I cannot overstate how much I love Tom Lehrer’s story. It sounds so fake but is entirely real.
He’s a goddamn genius- he started studying mathematics at Harvard when he was 15 and graduated magna cum laude. He worked at Los Alamos for a few years before being drafted and working for the NSA, where he claims to have invented jello shots to get around alcohol bans.
He then went back to Harvard for a couple years before starting to teach political science at MIT.
Through all of that, he was writing and performing both some of the funniest shit you’ll ever hear (Poisoning Pigeons in the Park, Masochism Tango) and absolutely scathing political satire (Who’s Next, Wernher von Braun, Send the Marines). Until the mid/late 60s counterculture gained momentum. He didn’t like their aesthetic, so he stopped making music.
Shortly after, he moved to California and started teaching math and musical theater history at the UC Santa Cruz for the next 30 years.
I don’t know if non-Californians understand just how goddamn funny that is. It’s where stoners and math (and now computer science) kids who couldn’t get into Berkeley go. Leaving Harvard/MIT for UCSC is peak academic phoning it in. And by all accounts he had a blast.
Plus the whole putting all of his music in the public domain thing. That fucked.
Also he is still alive! 95 years old as of November 2023.
The other day @piecesoftape sent me a text that said, “you probably got a notification for this, but Tom Lehrer outlived Kissinger.”
There’s a quote attributed to Lehrer, probably in answer to why he stopped performing, that “political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.”
I am delighted to report Tom Lehrer is still with us as of January 13, 2025.
And still with us as of 21st January 2025.
Here’s one I hadn’t heard before. As someone who experienced the conversion from Old Money to New, I understand.
At least I understand the theory, but since I didn’t and still don’t have the Master’s Degree in Mathematics which he recommends, the practice leaves me as baffled as before.
Suffice to say that both in UK New Money and later in Euro, decimal makes a lot more sense than this song.
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Writer Note – for general info about what pre-decimal currency was like, check this video. It’s Old Currency Info Lite, and a bit sloppy about details.
It flubs a couple of things, completely overlooking that there were other banknotes than the one-pound note.
Five- and ten-pound notes were in use, though growing less common in ordinary circumstances as their value increased. The largest denomination an ordinary person might carry were fivers, and perhaps an occasional tenner.
At the other end of this scale was a ten-shilling note, something lucky kids might receive through the post, tucked into the birthday or Christmas card sent by a particularly doting relative.
Speaking as one of those lucky kids, leaving out the ten-bob note is IMO a reprehensible oversight.
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The video could also make it clearer that gold guinea and half-guinea coins were long out of circulation by the time decimal currency came in. Gold sovereign and half-sovereign coins were also long gone from street use, reserved for investment and bullion transfer instead.
Pricing of goods and services in guineas continued after the coins went away, used for “snob value” to prove the purchaser could pay more when buying things like land or property, tailored suits or horses, and paying professional fees to lawyers and doctors.
(It may also have a “baker’s dozen” aspect, with the purchaser adding a bit extra to offset any risk of seeming stingy, or as a way of adding commission to the sale – though TBH, for most purposes it’s more likely to be snobbish.)
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The video also suggests that a crown (five-shilling coin) was regularly used for shopping right up to decimalisation. Beg to differ. During my pre-decimal lifetime I never saw one as pocket change. Half-crown yes, crown no.
After QEII’s coronation in 1952, the crown coin was AFAIK only ever issued as a commemorative, so while it remained legal tender and could be used in shops, it was invariably just kept as a souvenir.
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As Terry Pratchett once put it: “British people resisted decimal currency for a long time because they thought it was too complicated.”
But with all that said, and lacking a scientific study to confirm or deny it, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that pre-decimal people were better at mental arithmetic, if only as a survival measure…
amhrancas 