RIP Tom Lehrer

[graycardinal]

Reading online this morning, I find news of Tom Lehrer's passing. This is not perhaps unexpected in itself; he had led a long and fruitful life, but it's definitely a moment for reflection, as Lehrer was possibly the cleverest and most literate satirist of our time, not to mention the funniest.

More than usually, though, one of my favorite Diane Duane quotes applies: "What's loved, survives." We still have the music (and that's a very literal "we"; per his Web site, Lehrer a couple of years ago released his entire oeuvre into the public domain.

And in the wake of the news, it turns out he also left behind a (formerly) top secret mathematical joke that took more than half a century to fully detonate. (sanguinity, you should appreciate this....)

Comments

[sanguinity]

I do indeed!

I also appreciate the bit in his Desert Island Disks episode, when asked if he could escape the island (a standard in the question in the format), and the hosts pre-emptively answered for him that of course he could, he would know all the fiddly navigation stuff, he's a mathematician...

He said, "No, no, no, you're thinking of engineers."

Because of course he was the poet kind of mathematician, not the engineer kind of mathematician! (A distinction you may or may not remember TNG!Moriarty making in my "Verity and Verisimilitude".)

His memory for a blessing! It was an honor to share this timeline with him.