16 minutes ago, TheVat said:

So many quotable lines from Lehrer.

And he was a Harvard mathematician as well, and incorporated a subtraction problem into his song New Math, solving it in both base 10 and base 8.

Just now, swansont said:

And it didn’t always rhyme. (excuse me, rhyne)

Don't know that one.

But Rhyes mean something quite different in my neck of the woods.

The saying is 'Beware the Rhyne', which accurately predicted the outcome of the last pitched battle fought on English soil.

4 hours ago, studiot said:

Don't know that one.

But Rhyes mean something quite different in my neck of the woods.

The saying is 'Beware the Rhyne', which accurately predicted the outcome of the last pitched battle fought on English soil.

Folk Song Army

The tune don't have to be clever
And it don't matter if you put a couple extra syllables into a line
It sounds more ethnic if it ain't good English
And it don't even gotta rhyme (excuse me, rhyne)

This one's good for some outrageous rhymes (my daughter mentioned it to me, when I asked her if she remembered Tom Lehrer):

Spring is here, spring is here.

Life is skittles, and life is beer.

I think the loveliest time of the year

Is the spring, I do, don't you? Course you do!

But there's one thing that makes spring complete for me

And makes every Sunday a treat for me:

All the world seems in tune

On a spring afternoon

When we're poisoning pigeons in the park.

Every Sunday you'll see

My sweetheart and me

As we poison the pigeons in the park

When they see us coming

The birdies all try an' hide,

But they still go for peanuts

When coated with cyan-hide.

The sun's shining bright,

Everything seems all right

When we're poisoning pigeons in the park.

We've gained notoriety

And caused much anxiety

In the Audubon Society

With our games.

They call it impiety

And lack of propriety

And quite a variety of unpleasant names.

But it's not against any religion

To want to dispose of a pigeon.

So, if Sunday you're free,

Why don't you come with me,

And we'll poison the pigeons in the park.

And maybe we'll do

In a squirrel or two

While we're poisoning pigeons in the park.

We'll murder them all amid laughter and merriment,

Except for the few we take home to experiment.

My pulse will be quickenin'

With each drop of strychnine

We feed to a pigeon

(It just takes a smidgin)

To poison a pigeon in the park.

On 7/28/2025 at 2:31 PM, Phi for All said:

My favorite line of his was from The MLF Lullaby

I was tired when I read this and my first reaction was, how do I secure a card at the MILF Library?

1 hour ago, iNow said:

I was tired when I read this and my first reaction was, how do I secure a card at the MILF Library?

That's what my autocorrect suggested too.

Dewey want such a card? It's long overdue.

I like the way their volumes are stacked.

MILF also reminds me of Lehrer's "Alma." Both his biographical songs, Alma and Lobachevsky, are full of inaccuracies but entertaining nonetheless.

1 hour ago, TheVat said:

I like the way their volumes are stacked.

MILF also reminds me of Lehrer's "Alma." Both his biographical songs, Alma and Lobachevsky, are full of inaccuracies but entertaining nonetheless.

I think it’s literally poetic license.

I may have to see the new Naked Gun movie. Note that the name of its star, Liam Neeson, sounds a little like Leslie Nielsen if you uttered his name with your mouth full.

22 hours ago, swansont said:

I think it’s literally poetic license.

Yep.

Due to the rising usage of chat bots and "AI" backed by Large Language Models i hereby suggest the following to be added to the dictionary:

Tensorology

1. A belief system that attributes mystical, consciousness, or cognitive significance to multidimensional sets of numbers and their relationships with events and people. In modern contexts typically refers to interpretations in which such numbers are associated with Artificial Intelligence and more specifically with the static weights of LLMs (Large Language Models).

2. The study or practice of attributing meaning to the numerical structures of machine learning models.

   Distinguished by internal divisions between major factions of practitioners, notably:
       Promptologists who emphasize the role of prompt structure in producing machine consciousness and
       Layerologists who focus on the internal numeric representations of models and mystical attributes.

Note: Numerology is closely related and may be regarded as the special case of this belief system in which the focus is on scalars or lists of numbers.

The following concepts are still under investigation and lack formal definitions; require further study before any formal proposals can be advanced:

Narcaissism - AI boosted narcissism.
Narchissism - An AI ethics subfield; human induced machine narcissism where an LLM, due to sustained human input, generates text exhibiting simulated narcissistic tendencies.
Dunning Kruger Loop - feedback loop where user and chatbot convinces each other about their great discoveries of previously unknown scientific theories, typically in theoretical physics.
Hallhumanisation - When a chatbot user due to ignorance "hallucinates" concepts and theories not supported by mainstream science and hereby tricks an LLM into producing scientific-looking but false output (this false output is also known as "hallucination").

1 hour ago, Ghideon said:

Due to the rising usage of chat bots and "AI" backed by Large Language Models i hereby suggest the following to be added to the dictionary:

Tensorology

1. A belief system that attributes mystical, consciousness, or cognitive significance to multidimensional sets of numbers and their relationships with events and people. In modern contexts typically refers to interpretations in which such numbers are associated with Artificial Intelligence and more specifically with the static weights of LLMs (Large Language Models).

2. The study or practice of attributing meaning to the numerical structures of machine learning models.

   Distinguished by internal divisions between major factions of practitioners, notably:
       Promptologists who emphasize the role of prompt structure in producing machine consciousness and
       Layerologists who focus on the internal numeric representations of models and mystical attributes.

Note: Numerology is closely related and may be regarded as the special case of this belief system in which the focus is on scalars or lists of numbers.

The following concepts are still under investigation and lack formal definitions; require further study before any formal proposals can be advanced:

Narcaissism - AI boosted narcissism.
Narchissism - An AI ethics subfield; human induced machine narcissism where an LLM, due to sustained human input, generates text exhibiting simulated narcissistic tendencies.
Dunning Kruger Loop - feedback loop where user and chatbot convinces each other about their great discoveries of previously unknown scientific theories, typically in theoretical physics.
Hallhumanisation - When a chatbot user due to ignorance "hallucinates" concepts and theories not supported by mainstream science and hereby tricks an LLM into producing scientific-looking but false output (this false output is also known as "hallucination").

Would you need a dedicated website to serve up these hallucinations?

I see hallm.com is available at 4.99.**

We could all change the world in our reflected image possibly.

**I see it's "parked"(thought it was available)

Edited August 10Aug 10 by geordief

My new vehicle has too many distractions. Every time I put it in reverse, the car shows me videos of people getting run over!

Har!

He who walks in front of a car gets tired. He who walks behind a car gets exhausted.

A recent paper in The Albanian Journal of Atmospheric Physics and Wicker Cultivation has falsified the hypothesis that thunder only happens when it's raining, in a classic Popperian "black swan" disproof. The paper offers a definitive rejection of earlier results published by the Fleetwood Mac research group in 1976 in an obscure British meteorological journal (then released the following year as a song). The FMRG had also conducted a test of the hypothesis that players only love you when they're playing, which did not survive peer review due to methodological concerns over how players were defined as a distinct cohort and what specific behaviors constituted play.

Ecology memes

3 hours ago, TheVat said:

A recent paper in The Albanian Journal of Atmospheric Physics and Wicker Cultivation has falsified the hypothesis that thunder only happens when it's raining, in a classic Popperian "black swan" disproof. The paper offers a definitive rejection of earlier results published by the Fleetwood Mac research group in 1976 in an obscure British meteorological journal (then released the following year as a song). The FMRG had also conducted a test of the hypothesis that players only love you when they're playing, which did not survive peer review due to methodological concerns over how players were defined as a distinct cohort and what specific behaviors constituted play.

Did the address whether you will know, when the rain washes you clean?

2 hours ago, swansont said:

Did the address whether you will know, when the rain washes you clean?

Apparently this question was not considered, mainly in deference to an earlier study by a Liverpool group which determined that "you can get a tan, from standing in the English rain." One of multiple hypotheses formulated as part of the Eggman project. It seems unfortunate that a result confined to England would inhibit research across the globe.

53 minutes ago, TheVat said:

Apparently this question was not considered, mainly in deference to an earlier study by a Liverpool group which determined that "you can get a tan, from standing in the English rain." One of multiple hypotheses formulated as part of the Eggman project. It seems unfortunate that a result confined to England would inhibit research across the globe.

They were on acid

Edited August 22Aug 22 by geordief

Players only love you when they are playing!

If drinking energy drinks causes short term memory loss, imagine what drinking energy drinks would do!

I used to be paranoid before I found out it was the person behind me.

I used to be a paranoid schizophrenic before I found out it was myself behind me.

I can't remember how to write 1, 1000, 51, 6 and 500 in roman numerals.. IM LIVID

1 hour ago, StringJunky said:

I can't remember how to write 1, 1000, 51, 6 and 500 in roman numerals.. IM LIVID

Life was simpler back then.They never had to divide by zero.