E-SKEPTIC FOR MAY 26, 2002
Copyright 2002 Michael Shermer, Skeptics Society, Skeptic magazine, e-Skeptic magazine (www.skeptic.com and skepticmag@aol.com). Permission to print, distribute, and post with proper citation and acknowledgment. We encourage you to broadcast e-Skeptic to new potential subscribers. Newcomers can subscribe to e-Skeptic for free by sending an e-mail to: join-skeptics@lyris.net
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A MUSICAL TRIBUTE TO STEPHEN JAY GOULD

As tributes continue this week in honor of our fallen brother, Stephen Jay
Gould, I wanted to add the following tribute from Richard Milner, in musical 
form, which he wrote for the Festschrift we held at Caltech last year for 
Steve. It is very cleverly written. Information on getting the CD with this 
and numerous other science- and evolution-related songs follow. You can order 
the video tape of Gould's brilliant lecture he delivered at the end of a day 
of lectures about evolution, from www.skeptic.com under our 2000 conference 
videos. Enjoy the lyrics.

STEPHEN JAY GOULD IS MY NAME
By Richard Milner Copyright R. Milner, 2000

Based on "My Name is John Wellington Wells" from "The Sorcerer"
(With apologies to Gilbert & Sullivan)

Oh! Stephen Jay Gould is my name
And fossils and shells are my game
Canadian shales
And Bahamian snails
Have brought me a measure of fame.

If Darwin is your cup of tea
But you don't have a lot of time free
You don't have to look
Through his wearisome book
You can learn evolution from me.

I can tell you a tale of a trial
Where Bryan and Darrow once tangled
A courtroom so laden with bile
That truth got distorted and mangled.
Fundamentalists shouted defiance,
"Darwinian textbooks must go,
The Bible contains all the science
A biology class needs to know!"

I write of cladistics
And baseball statistics
>From dodos and mandrills
To friezes and spandrels
With answers provisional
Branches divisional
Watching them practically
Bifurcate fractally, bifurcate fractally

I write
Essays thematical
Always grammatical
Asteroids, sesamoids,
Pestilence tragical
Ratites, stalactites
And home runs DiMaggical

Oh!

If my essays anyone lacks
I've got the back issues in stacks
You can get them from me
For a nominal fee
Just drop me a line or a fax!

I can find
no cosmic mind behind
Life's eternal mystery
If an ape
replayed the tape
He'd see only contingent history.
A plan
to make a man
Was not evolution's objective
To believe all the fuss
was all about us
Is an anthropocentric perspective!

I write of

Cranial capacity
Owen's mendacity
Huxley's audacity
Galton's urbanity
FitzRoy's insanity
How Ernest Haeckel, without an apology
Faked illustrations about embryology

Marsh's collecting
Butler's objecting
Paley's theology
And teleology
Cope's osteology
And eschatology

But I confess to a preference
For Wallace's deference --
for Alfred Wallace's deference!

Yes!

My name is Stephen Jay Gould
In science I'm very well schooled
So beware adaptationists!
Look out, Creationists!
I am not easily fooled.

If my essays anyone lacks
I've got those back issues in stacks
You can get them from me
For a nominal fee
If you drop me a line or a fax!


The CD with this and original songs from his show "Charles Darwin; Live and 
in Concert" are available directly from the writer/performer Richard Milner. 
You can e-mail him directly at rmilner@nyc.rr.com Total price including 
shipping is $15.00. The CD includes: The Anthropologist Song, Let Him Be 
First, Why Didn't I think of
That, I Do What I Love, When you Were a Tadpole and I was a Fish, My Name is
Stephen Jay Gould, I'm the Guy Who Found Natural Selection, and others.

I highly recommend the CD. 

Michael Shermer

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