The Internet: what isn't it good for? It's made mathematical research so, so, so much easier. I can't imagine how mathematicians ever got by before searchable databases like MathSciNet, which not only lets you hunt down articles based on author, title, or keyword, but even spits out BibTeX code you can just cut and paste into your bibliography!
I made extensive use of this when I was writing a paper for my general exam. Which, by the way, I have finished. That's right! A 20-page summary of my current research interests, all typeset with diagrams and everything. Chilling! Exciting! Spectacular! Action-packed! Thrill to the torrid, turbulent transgressions and death-defying derring-do of double-coset decompositions! Marvel at mysterious machinations of Morse-theoretic mayhem! Peer at propositions that pout and preen prettily while plied with polished prostrate plaudits and palaver, panegyrics of proof!
You know what else the Internet is good for? Archiving our civilisation's mountainous wastes of cultural flotsam and jetsam. The campish fragments that would surely be lost and forgotten forevermore were it not for YouTube. Windows onto the odd taste of yesteryear! Just today I encountered one such fragment. On a political blog, of all things. I guess they've gotten tired of Transhumanism and have moved on to falsetto-voiced ukulele player Tiny Tim and his unforgettable rendition of "Tip-Toe Thru The Tulips", which, despite my comparatively meagre years on the cosmic scale (being as I am still in my late-mid-twenties, though I can feel my early-late-twenties creeping up on me), I remember seeing back in the days of my childhood on re-runs of Laugh-In. It is, as they say, something. Something is exactly what it is.
But there's more Tiny Tim out there. Oh so much more.
And we mustn't ignore this one, oh no. Oh no. Did you realise that Tiny Tim lived for a time in Des Moines of all places, and had very conservative views about a woman's role in a marriage?
I like this one a great deal.
I wish I had talent like his. I would take my ukulele everywhere. Especially to class. On exam days. Picture it. Just...picture it.
BUT WAIT! THERE'S MORE!God bless this man. It's Harvey Sid Fisher, the astrological lounge singer! I caught his act once at Gabe's Oasis in Iowa City. Unforgettable, although he was a little older and...not so much in a tuxedo as a T-shirt. Of course, at the time I was very, very drunk.
Very drunk.
STILL MORE! Oh YouTube, you'll be the death of me. So much Shatner. Oh the Shatner. And Nimoy? You'd better believe there's Nimoy. Now you too can enjoy "The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins", as I have done these many years. It's honestly surprising that everyone involved in the making of that song hasn't died of shame. You'd think that it would kill something inside you.
DEAR GOD HELP US ALL, IT WON'T STOP. The Internets are full of horror today. It's like I woke up this morning and found the world overrun by Daleks.
Tiny Tim, for all his quirks, had a real talent and a rare flair. This...this is just a trainwreck. I don't know which is more alarming: that western civilisation could produce such an abomination, or that someone out there preserved this like a turd in formaldehyde to sicken future generations.
Tim, how could you leave us when we need you now more than ever?
Posted by aloysius at July 08, 2006 12:53 PM |