Lessons of 1984

Innovation awakened the mobs.
Cupertino, can you hear our sobs?
Though an Apple a day
Could keep drabness away,
In the end, it could not save our Jobs.


The Limerick Savant


Apple’s Visionary Redefined Digital Age
STEVEN P. JOBS, 1955-2011
By John Markoff, The New York Times, 10/5/11

Who wants to be a m...

Movie of the Year?

We endure what seems endless and numbing
Just to view what we knew would be coming.
The predictable plot?
When you're hot, you are hot;
And Oscar was hot to go Slumming.

Golden Statuettes, Leaden Television
By Tom Shales, The Washington Post, 2/23/09

Who needs a presidency?

You have watched as her empire has grown.
Now, a network that's hers all alone?
For serious bettors,
You know the call letters
Mean there's nothing that O. won't soon...

Oprah Winfrey and Discovery to Create New Cable Network
By Edward Wyatt, The New York Times, 1/16/08

Record* catch!

Seems Barry is joining the ranks
Of the greats with achievements like Hank's.
If using the 'roids
Automatically voids
His record, this guy still says, "Thanks!"



Record baseball may be worth $1m
BBC News, 8/8/07

Survival of the twit-test

Geneticists found a solution
For uncovering new evolution.
By measuring genes,
They now have the means
To map an event's contribution.

And armed with this means of detection
They've identified recent selection;
But it still can't reveal
The errant allele
That resulted in Bush's election!

Thanks to George at Brewed Fresh Daily for allerting me to the story. It's worth a read if only for the wonderful evolutionary morph of Stephen Jay Gould.

And the Evolutionary Beat Goes On . . .
By Shankar Vedantam, The Washington Post, 7/24/06

Not so grand slam

What sort of deplorable wonk
Could ignore the performance of Pronk?
His omission, it’s clear,
From the All-Stars this year
Is a Travis-ty. Fans got it wrongk!

Pronk'd: Hafner is overlooked
Indians' DH keeps his sense of humor over All-Star slight
By Phil Rogers, The Chicago Tribune, 7/9/06

Sexy at sixty

[And I don't mean Dubya!]

So much in a package so teeny-
It’s work of a fashion Houdini.
The consummate Gaul!
From nothing atoll,
He conjured the Age of Bikini.



The bikini: Not a brief affair
By Kathryn Westcott, BBC News, 7/5/06

Du vin, chichi code

This week they, again, were divining
Whose vintage is tops, or declining.
Thirty years since the test
When the U.S. fared best,
But the French haven't ever stopped wining.

California wines beat French again
By Laurie Daniel, San Jose Mercury News, 5/24/06

Coo coo cachoo

The Carnival of Satire (#34) is now up

Handled with kid gloves

Just learned Surfnetkids has been linking.
Well, something in Denmark is stinking!
Share Savant's twisted views
With suggestible youths?
What ever could Barbara be thinking?!

"I wouldn't want to link to any site that would accept a link to my blog"
----------L.S. 2006 (channeling Groucho Marx)

"Limerick Savant... I loved it!"
Surfing the Net with Kids
by Barbara J. Felman

Arachnophilia

You can't keep a good city down
With so many claims to renown.
What Web destination
Is best in the nation?
Why, Cleveland, while Spidey's in town!



It's lights, camera, action on Euclid
Spidey crew ready to spin its magic
Julie E. Washington, The Plain Dealer, 4/21/06

Prized Find

You can keep your hip-hop and your punk.
By comparison, all of that's junk.
#1 with a bullet, sir,
And, now, with a Pulitzer;
Give me jazz by Thelonius Monk.

2006 Pulitzer Prize winners
Seattle Post Intelligencer, 4/17/06

Pointing the way

After Sunday's career eighty-one,
Kobe stunned all his critics, bar none.
"I'm just self-reliant,
Not selfish," says Bryant
"And won't wilt 'til the record's outdone."

With 81 Points, Kobe Crushes Critics
ABC News, 1/23/06

Globe trotter

Each year, at this time, movie's hordes
Come to Holly wood like it was Lourdes.
I wish I could quit you
But have to know which you
Will bless with those shiny awards.

Globe wins establish `Brokeback Mountain' as Oscar favorite
David Germain, Miami Herald, 1/17/06

Origin of specious

You may think the Savant had resolved:
"In '06, politics? Not involved!"
Could domestic surveillance
By right-wing assailants
Have meant I'd have thusly devolved?

No, I haven't been losing my spine.
My omissions are only a sign
That there never has been
An intelligence in
My creation by limerick design.

BREAKTHROUGH OF THE YEAR:
Evolution in Action
Elizabeth Culotta and Elizabeth Pennisi
Science, 12/23/05

Winner by a nose

Cleveland Clinic was setting the pace
In this cutting edge surgical race.
But then France finished first,
And our surgeons are cursed
With the question of how to save face.

French perform partial face transplant
Cleveland Clinic still plans full procedure
Harlan Spector, The Plain Dealer, 12/1/05