Opal @opalescentopal.bsky.social
With Tom Lehrer's passing, I suppose this is a moment to share the story of the prank he played on the National Security Agency, and how it went undiscovered for nearly 60 years.
July 27, 2025 at 5:01 PM
Opal @opalescentopal.bsky.social· 10d
I worked as a mathematician at the NSA during the second Obama administration and the first half of the first Trump administration. I had long enjoyed Tom Lehrer's music, and I knew he had worked for the NSA during the Korean War era.
The NSA's research directorate has an electronic library, so I eventually figured, what the heck, let's see if we can find anything he published internally!
And I found a few articles I can't comment on. But there was one unclassified article-- "Gambler's Ruin With Soft-Hearted Adversary".
The paper was co-written by Lehrer and R. E. Fagen, published in January, 1957.
The mathematical content is pretty interesting, but that's not what stuck out to me when I read it.
See, the paper cites FIVE sources throughout its body. But the bibliography lists SIX sources.
What's the leftover?
Well, you can look through the entirety of the body of the paper. It'll take you a while, but you can pretty quickly pick up that sources 1, 2, 4, 5, and 6 are all cited.
But if you know anything about Lehrer's musical career, you can probably figure it out by looking at the bibliography.
See, entry 3 in the bibliography is "Analytic and Algebraic Topology of Locally Euclidean Metrizations of Infinitely Differentiable Riemannian Manifolds" by one N. Lobachevsky.
And if you've ever heard Leher's song "Lobachevsky", you may have just finished that title with "Bozhe moi!"
Now, it's important to note: this paper was published internally in 1957. Tom Lehrer had recorded and released "Songs by Tom Lehrer" in 1953, with "Lobachevsky" included. The song had already achieved some success.
...but nobody at the NSA noticed when he and Fagan dropped it in as a reference.b
It struck me as a very Lehrer-ish sort of prank. It's harmless, it's light-hearted, and it thumbs its nose a bit at stuffy respectability through its unfailing pretense of seriousness.
How had other people reacted to the joke, I wondered?
So I sent an email to the NSA historians. And I asked them: hey, when was this first noticed, and how much of a gas did people think it was? Did he get in trouble for it? That sort of stuff.
The answer came back: "We've never heard of this before. It's news to us."
In November of 2016, nearly 60 years after the paper was published internally, I had discovered the joke.
A few years later, I filed to have the paper declassified, and the NSA eventually agreed, and even put it up on their webpage:
media.defense.gov/2021/Jul/14/...
https://media.defense.gov/2021/Jul/14/2002762807/-1/-1/0/GAMBLERS-RUIN.PDF/GAMBLERS-RUIN.PDF
Rich Fagen @richfagen.bsky.social
· 9d
Thank you for posting this amazing story. My father (R.E. Fagen) was the co-author of this article with Tom. They worked together at "No Such Agency" and co-authored a few papers that were published in scholarly journals. (Scroll to the bottom on Tom's Wikipedia page under Publications).
//
https://www.buzzfeed.com/bensmith/tom-lehrer
Looking For Tom Lehrer, Comedy's Mysterious Genius
Tom Lehrer is considered one of the most influential figures in comedy — despite a body of work consisting of just 37 pitch-black songs and a career that stopped abruptly when the counterculture he he...
fsandow.bsky.social @fsandow.bsky.social
· 10d
And for those who haven’t seen his contributions to The Electric Company, an educational kids’ show from the 70s:
https://youtu.be/dB2Ff8H7oVo?si=WGXhQjGnqbBqFDqs
Tom Lehrer - "L-Y"
YouTube video by Edgar Aldrett
youtu.be
U.S. — President Trump has reportedly finalized a new trade deal with the United Kingdom, securing a 15% tariff on the extra "U" in British words.
"I guess you could say this is my favourite trade deal," Trump said, explicitly using the British form of favorite. "And England's shown a lot of honour, a lot of honour. Colour me impressed."
According to sources, the U.S. will now collect a fee every time someone uses a word with an unnecessary "U" in it. This is expected to have vast repercussions across the globe, taking the focus from British English and placing it on American English where it belongs.
On a chilly October evening in 1958, a group of MIT students shuffled onto the Harvard Bridge, which separates the university town of Cambridge from Boston proper. The shortest among them lay down on the sidewalk at the bridge's start, his friends marked his length, he got up, moved forward, and repeated the process.
The man in question was Oliver Smoot, then a freshman at the institution who was pledging to join the Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity. As part of his initiation, he was tasked with measuring the Harvard Bridge using his own height. The resulting unit, the "smoot," remains visible on the bridge today, with its markings repainted annually.
Local police even use these markings to pinpoint locations of traffic incidents. Google Earth also includes it as a unit, measuring five feet seven inches (170.18 cm) - you can find it as the last item under "Settings," then "Distance units."
Smoot went on to a career in standards and policy within the technology sector. After holding various roles, he served as chairman of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) from 2001 to 2002 and later as president of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) from 2003 to 2005.
"Anguish Languish" by Howard L. Chace is a playful and experimental publication written in the mid-20th century. This unique text presents an inventive language game that transforms English phrases into a humorous form called Anguish, where the meanings of words are altered through phonetic substitutions. The book serves as both an entertainment and a linguistic exploration of how words can be manipulated for comedic effect. The content of "Anguish Languish" consists of a collection of whimsical stories and poems that showcase the transformations of familiar sayings and tales into their Anguish counterparts.
The Knuth diamond sign collection, from http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/diamondsigns/dia
During our summer vacation in 2003, my wife and I amused ourselves by taking leisurely drives in Ohio and photographing every diamond-shaped highway sign that we saw along the roadsides. (Well, not every sign; only the distinct ones.) For provenance, I also stood at the base of each sign and measured its GPS coordinates.
This turned out to be even more fun than a scavenger hunt, so we filled in some gaps when we returned to California. And we intend to keep adding to this collection as we drive further, although we realize that we may have to venture to New England in order to see `FROST HEAVES'.
All photos on these pages were taken by Jill C. Knuth, unless noted otherwise.
ANGUISH
LANGUISH
by
Howard L. Chace
English words are astonishingly versatile and could readily be made to serve a new and extraordinary purpose, but nobody seems to care about this except SPAL[8] (Society for the Promotion of the Anguish Languish).[1] In keeping with its lofty ideals and its slogan, ANGUISH FOR EVERYBODY, the Society is sponsoring this little text, which has three aims:
-
To improve the public’s understanding of the Anguish Languish.
-
To improve the academic standing of the Anguish Languish.
-
To improve the social and financial standing of the Society.
WITNESSES
(45-80 MINUTES)
Eight men, who rubbed shoulders with Jesus, tell stories of their encounters with him. Ranging from wildly funny to dramatically intense, these stories show a “fleshed out” Jesus, who made a curious call on these mens’ lives. Performed in contemporary dress, with very contemporary language, this show introduces the audience, in a fresh way, to Jesus, without “church language or pews”. In the blink of an eye, with very simple costume changes, Curt becomes eight different men, with eight different perspectives on Jesus. //
God-Views
(40-60 minutes)
What is God really like? This show asks that question. And … it’s funny. Very funny. In it, Curt presents, in caricature form, six different comic misconceptions of the nature of God. God as a Sheriff, a Butler, an old Geezer, a Mechanic, a Cosmic Party Animal, and … God-in-a-box. He concludes with one of two stories (or sometimes both!) … a tender re-telling of the Prodigal Son story, showing the Father heart of God, or a very funny “redneck parable,” showing, in no uncertain terms, the picture of a gracious God.
PICNIC
Problem In Chair Not In Computer
Re: PICNIC
Hm, sounds nicer than PEBCAK !
Re: PICNIC
Problem with knob controlling monitor.
So please, when sending your protest message in the form of flames, please be sure to choose fuel consisting of a minimum of at least 30 percent bio-ethanol, and select only cars with standard power plants. This will also ensure that more EVs will remain on California roadways. Protest responsibly and govern yourselves accordingly. //
Granny Heartful
an hour ago
I might be a dumb blonde, but I gotta ask:
How do you burn cars in an environmentally responsible fashion?
I wish it weren't so, but there's gotta be a punch line in there somewhere.
bk Granny Heartful
3 minutes ago
You give up smoking dope for a week and call it a carbon offset. /s
Eric Daugherty
@EricLDaugh
·
Follow
🚨 LMAO...!!
DOOCY: There was a video of the First Lady of France slapping her husband, Emmanuel Macron. Do you have any world leader-to-world leader marital advice?
TRUMP: "Make sure the door remains CLOSED. That was not good."
🤣
"I spoke to him. He's fine. They're fine...I Show more
2:26 PM · May 30, 2025
Two dogs arguing
Rich people problems
”Watery tart” is still my favourite expletive.
The word: “Nerdgassing”
Definition: The venting nerds emit when some (often minor) detail of a book/movie/TV show/comic book/etc either conflicts with canon and/or handwaves through some some suspect science.
Example One: “In the third show of the second season of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Data clearly says that the Glorithian flagship was constructed in orbit around that planet Norgar, but then in the fifteenth show of the sixth season, it’s said it was constructed in the Buterian space docks! How do you explain that, hmmm?”*
Example Two: “Ringworld is unstable! Ringworld is unstable!”
Secondary definition: What happens after too many Cheetos and Mountain Dew.
I checked in Google — apparently “nerdgassing” appears nowhere on the Internet. Thus: I coin it! I claim it! Me! Bwa ha ha ha ha!
Free Blue Screens of Death for Windows 11 24H2 users
Microsoft rewards those who patch early with bricks hurled through its operating system
...
Microsoft is addressing the issue using a Known Issue Rollback (KIR), a mechanism introduced in 2021 that lets the Excel giant quietly undo borked non-security updates without user intervention.
If you're running Windows 11 24H2 on a personal or unmanaged machine, the rollback should apply automatically via Windows Update - though it might take up to 24 hours to kick in. A reboot could help your system grab the fix faster, according to Microsoft.
So... this is all you do all day is it?"
"Most days. Other days Carl or Peter does it."
"Carl or Peter?"
"Yeah, we work shifts - because the market never sleeps."
"So let me get this straight. You don't have any servers, you don't have any real work - AND THERE ARE THREE OF YOU - so you just make problems to keep yourself in a job?"
"Yep, That's pretty much it." //
A minute of silence passes, then finally the geek cracks. There's no server hardware. Nothing. Over the last five years the entire company operation has moved into online services - theoretically leaving our geek with no job.
"So what do you... do all day?" the PFY asks.
"SOME days, I'll take a complete snapshot of our cloud infrastructure," he says.
"Once a month you mean?" the PFY surmises. "So what do you do with the rest of your time?"
"I, um, manufacture outages," he admits.
"Manufacture outages?"
"Yeah, I'll light up the RED lamp on a server and, uh, take a cloud service offline."
"Why?"
"Because then they'll call me and get me to fix it. I'll bring them in here, fire up a linux laptop with the Matrix screensaver, edit a JPEG with a Hex editor, pretend to find a virus signature or an internal consistency error, then 'fix' it and bring the service back online again."
It seems so simple now that he says it.
“I consider Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez to be the leader of the Democratic Party," Kennedy declared.
He then just killed the room and sent them all off into gales of laughter, “She's entitled to her opinion. I'm entitled to mine. As I've said before, I think she’s the reason there are directions on a shampoo bottle. Our plan for dealing with her is Operation Let Her Speak.”. //
anon-ia42
31 minutes ago
She also the reason for the warning on hair dryers.......do not use this appliance.....in the shower.
Boswell first confronts Johnson with Hume’s ideas in late July 1763, just a few months after his first meeting with Johnson. He spoke of the Politician and agriculturalist George Dempster whose principles had been poisoned by a ‘noted infidel writer’ that is, Hume.
Johnson’s response was that
Hume and other sceptical innovators are vain men and will gratify themselves at any expense. Truth will not afford sufficient food to their vanity; so they have betaken themselves to error. Truth is a cow which will yield such people no more milk and so they are gone to milk the bull.[4]
But what Johnson went on to say is also important:
Everything which Hume has advanced against Christianity had passed through my mind long before he wrote. Always remember this, that after a system is well settled upon positive evidence, a few partial objections ought not to shake it. The human mind is so limited that it cannot take in all the parts of a subject, so there may be objections raised against any thing [5].
So when his "tracker" tried to nail Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) with a "gotcha," it didn't quite go as the man would have liked. “Do you trust Trump's national security team to keep our war plans secret?” the "tracker" asked.
Tim Burchett's epic reply, “Do you trust your mother every night to fix your Hot Pockets and make sure your Game Boy is turned on?”