I have to out myself now as a Daniel Radcliffe fan. Having never seen a Harry Potter movie I had no idea until yesterday, but then I happened upon a youtube clip of an interview he did on a British talk show.
In this interview Radcliffe opted to sing a Tom Lehrer song.
Lehrer was a mathematician at Harvard, MIT and U Cal who dabbled in musical comedy on and off, but principally in the late 50s and early 60s. For those not familiar with Lehrer I recommend you correct that deficiency as soon as possible.
The last Potter movie had only just been released and Radcliffe was starting some new project. Logic suggests that he should have used this publicity opportunity to plug the Potter movie, or the movie he was just starting to work on, or to brag about who he had slept with, or pretty much anything else to plug his career.
Instead he opted to sing a Tom Lehrer song, and not just any one … he sang the Elements song (ie singing The Periodic Table … lyrics provided above so that you can sing along).
What a nerd, what a total geek, what a … soul brother.
I completely empathized with his love of and joy with the Elements Song; what science nerd wouldn’t? (and let’s not even start about the habit of talking about whatever excites us regardless of how obscure or irrelevant to the social context and to hell with whatever anyone else wants … we have absolutely no clue at all that others are not as excited by complex numbers/quantum theory/the foraging strategies of marsupials as we are; and even when we do detect it, well they should be damn it! and undoubtedly will as soon as we finish telling them about it! 😉 ).
If you didn’t already know The Elements Song I hope you will get as much pleasure from it as I did and do.
The original:
We give our consent every moment that we do not resist.
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Greenfyre's 
As another Lehrer fan (although, oddly, one of the rare few who doesn’t really like The Elements… as far as list songs go, I consider Lobachevsky to be funnier), I should caution you about using The Elements as a test for fellow nerd-dom.
After all, last February, when BBC’s Storyville ran a piece on “The Sceptics” starring Christopher Monkcton, we were treated to the Viscount’s own grandiose rendition of that very song, performed (apparently) on an outing in the Australian mountains with Ian Plimer.
The show used the performance to segue into clips of the “definitive” Major-General film performance, as this was around the part of the narrative where it was becoming clear how crazy Monckton was and how the interviewer was convinced he was wrong.
(Sadly, it’s no longer available from the BBC, but I can try to make it available if need be. Contact me.)
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