I actually knew the Austrian counterpart Georg Kreisler in person.
I find that his bodily gestures and facial expressions greatly add to his performance, yet I can find most of his songs in audio format only? Does anyone know if there are more recordings available, apart from the concert in denmark?
Did he have a song "when you're dead" about when you learn that someone is alive that you thought was dead? Because google ai thinks that he did but I can't find it...
If he were still with us maybe he'd write a song about LLM hallucinations.
Such a unique and wonderful contribution to the culture. RIP
(reminder that he published all his lyrics and music as public domain a few years ago: https://tomlehrersongs.com/ )
lyrics and sheet music on archive.org https://archive.org/details/tomlehrersongs
I recall listening fondly to his music as a child. The Elements and New Math stand out in particular.
A few days ago I played them for my children on a whim.
The universe is weird some times.
Does anyone know if there exist videos of his tv shows?
A hacker favorite, for sure. Between him, Gilbert and Sullivan, and Douglas Adams, and many others, the nerd soul was satisfied. RIP
One of my favourite musicians of all times. All I can say is that I can't wait to introduce my children to his work one day.
That is sad, but he lived a long, rich life.
I was raised on his music. Much of it would not fly, these days.
"If, after hearing my songs, just one human being is inspired to say something nasty to a friend, or perhaps to strike a loved one, it will all have been worth the while."
RIP
RIP
His songs helped me through so many difficult times.
Rest in Peace, Bittersweet Prince.
The world just became a lot poorer.
https://archive.is/89a1G
He is now flying with the pigeons he poisoned. Brilliant lyricist I learned in grade school. Brilliant.
Darn… RIP.
"Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize."
“Played piano acceptably.”
To the downvoter — this is a quote from the liner notes of one of his albums, where he published middling to damning reviews of his concert lol.