Actually, I did rather well myself this past Christmas
The nicest present I received was a gift certificate
Good at any hospital for a lobotomy
Rather thoughtful
Now
Now if I may digress momentarily
From the mainstream of this evening's symposium
I'd like to sing a song which is completely pointless
But it is something which I picked up during my career as a scientist
This may prove useful to some of you someday perhaps
In a somewhat bizarre set of circumstances
It's simply the names of the chemical elements
Set to a possibly recognizable tune
There's antimony, arsenic, aluminum, selenium
And hydrogen, and oxygen, and nitrogen, and rhenium
And nickel, neodymium, neptunium, germanium
And iron, americium, ruthenium, uranium
Europium, zirconium, lutetium, vanadium
And lanthanum, and osmium, and astatine, and radium
And gold, protactinium, and indium, and gallium
And iodine, and thorium, and thulium, and thallium
There's yttrium, ytterbium, actinium, rubidium
And boron, gadolinium, niobium, iridium
And strontium, and silicon, and silver, and samarium
And bismuth, bromine, lithium, beryllium, and barium
Isn't that interesting?
I knew you would
I hope you're all taking notes
Because there's gonna be a short quiz next period
There's holmium, and helium, and hafnium, and erbium
And phosphorus, and francium, and fluorine, and terbium
And manganese, and mercury, molybdenum, magnesium
Dysprosium, and scandium, and cerium, and cesium
And lead, praseodymium, and platinum, plutonium
Palladium, promethium, potassium, polonium
And tantalum, technetium, titanium, tellurium
And cadmium, and calcium, and chromium, and curium
There's sulfur, californium, and fermium, berkelium
And also mendelevium, einsteinium, nobelium
And argon, krypton, neon, radon, xenon, zinc, and rhodium
And chlorine, carbon, cobalt, copper, tungsten, tin, and sodium
These are the only ones of which the news has come to Harvard
And there may be many others, but they haven't been discovered
