Always to Call it Please, "Research"

Lehrer performing in 1960

The above is taken from a song by my favorite comedian-satirist-singer, Tom Lehrer (b. 1928). The fact that he was in his heyday before I was a gleam in my father's eye is beside the point; I just love his stuff. Some favorites include:

• Lobachevsky (containing the above quote)
• Poisoning Pigeons in the Park
• The Elements
• The Masochism Tango
• National Brotherhood Week (source of my usual Internet tagline: "I know there are people out there who do not love their fellow human beings... and I hate people like that")
• New Math (which I hum under my breath as I help Abby with her homework)

There are many more, of course, including a couple he did for The Electric Company (Silent E and L-Y), the adult versions of which are not appropriate for general audiences (Silent E "turns a simple rap into a..."), as well as others. But this came into my mind today as I was discussing copyright with my husband Laston, as he was concerned about images I found using Google Image Search and whether they were in the public domain. 

Oh yeah.

Since I am attending an online workshop on how to avoid plagiarism, and had this discussion with my spouse, and just added my tagline (see above) into my Google+ account, it was on my mind. 

And that's how blog post topics enter my head.