With the daily news preoccupied with the foibles of one of the worst and most ignorant of Americans, one struggled to find mention in the news of the July 26 passing of one of the best and brightest of Americans.

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Now, though, the internet and wider world are alive with honourings of the genius and goodness of American satirist/songwriter/virtuoso pianist/scholarly mathematician Tom Lehrer.

So for example, this week's ABC Radio National The Music Show is devoted to a long year 2000 interview with him at his witty, brainy, modest best. The program features recordings of several of his most famous compositions/performances, with Lehrer singing his songs and accompanying himself dazzlingly, virtuosically on the piano.

Not familiar with Lehrer? Then for a homework glimpse of him at his bedazzling best go to YouTube to marvel at him performing his composition The Elements.

It is the names of the chemical elements made into perfectly rhyming verses and set to the gallop-paced tune of Gilbert and Sullivan's I am the very model of a modern major general.

The performance is a thrilling, almost superhuman feat, a feat of memory, of agility of the lips and tongue, of wittily twinkle-fingered piano playing. Watching it again this week I found it exciting and delighting some of the same parts of my amygdala being excited and delighted by the magical tries being scored this season by the Canberra Raiders' twinkle-toed young stars.

Then there is Lehrer's shocking and macabre (but inspirational, too, always moving some of us to take action against the pigeon-vermin in our gardens) Poisoning The Pigeons In........

© Canberra Times