it comes in pints?

I'm going to do a wild guess here and say it had something to do with 60s-70s pharmaceutical company ads for narcotics and antidepressants and such.

In other words: the perils of modern living are depression, anxiety, etc. So pop a pill and it will all be better!

(Somewhere - maybe on Lileks - I remember seeing a series of creepy ads, like one for Thorazine that was promoted as a way of 'calming down the agitated elderly' or somesuch)

Lileks has a knack for finding really odd and dated stuff like that.

But it's not the answer.

That was a regular feature in this defunct publication.

I'm amused, but again it's not what I'm looking for.

I'll drop a small and probably unhelpful hint a little later if Angie and John don't show up - I suspect they both know it.

I think I know what it is, but I'll wait it out to see if anyone else gets it, especially our favorite science geeeks.

Merely amused, Ken? I must be slipping.....

It meant diddly to me. So I cheated. The meaning you're thinking of is not obvious to the casual observer (meaning it was far from the top hit of the search, nor was it very common in the search). I don't think I'd ever seen it before.

"Civilization and It's Discontents", Sigmund Freud?

Mojo, nope.

Angie, did you do a search with quotes? It came up at the top of my list. And now that you've seen it, you were amused, yes?

Oh man, I guess "beer goggles" isnt it, huh?

No, but I like the way you think.

Angie, did you do a search with quotes?

Yes. But I repeated the search, and I see that I overlooked the first result because I was thinking of something completely different.

And now that you've seen it, you were amused, yes?

Meh. It's clever enough, but I don't really see how it describes "the perils of modern living". (Also, I admit, that I found it on the link "please pass the science", which garnished it with a bit of de rigeur hand-wringing, causing my eyes to roll. Very uncomfortable.

Come now, you know you giggled at the macassars.

I had to Google it as well. Funny, but not a thigh slapper. Of more interest is how arcane it seems to be......us mere engineers wouldn't worry about such risks. Treble the safety factor and drive on!

Dude, he kept macassars on his chairs. I don't care who you are, that's funny right there.

Angie, I found that link you found, and I see what you mean. The first link I found was this one. Couple other amusing items below it ("Wanted Dead or Alive: Shrodinger's Cat").

Dude, he kept macassars on his chairs.

I'd prefer antimacassars myself. But then, I don't have as much hair as I once did.

Yeah, macassars tend to make things a bit slippy.

I googled it too. Read it, and decided that the author was probably too smart for me. But then, I'm just a "life" scientist....which is often considered the softest of the "true" sciences.

Of course, perhaps in the world described within the poem, macassars DON'T make things a bit slippy.

I don't know, I guess LOLcats are more my speed as far as humor is concerned.

Never heard of it. Remember, I went to an ALL science and engineering college - no other majors except Math. We tended to look down on excessive geekiness as a slight to our already battered image as the geekiest school in town (not a hard slot to earn when your comeptitors are Larry Bird's alma matter and a Catholic women's college).

Reciting something like this would have earned the reciter a chorus of "geek" and perhaps a Melvin from the big-assed Snivel Engineers on the football team (most of the football players were Civ. Es or Mech. Es.

This on the other hand was considered true to life enough to be acceptable geek humor. Although #9 was ammended to add: "and thy girlfriend have no other use for thee except thy wage". Well known side effect of radiation poisoning.

I don't happen to consider the "life" sciences any "softer" than the "harder" of the "hard" sciences. And I love it that Ernest Rutherford got just a wee bit of a smackdown in his Nobel Prize.

For the benefit of those who don't know about that prize, Rutherford was well-known for saying things like "all chemistry is solved in principle" and "all science is physics, all else is stamp collecting." I won't swear that both of those quotes are his but I don't have time to google it to be sure.

Anyway, when he was awarded the Prize for his work on disintegration of radioactive elements, he was awarded the Prize in Chemistry.

Heh. Having degrees in chemistry and biology, that tickles me.

John, that link is great!

Here's another good one: Alexander Pope wrote

Nature and nature's laws lay hid in night;

God said "Let Newton be" and all was lightI can't remember the very first words of it, but Joel Primack, a professor at UC Santa Cruz, added

...the Devil crying "Ho!

Let Einstein be" restored the status quo.

I had to google it too, but I think I've read it before. I wonder if I saw it in Fantasy & Science Fiction, or some such pulp. Cute indeed.

Come now, you know you giggled at the macassars.

OK, that was funny.