The news has turned into a Tom Lehrer song

[lauradi7dw]

Specifically "Lobachevsky." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXlfXirQF3A More specifically, the part that says "Tomsk to Omsk to Pinsk to Minsk to me the news will run." I've been thinking of it because of all the news coming out of Belarus, centered on Minsk, and then poor Alexei Navalny is being (probably) incorrectly treated in a hospital in Omsk. Which has taken down its rainbow decorations, lest the world get the wrong idea. https://twitter.com/ilya_shepelin/status/1296703783276367872 This relates to thoughts of the day about online search. I had seen someone's rant about a google search for "phylacteries" bringing up instructions from a D&D site about how to destroy them. Someone else pointed out that google searches are personalized (whether a user wants them to be or not), and she did not see the page in question. Other people linked to the word's history, and how it can (did?) just mean a box with a holy object inside, so while tefillin is the first thing some of us think of, it could mean a Christian reliquary or whatever it was meant to be in D&D. After we pulled up Lobachevsky (pretty easily), I went to search for a book I thought was called "It happened in Minsk." Got lots of news, but not what I wanted. I added quotation marks, and children's book to the search terms. Nothing. I only use Duckduckgo, and was pretty peeved by this point. Arthur tried in google, and eventually by adding the main character's name (Irv Irving), he got someone's blog post about a book called "It happened in Pinsk." Sigh for my memory, and for search engines that can't guess about something one letter different, although I have the same problem when searching for a book in the MLN database. If I mistype it, I don't necessarily find it. When I tried Irv Irving in duckduckgo, I got a large number of hits for an actual person with that name, but not the book, which I recommend, if you can track it down. It's sort of based on Gogol. I don't know why the goodreads page lists only the illustrator (Richard Egeilski) and not the author (Arthur Yorinks). https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/496912.It_Happened_in_Pinsk

Comments

[sovay]

but not the book, which I recommend, if you can track it down.

I grew up on that book! (As well as several others by Arthur Yorinks.) It was definitely my first intimation of Gogol.