Adven­tures in Ethics and Sci­ence announces “It’s a nerd-off.” And I have to admit that Stemwedel is pret­ty nerdish.

But seri­ous­ly, does she bring out the fab­u­lous work of Tom Glaz­er or Marais and Miran­da to enlight­en her sci­ence labs? No, I think not. Who but a nerd god would dare attempt to use bizarre ’50s and ’60s edu­ca­tion­al music to inform sophis­tu­mi­cat­ed mod­ern youth?

And who but a nerd god would get such joy out of “Song of the Rocks,” whose lyrics proceed:

“I am mica-schist” cracks me up every time. The old-guy voic­es explain­ing “we’re cinnabar” always sends me off to fig­ure out if the rocks that iden­ti­fy them­selves in the plur­al are actu­al­ly com­pos­ites of some sort. And whether the voic­es’ gen­ders are sup­posed to tell me some­thing about the prop­er­ties of the rocks they represent.

That’s how big a nerd I am.

As for the var­i­ous jokes cir­cu­lat­ing, here’s a per­son­al favorite:

Liv­ing on a small trop­i­cal island has its rewards. Life is sim­ple, the grass huts let the wind blow gen­tly, and every­one gets along.

In hon­or of his sta­tus and gen­er­al excel­lence, the king of our par­tic­u­lar island has a sec­ond sto­ry on his grass house. One year for his birth­day, the peo­ple get togeth­er and decide that, giv­en his gen­er­al benev­o­lence and all around excel­lence, he deserves a throne that’s a bit less rat­ty. So they secret­ly con­struct a new one, and on the anniver­sary of his regal birth, they present the new seat of pow­er to their king. 

The king, over­joyed and hon­ored by his sub­jects’ dis­play of affec­tion, has the old throne stored on the sec­ond floor, and pro­ceeds to use the new throne while rul­ing the island.

As the year rolls around again, the peo­ple remem­ber how hap­py the king was with his birth­day present, and decide to make it a tra­di­tion. Every year they make a new throne, and the king has the old one placed in his attic.

All goes well for years, the winds still blow gen­tly and life is still sim­ple. That is, until the weight of years of thrones caus­es the king’s house to col­lapse, squash­ing him.

The moral is sim­ple: peo­ple who live in grass hous­es should­n’t stow thrones.