Tom Lehrer: Lobachevsky (concert live) (1960)

[@isaacschmitt4803]

Every time a professor assigned a paper and told us not to plagiarize, I always hummed this loudly.

[@diogoleite8151]

What a madlad

[@flidethechemist]

What an absolute *madlad* you are good sir.

[@TnseWlms]

In 1988, a professor gave us the usual "don't plagiarize" speech." He said, "As you all know, a past act of plagiarism got Joe Biden out of the presidential race..." But look what happened later.

[@zr3755]

​@@TnseWlms If you plagiarize, you too may be able to "win" the presidency under, er, dubious circumstances

[@OtakuSoze]

Obviously, the dislike is from the mathematician from Dnepropetrovsk.

[@pizzatime4700]

8 years

[@blacksheepde]

2 months

[@mimemcmacmimesonson1716]

6 days

[@blacksheepde]

@@mimemcmacmimesonson1716 19 minutes

[@НовгородРоссиев]

@@blacksheepde плагиат!!!

[@arcarchivist2638]

Just came back because this is now the anthem of every video essayist on KZbin.

[@oblivion73]

Agreed, and it's called "research". :)

[@jhk8396]

I'm just stunned this man can sing this well in at least 3 accents

[@massoudkaykha5885]

نابغه است

[@yuvalne]

Just realised he made a joke about teachers not being paid enough in 1960.

[@inigo8740]

True then, true now. The question is, what will I do once I get my PhD? That stuff doesn't pay bills!

[@ShinJefLebowski]

I think the funniest thing is, that's just what Tom lehrer did after his brief stint in music. Teach math and musical theatre at universities.

[@Cripple_Finger]

@@ShinJefLebowski I mean 'lehrer' litterally means 'teacher' in german

[@CamiloCienfuegosStan]

Because the material conditions are the same in issue

[@jdatlas4668]

Maybe if your teacher had been paid enough they'd have taught you it's "paid" and there's a difference :P (sorry, I absolutely couldn't resist, I swear I'm not that nitpicky, it just seemed funny in a comment about teachers)

[@qwaszxjklqwaszxjkl]

I invented a new word today: Plagiarism

[@jacobbruinsma]

Brilliant! What exactly do you mean by it ? Explain so I can "quote " you. Apart form that, this is okay - but Danny did it better.

[@kathyhalton8352]

Ironic that you nicked that that joke

[@infernalsquid]

Be sure to call it always research, please.

[@thefakeslimshady8881]

I’m taking credit for that joke

[@natalee5588]

As of this posting (March 2023) this man us STILL ALIVE!! Tom, I hope you realize how well loved you are and the impact you made on all of us! My science teacher introduced us to "Pollution" in 1970, and I'm in my mid-60s now. Be prepared!❤

[@kegginstructure]

As part of my doctoral work in chemistry, I was required to present a seminar summarizing my findings - a public defense, if you prefer. I used Tom Lehrer's "The Elements" as my theme song. This was in the early 1970s. I am continually amazed to hear Tom's work as he was such an entertainer. Cerebral yet funny.

[@TheMimifur]

I am never forgetting the day that my father introduced me to Tom! One mathematician to another and I love these songs! Thank you.,

[@pizzatime4700]

Still listen

[@tutejshaja]

i was born in dnepropetrovsk and lived more than 10 years in minsk :)

[@jaycee330]

By way of Omsk?

[@jsmith4liberty]

@@jaycee330 nah, by way of Petropavlovsk, then Alexandrovsk, then Akmolinsk, then Tomsk, then Omsk, then finally Pinsk

[@woesmevrou5673]

Telephone directory for index is just brilliant.

[@vidiia]

i'm surprised how good his russian pronunciation is

[@bbharim]

Oh come on. Every Jew worth his overcoat can sing Klezmer, in Funny German pronounced Russian called Yiddish. Just like Bubbie and Zaidie. Oy Vay!

[@genericperson6]

I don't know if this has been said here but the translations for what he says at 3:40 and 3:47 are: Жил Был король когда-то, при нём блоха жила - Once upon a time there was a king, with him a flea lived. Я иду куда сам царь идёт пешком - I go where the king himself goes on foot.

[@TheLordMoyne]

To have an understanding of what is implied in the second phrase, you need to keep in mind that the only time the king would go on foot was when he needed to relieve himself.

[@brettknoss486]

He needs to improve his skills. A true mathematician can plagiarize work from anywhere around the world, with no more than six degrees of seperation.

[@nathanmcgill7249]

Is this a reference to Paul Erdos

[@brettknoss486]

@@nathanmcgill7249 No Stanley Milgram, he made it famous. 😉

[@elliotskydel641]

And still misspell separately.

[@sealamander4607]

this is one of the funniest comment chains I have read

[@explosivo1980]

I'm like 4 videos deep from this guy, and I have to say... GENIUS!!!

[@rebecca6125]

Thanks for these lyric videos! I was introduced to his music at age 12, got a copy of this concert recording about 10 years later and 30 years later still sing along with great glee!

[@plunder1956]

One of his very best. I know an Economics professor who writes lots of papers & both reviews & supervises PHDs. Believe me it's close to the truth.

[@mjfan653]

Boze moi - means "my god!" Or "dear god!" A great nod to something a russian living in exile for 50yrs would still say. Its in their blood.

[@armstrong2008]

I believe people who really understand his rumor have to really know much. He is a genius.

[@bbharim]

He is drawing from at least 15 cultures. And yet he remains the quintessential New York Jewish grandson. He delights me in at least 15 ways! And compared to Tom, I am a cultural Bohemian!

[@George12String]

"locally euclidean metrization of riemannian manifold" is redundant :p

[@AlexSh789]

+George12String - Is it really? What does it actually mean? It's been mystifying me ever since I heard this song.

[@George12String]

+Alexander Shekhtman A Riemannian manifold is, of course, a manifold - a topological space that appears to be euclidean within its immediate surroundings, or "locally euclidean". A Riemannian manifold in particular refers to manifolds that contains a metric tensor. A metric tensor is basically a function that that can yield the distance between two tangent vectors of a surface or (most importantly in our case) a differentiable manifold in euclidian space. Therefore, in other words, a Riemannian manifold is, by definition, locally euclidean metrization of differentiable manifold. =)

[@George12String]

+George12String (sorry for the delay, I've been busy)

[@AnHeC]

+George12String I'm pretty sure Lehrer knows that considering he IS a mathematitian and lectured at various universities. MA from Harvard in mathematics does not look so bad :P

[@AlexSh789]

+AnHeC - Maybe so, but George12String was talking to me. My 17-year-old self who posted this video, had no clue what the whole bit about "Analytic and algebraic ... differentiable Riemannian manifold" actually means. Fast forward 5 1/2 years to today, and I'm still not properly educated on the subject.

[@joyunicycle]

A funny catchy song + impersonating Danny Kaye's acts = YOU ROCK, TOM LEHER!!!!

[@altynaiabasbekowa5271]

Боже, это уморительно!

[@JustOneMoreChild]

БОЖе мой = Oh my God!

[@pizzatime4700]

10 years ago

[@zr3755]

Thank you

[@farleydbear]

everything hit the wall behind me after it went over my head

[@DaekoTan]

I laughed my clothes off at KKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKHypotenuse.

[@juliantepper]

The fifth line in the song, Lehrer's homage to Louis Moreau Gottschalk, is my favorite. j

[@Eddy438]

I don't hear any Gottschalk but he does quote Liszt's Second Hungarian Rhapsody!

[@DieFlabbergast]

"The greatest that ever got chalk on his coat." "got chalk" sounds like Gottschalk.

[@megelizabeth9492]

He plagerized it!

[@NoxUmbrae]

@@megelizabeth9492 researched*

[@jaycee330]

It was only after studying maths later in life that I got the "got chalk" reference. Clever.

[@threebadgersinatrenchcoat7957]

Boze moi has become deeply engrained in my vocabulary because of this song

[@PnfrlEnm]

HCHCHCHCHCypotenuse!

[@diegoruelas603]

damn i listen to this song since i was a child and i never realized that the intro is the national anthem of my country, Mexico!

[@Maridun50]

Anybody tried to sing this.....?

[@giovannicovi1377]

EVERYDAY

[@kathyhalton8352]

With varying success

[@DieFlabbergast]

Been singing this since I was 19 - in 1969! It's probably easier if you've studied Russian.

[@julesjaay822]

Time and again from childhood, never well but always with enjoyment!

[@MURDERPILLOW.]

Tom Lehrer did i imagine

[@MURDERPILLOW.]

It took me an embarrasing amount of time to figure out that 2:31 - 2:46is listing place names, and not names of mathmaticians

[@SDW90808]

Classic! Still awesome after all this time. 😂😂

[@Merthyc]

Then woe the day you ever run into him in public and he tells you a joke!

[@unclelouie3828]

LOVE HIM.

[@AT-zr9tv]

Goodness he was brilliant!

[@AlexSh789]

Was?

[@AT-zr9tv]

@@AlexSh789 He's retired, isn't he?

[@AlexSh789]

@@AT-zr9tv - He didn't retire from being brilliant, that's for sure

[@AT-zr9tv]

@@AlexSh789 lol ok I just meant as a performer

[@elliotskydel641]

Is.

[@KyleRayner12]

According to my translator, "This generally that."

[@ferraghamo]

боже мой! awesome!

[@TheRachaelLefler]

ha, this reminds me that our hs Russian exchange student was from Vladivostok.

[@bbharim]

Ah Vladivostok in January! How I miss it!

[@oundhakar]

WTF? Only 1 dislike? I thought there were many more out there with no sense of humour.

[@ingeborgthingvold6430]

Its the guy in Dnepropetrovsk

[@Sahakvic]

...and the second guy is Lobachevsky for ratting out his methods.

[@Mr.X2]

The best part is that parts of the song are stolen from classical pieces

[@bbharim]

It's Tom Lehrer. EVERYTHING is plagiarized, tweaked, and Leherized. He writes in cultures. Sews them together seamlessly. True genius. This is at the level of Mozart. Who could write for, and most probably play, every instrument in the orchestra. Lehrer is enculturated in American, British-English, Yiddish, Klezmer, Russian, Mexican, Mathematics, Italian, French, German, Austrian, a whole bunch more, and of course Music. Then he uses them to tell the News. John Stewart knows something about this.

[@kdheithaus]

Thanks for doing this! спасибо =)

[@noreneallinotte8270]

Hysterical…! I have an uncle in the Furniture business!

[@andrewmihovich4252]

Credit where it's due From the latest viewer down the pike And I just gave this video its 4,000th Like. _Oy!_

[@MichaelBoyce-tm2vw]

He did this on TV!

[@692Caboose]

I feel like if this was released today, people would freak out over the plagiarizing bit.

[@Astralfirework]

Senses of humor are relative to the times we live in - some of us understand that not everything is to be taken literally.

[@nguyenquangminh4814]

Well, plagiarizing is still research today, only it's called "secondary research"

[@kathyhalton8352]

Are you really saying that? Or is that just someone else's opinion that you copied for yourself?

[@infernalsquid]

What a 'researched' statement!

[@conorellisfitness]

@@nguyenquangminh4814 so true!

[@dulcilass]

Always a winner.

[@sami12569]

3:03 yo it's a small chunk of the Friska from Hungarian Rhapsody no.2

[@stevetillcock7361]

He always makes me laugh!

[@MrSkeptik-z5r]

Comedy gold, brilliant🤣

[@columbus8myhw]

Ай!

[@warrenlehmkuhleii8472]

Can someone translate all the Russian for me, thanks.

[@Shakes-Off-Fear]

It’s gibberish I

[@communistpropagandist4608]

It stinks

[@ЛаисЛ]

Well, the first part is a line from a Russian translation of an excerpt from Goethe's Faust that became a popular "folk" song. It means "Once upon a time there was a king who had a pet flea" and it makes...some sense in context (not in song's context lol). The second one means "I'm going to the place even Tzar has to go on foot" (i.e. to the bathroom). Both could've been word salad, frankly, but they are genuine expressions!

[@AlexSh789]

Вы забыли написать что такое "Правда" и "Известия". xD They were Soviet newspapers whose titles mean "truth/verity" and "news/tidings", respectively.

[@ЛаисЛ]

@@AlexSh789 думала, это не так важно. Но таки да, those two were most prominent newspapers that served as Party mouthpieces. Unlike more specialised papers&magazines those two covered only big news or those considered politically important, and certainly not obscure maths problems (which makes the joke even more funny imo)

[@ronruddick2972]

The subject of the work subject is really quite funny...

[@MichaelBoyce-tm2vw]

From a Studio version.

[@nyan2exteen]

Can anyone translate the Russian parts? They sound interesting

[@AlexSh789]

See my reply to George Cole's comment.

[@nyan2exteen]

I didn't see that comment. Thanks a lot!

[@jaycee330]

Жил Был король когда-то, при нём блоха жила - Once upon a time there was a king, with him a flea lived. Я иду куда сам царь идёт пешком - I go where the king himself goes on foot. (i.e. the toilet)

[@MichaelBoyce-tm2vw]

This was when he jumped to Reprise.

[@hydethepenguin]

he's a genius

[@K22channel]

Wow 🐸and wow! ✔️🙏🏼

[@jorgeegrojful]

the intro... is the music to the mexican national anthem, isn't it?

[@MichaelBoyce-tm2vw]

Kaye did this too.

[@AlexSh789]

@Tommykification What do you mean? RUS: Что вы имейте в виду?

[@ferraghamo]

*имеете

[@iwantcoolname]

can someone explain hypotenuse joke

[@anim8nz]

Have a look at some pictures of Bridget Bardot from the 1960s.

[@iwantcoolname]

Idk, I'm probably missing some wordplay that only english native can catch, it does not make any sense to me

[@RvEijndhoven]

In mathematics a hypothenuse is the overside line in a triangle from an angle (so in Pythogoras' A squared x B squared = C squared, C is the hypothenuse of the angle between A and B). In writing, the hypothenuse is also the object of affection in a 'love triangle' (i.e. where two people love the same person and that person has to choose between them).

[@TnseWlms]

The eternal triangle is two men in love with the same woman or vice versa. When Metro Goldwyn Moskva bought the movie rights, they thought the title "The Eternal Triangle" would be easier to remember and more romantic than "an analytic and algebraic topology of localized Euclidean metrification of infinitely differentiable Riemannian manifolds". Since a right triangle consists of two legs and a hypotenuse, the woman that two men fight over would be the "hypotenuse" of the love triangle.

[@TnseWlms]

Once there were three (Native) American Indian women. The first married and settled in a tepee made of deer hide. She got pregnant and gave birth to a baby boy. The second married and also settled in a tepee made of deer hide. She gave birth to a baby girl. When the third got married, her husband made her an extra large tepee from hippopotamus skin. She gave birth to twins- a boy and a girl. That demonstrates that the squaw of the hippopotamus is equal to the sum of the squaws of the hides.

[@robertpollard1412]

DAHLING!!! This is so Black Widow!!! dahling!!! XXXXXX Dahling!!! (and to you Boris...Hot Devil!!)

[@Hoshimaru57]

You know I’ve waited years to translate what the reviews said, and now that I finally have…I don’t get it. Some Russian idiom maybe? Or google translate doesn’t understand either. “Once upon a time there lived a king. A flea lived with him.” “I follow where the king goes”

[@sonjak8265]

"The Song of the Flea" (Russian: Песня о блохе) is a song with piano accompaniment, composed by Modest Mussorgsky in 1879. The lyrics are from the Russian translation of Goethe's Faust.

[@sonjak8265]

"I am going where the king goes on foot." That means a toilet. An Eastern European folk expression.

[@sonjak8265]

The reviews do not make sense. They are jokes.

[@bbharim]

The flea lives on the King's foot. Therefore, he goes where the King's foot goes. Hilarious. Of course, it means going to the toilet. Which may be outside. In the Russian Winter. Even a king has to shit. Hilarious.

[@rhetta16]

рщц г вщ ерфе сгя шеы сщщд

[@pavaneee922]

It sounds like I m listening song from movie coco

[@TegetthoffstrasseNr4]

why do you use a part of the mexican anthem as an intro?

[@saul_no]

The Mexican anthem at the beginning tho

[@beyoncealways2911]

1:12

[@Laura-vz3ts]

Hilarious!

[@Languslangus]

✷

[@evilsophie2002]

chatgpt coded😊

[@johnyLTM]

No you can't invade Czechoslovakia.

[@js66613]

Mostly because it no longer technically exists. It is now split in two countries: Czech Republic, which for the sake of appealing more to hippies and whatnot prefers to be referred to as Czechia in English and Slovakia, which is the smaller and initially slightly less fortunate country. And of course, the Czech's didn't waste time snatching up the flag for themselves.

[@Merthyc]

I hope you never get a laughing fit in public. o_O

[@randalbuhler9042]

Ve send you to Siberia Da😮😢😂🤔🤟😜💯⁉️‼️⁉️

[@LuisAntonioRuiz]

I've seen many many more ridiculous titles on the field...

[@FewVidsJustComments]

technicly 'Russia" didnt exist at the time. Some people forget that Russia was the Soviet Union for the majority of the 20th century. So, technicly, he was Soviet, not Russian

[@AlexSh789]

Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky was born in the 18th century and died in the 19th, long before the founder of the Soviet Union, Vladimir Lenin, was a twinkle in Ilya and Maria's eyes. Besides, even during Soviet times, what was the name of the largest constituent republic? The Russian SFSR. What was the main language of the land? Russian. So yes, Russia did exist. It was just Soviet Russia.

[@FewVidsJustComments]

@@AlexSh789 Oh, I didnt know he was a real person. I was referring to the era this song was written during, I am sorry I forgot to specify.

[@steven_003]

@@FewVidsJustCommentsRussia actually did exist back then as the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (Russian SFSR), making up the bulk of the Soviet Union.

[@massoudkaykha5885]

نابغه

[@Tommykification]

это вообще что? what a f... is that?

[@sonjak8265]

joke

[@peggybeckwith3479]

What does this have in common with Biden.

[@giba687]

I don't know, what?

[@unsuisseegare1291]

Nothing tbf, biden couldn't sing this without tripping on every words

[@scpmr]

Stinky Lehrer smeared Lobachebsky's honest name.

[@steven_003]

He was just joking about academia.

[@scpmr]

@@steven_003 Would you like if someone used your name for such jokes? I know many people who believe in what is said in this song about Lobachevsky exactly because of this song. They think that it's based of facts and never check it.

[@mikhailmikhailov8781]

The whole song is also itself plagiarized! What a rascal that Lehrer guy is, teaching math at MIT must really degrade your moral fibre.

[@KolchaksGhost]

scpmr yeah but it isn’t, and Tom never claimed it was, it’s not his fault people miss the point of the song

[@KolchaksGhost]

Mikhail Mikhailov that’s pretty epic considering he credited Danny Kaye in every performance

[@ambergaia1448]

Joe Biden theme song