West 116th Street

Tom Lehrer
Everybody knows how I feel about Tom Lehrer - the man is a genius, and I am completely addicted to his songs. Here is a post explaining my fandom a little bit more.

Articles and Interviews
• NY Times, 2000
• Newsday, 1981
• AV Club Interview, 2000
• Paul D. Lehrman Interview, 1997
• Subsequent Paul D. Lehrman Article, 1997
• SF Weekly, 2000
• Cosmic Debris Magazine, 2000
• Mash Magazine, 2000
• Sydney Morning Herald, 2003
• American Scholar, 1984

Other Stuff
• A Very Complete Discography
• Tom Lehrer Forum (somewhat inactive)
• Tim Newsom's Page With All the Lyrics
• Wikipedia Entry
• A video of Tom Lehrer singing math songs

Eric Siegel, PhD
Eric Siegel was a Professor of Computer Science at Columbia. He wrote some songs that I think are pretty funny. Of course, they are probably only funny to about 500 people in the whole world (although "Debugging Angst" should ring a bell with anyone who ever took a programming class in college).

• Computer Science Songs, Lyrics
• Online Recordings

Math Movies
I like movies about math (and computer science, which is really math, when you think about it). I especially like it when they get it right, but when they get it all wrong, it can be fun too.

• Definitive Math in Movies Page (I like the bit about "Die Hard: With A Vengeance")
• Hollywood and Computers
• Anyone who cringed when Jeff Goldblum uploaded a virus to an alien spaceship from his Apple laptop in ID4 will certainly appreciate this list of similar annoyances.

Games
I like Real Time Strategy games, like Starcraft and Age of Empires. I've also been known to go for days without food, water, or human contact, in order to complete a Civ3 game. Some time ago, I used to like chess... but the graphics just aren't hot enough anymore.

• Age of Empires Forum
• Starcraft Compendium
• Starcraft Legacy
• Civilization Forum
• Top 10 RTS Games of All Time
• When I feel like regressing to my childhood, I hit FICS
• When you need to pass time, and all you have is a crappy video card, you can always surrender your free will to Bejeweled.
• I like to read Penny Arcade. It helps me feel normal.

Random Fun
Here is some more interesting stuff that amuses me.

• A collection of songs from the heyday of Soviet "estrada." I especially like the children's songs, along the lines of "2 time 2 is four, any idiot knows that, don't embarrass the collective by getting the wrong answer."
• Computational Complexity of Games and Puzzles
• Clay Math Institute's Millennium Problems
• An mp3 and the lyrics for "The Longest Path" song. Granted, it's no Vatican Rag, but I really like this song. The rhymes are clever (i.e. men with n-log-n), and the joke hits close to home - "Am I math fool, if I spend my life in grad school..."
• When I was an undergrad, I had a really cool TA for my ODE class. He could solve the Rubik's cube in under a minute. It was ridiculous, and I was so impressed. That summer, I figured out how to do it too (It's great at parties, and on crowded trains). Here is a page on the Best-Fast Algorithm that helped me make sense of it all. Chris Hardwick's page also has a lot of cool info and links.