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Casey Einstein

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Today is both the birthday of Casey Jones (1863) the brave engineer, and Albert Einstein (1879), the Nobel Prize winning physicist and brainy icon.

There are a couple of famous songs about Casey Jones. This one is by Johnny Cash.

And there’s this not very well known song about Albert Einstein.

But there’s no song at all that combines the two of them.

Well I’m gonna tell you if you insist
Of an engineer who was a physicist
Casey Einstein was the fella’s name
With some fancy calculations, boys, he won his fame.

The Dean called Casey at a quarter to 8
Put him on a train, said “Don’t be late.”
He was goin’ to Stockholm with some other guys
And they’d all be comin’ back here with the Nobel Prize.

C. Einstein, no one else is greater.
C. Einstein, no one else can be compared.
C. Einstein didn’t need a calculator
When he figured out that E is just like MC squared.

The train set out but it was far too slow.
They would never get to Sweden for the Nobel show.
Had a speech in his pocket he might never give
Casey thought it was a good one but that’s relative.

Einstein told the fireman to pour on coal.
‘Cause the speed of light is our final goal.
There’s no speed more speedy and it ain’t been topped.
When they hit it Casey saw his pocket watch had stopped.

Casey Ein. Gonna finish his name later!
Casey Stein. See, you didn’t have to wait!
If you don’t malign or manipulate the dater
The consistency of time is open to debate.

Spelling Speed Of Light starts with S.O.L.
It’s an acronym for other shocking things as well.
Which we won’t discuss, ’cause we’ve got reserve.
But S.O.L. is what they felt when Casey hit that curve.

Now they say the train kept going and it’s going still.
Casey Einstein left the world without a final will.
All he had was just a fiddle and a coffee cup.
And a train that goes forever and keeps speeding up.

Casey E. he was born to be a thinker.
Casey E. had ideas you can’t resist.
Casey E. wasn’t nasty or a stinker.
Just a brilliant engineer and a brave physicist.

Who shares your birthday?

103 thoughts on “Casey Einstein”

  3. What’s this about Einstein the Genius not being a well known song? (not in these environs!)

    Nice Casey/Albert amalgamation, Dale!

    Pre-Wikipedia, I knew (but had forgotten) that Arnold Schoenberg (1874) shared my birthday. I have met a number of people whose b-days are the day before or the day after but only a couple who share the actual day. The last time I flew, I had a moment of warmth with the credential-checking TSA person as he noted our shared birthday.
    Since we have the wiki-power to know more, I find that people of interest who share my day:

    K’inich Ahkal Mo’ Naab’ III, Ruler of Palenque (678) (never heard of him, just like the name)
    Frescobaldi (1583)
    Jan Brueghel the Younger (1601)
    Clara Schumann (1819)
    Bill Monroe (1911)
    Roald Dahl (1916) – one of my favorites
    And on my ACTUAL birthday, the ever-famous Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz, Polish politician.

    And, on non-leap years (thus, not this year), it can be Programmers’ Day. Fitting, as I’m a programer.

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  4. Rise and Shine Baboons!

    I had to google my birthday to find anyone (aug 21). Princess Margaret, Kim Catrell, and Steve Case plus a bunch of people I’ve never heard of. A day of little to distinguish it. BUT WE ARE LEO’S. ROAR.

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  5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akira_Yoshizawa (google is honoring his origami today)
    is also a birthday boy today. so is my son spencer age 19 and my daughter tara turns 23. march 14 has long been celebrated at our house as albert and my kids birthdays. fun stuff. tara used to request bop til you drop shake it til you break it move it til you ose it dance dance for her birthday and spencer got the bach cello solos until classical was verboten on tlgms.
    my birthday is a day after george washingtons, it is also hank aarons george fredrich handel and a whole bunch of famous people no one ever heard of. my birthday is for me einstein is the right level of guy to match it up with, ed too tall jones of the dallas cowboys not so much

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      1. Thanks for that–he left a large void and I’m glad to hear someone wants to attempt this. When is your new gadget coming out? I ‘d suggest a housework robot. IDust or something like that.

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    2. Hey tim, where do you look to find out what Google is honoring with their logo interpretation of the day? Sometimes it’s obvious but I was wondering about today.

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  7. William Cornwallis, Charles Lamb, Prince Waldemar of Prussia, Boris Pasternak, Jimmy Durante, Larry Adler, E. L. Konigsburg, Roberta Flack, Cesar Izturis.

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    1. And Liam Hendricks – one of the Mn. Twins minor league pitchers (but maybe he will be in the major leagues this year). His birthday is just a few years – cough, cough – after mine.

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  8. I found a very long list of people I mostly have not heard of—and Richard I of England (who the more I know, the less I like).

    I think we shall have pi this morning for breakfast (after the maiden voyage to the orthodontist, uff da).

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  9. Jelly Roll Morton and Sophia Loren are the two I can manage to remember – not bad company. A stride piano player and a gorgeous actress, both wildly talented. Apparently, I also share the day with the guy who compiled the Sacred Harp (Benjamin Franklin White) and James Dewar of the Dewar flask (as in chemistry, not Scotch whisky), at least if I can believe Wikipedia. Also, Wikipedia tells me the QE2 was launched on my first birthday and Billy Jean King beat Bobby Riggs in the Battle of the Sexes on my 7th birthday.

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      1. I have been to a couple of shape note singing gatherings – tons of fun (though hard on the throat if you try to keep up with the regulars).

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    3. My family rode on the QE1 when I was young! It was the early 60’s and the ship was a grand old passenger liner. Unique vessels that deserved to be memorialized. I think the QE2 was launched later in the 60’s, wasn’t it?

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      1. 1967 – my folks rode on one of the last voyages of the QE2, a trip through the St Lawrence seaway as I recall. Also one of the last big trips they were able to take – my mom realized I think on that trip that the combination of my dad’s memory loss and vision loss was too much for her to handle on her own with him. A lovely trip, but I’m sure a bittersweet one for my mom in retrospect.

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  10. Good morning to all. I went straight to the internet to find the answer for today’s question. My exact day of birth is shared with actress Jenny Maxwell who appeared in the film Blue Hawaii with Elvis. She was a teenage star in an Elvis film and I was a teenage fan of the music that Elvis made so I guess there is some connection there. I hope I don’t share too much with the Boston Strangler who was born on the same day as I was in a different year.

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    1. Here’s the test to see how much you have in common with the Boston Strangler:
      1) Do you reside in Boston?
      2) Do you strangle?
      If you answered, ‘No,’ to these questions, you’re probably safe.

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  11. I share a birthday with John Ford, Langston Hughes, Clark Gable, Don Everly, and S. J. Perlman, Murial Spark, and G Stanley Hall (an early American psychologist), and Bogomil Witalis Andrzejewski, professor of Cushtic languages (I have no idea what those languages might be, but what a name!) I share an actual birthday with Luther Blisset, an English football player, and Maureen Madill, an Irish golfer. I wish I had Perlman’s wit and humor. I have no athletic ability at all.

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  12. Bruce Springsteen
    Ray Charles
    Mickey Rooney
    Walter Pidgeon
    Jason Alexander
    Julio Iglesias
    Euripides
    Augustus Caesar
    Octavian
    Kublai Khan
    Mexican Wrestler & ‘B’ Movie Star, El Santo
    John Coltrane

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    1. tgith, there are some names you could combine on that list to do a poem like the fine effort by Dale this morning. How about a poem using the name Kublai Coltrane or one using El Santo Caesar?

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    3. In Xanadu did Kublai Khan
      Olivia Newton John foresee
      With Gene Kelly of hoofer fame
      His fabled career a flickering flame
      A disco-ish travesty

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  13. If you use the Gregorian calendar I share my birthday with the Buddha. If you use the traditional Chinese lunar calendar, the Buddha’s birthday is on the 8th day of the fourth month, so it changes from year to year.

    Otherwise I share my birthday with Leonardo Da Vinci and Kourtney Kardashian.

    Have a beautiful day, ‘booners!

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  14. Morning–

    Sid Vicious (54)
    Donovan (65)
    Judith Jamison (68)
    Gary Owens (75)
    Pat Summerall (81)
    Nancy Walker (89)
    David O. Selznick (109)
    Fred Astaire (112)

    I remembered Fred Astaire, didn’t know the rest of these. And honestly can’t say I would know Sid Vicious if he bit me on the street.
    Road trip to Fairmont today.
    Carry on.

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      2. Oh yeah, it’s awful in that regard. But the characters and performances happen to do it for me in a way that I cannot deny. And the production, as I said above, was masterful. One of the truly old-school, no-holds-barred BIG HOLLYWOOD epics.

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  16. I presume that millions of people share my birthdate, but the only famous person I know is tennis great Bjorn Borg. Oprah Winfrey is exactly two years older than I. And I was two days late from being born exactly two hundred years after Mozart. One of my greatest silly regrets, because I struggled as a musician/teacher for some years and always thought deep down that if I had been born on Jan. 27, 1956 instead of Jan. 29, 1956, I might somehow have absorb some of Mozart’s cosmic genius and succeeded as a professional musician. And then I wondered about Schubert, being born on Jan. 31, 1797. Might there have been a connection to him if I’d been born exactly 159 years after he was?

    *SIGH* The things one wonders about in his/her spare time.

    Chris

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    2. Also W.C. Fields, Rockefeller Jr, Thomas Paine and President William McKinley… some real powerhouses on the list, Chris. Have you absorbed any of Oprah’s interview skills or philanthrophic ways? One of the millions with whom you share the day is my newest grand baby… born January 29th of this year. It seems she’s in some good company.

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      1. Hi, mn firefly,

        I like WC, don’t care much for Presidents or oil tycoons((or was Rocky Jr the Veep?). Thomas Paine? I can dig him. Nice to know that. I’m lousy at interviews (asking the questions) but try to be as philanthropic as the budget allows. Sorry, Babooners, no cars or free trips to Australia… 😦

        It goes without saying that January is the coolest month to be born (temp-wise AND hip-wise) and it’s doubly cool that I’m 56 and your grand baby was born 56 years after 1956! How’s that for some nordic numerology? 🙂

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      2. Junior DID work in oil… but he resigned from that and became a huge philanthropist (see? another one!). He gave nearly $540 million during the early 1900’s. I had no idea how many causes he made significant contributions to (birth control, cancer research, the arts, conservation, and many more). “Philanthrophy On a Budget”… might make for a pretty decent book. I like the numerology bound between you & grand baby. 🙂

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  17. Doris Day
    Marlon Brando
    Leslie Howard
    Richard Manuel
    Richard Thompson
    Sandra Boynton
    Eddie Murphy
    David Hyde-Pierce
    Alec Baldwin
    Matthew Goode

    Doris Day and Marlon Brando were born on the same day in the same year (1924). They’re sort of an Odd Couple, aren’t they? Imagine them cast together in When Harry Met Sally.

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    1. 🙂 Remake 50 years later. . . Sally and Harry, many many cats and gallons of wine later. . .
      PS I’d like to share my day with Sandra Boynton as a muse. Lucky you!

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      1. Oh, that would be fun, to have Sandra Boynton as a muse. Wonder, though, what sort of birthday card you buy for the woman who has created so many funny ones? (Her twitter feed, btw, is a hoot.)

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  18. Margo, my friend Molly’s delightful 3 year old daughter and my birthday buddy
    Phil Hartman, RIP, my twin (1948)
    Sir Alec Guinness, the original Irish brewer
    an awful lot of athletes (sad to say I’m not one of them) and actors and long dead politicians
    Jim Henson
    Linda McCartney
    So Wing Hong (“a Hong Kong singer” whose Wikipedia photo has him sitting in front of a poster of some very large pastries)
    F Scott Fitzgerald, born across the River in St. Paul

    Some events of doubtful note that occurred on my birthday:
    Benedict Arnold made his getaway to the British
    the Mormons renounced polygamy
    Eastern Orthodox liturgical holiday (a sleeper hit?)

    Dr. Seuss, who died on my birthday in 1991– “Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.”

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      1. I’d forgotten about The Horse’s Mouth. I think I saw it when I was too young to appreciate/understand it but I have a sort of fond feeling for it even though I remember nothing about it. That one WILL go on my queue.

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    3. Oops, my typo!!! It’s not Alec Guinness, but ARTHUR Guinness, the Irish brewer who founded Guinness Brewery. According to Wikipedia, he took a 9,000 year lease on the 4-acre brewery at St. James’s Gate from Sir Mark Rainsford for an annual rent of £45. He was never a “Sir”, never knighted — his legacy was his beer. 🙂

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      2. But what a legacy!

        Brenda O’Malley is home making dinner as usual, when Tim Finnegan arrives at her door.
        “Brenda, may I come in?” he asks. “I’ve somethin’ to tell ya.”
        “Of course you can come in. You’re always welcome, Tim. But where’s my husband?”
        “That’s what I’m here to be tellin’ ya, Brenda. There was an accident down at the Guinness brewery.”
        “Oh, God no!” cries Brenda. “Please don’t tell me…”
        “I must, Brenda. Your husband Shamus is dead and gone. I’m sorry.”
        Finally, she looked up at Tim. “How did it happen, Tim?”
        “It was terrible, Brenda. He fell into a vat of Guinness and drowned.”
        “Oh my dear Jesus! But you must tell me true, Tim. Did he at least go quickly?”
        “Well, no. Fact is, he got out three times to take a pee.

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  20. My list is pathetic. One of the major figures born on my day is Marv Albert, the toupee rapist. For great artists, I need look no further than Jim Nabors, perhaps known to you as Gomer Pyle. For a great statesman and political leader I can be proud (urk!) of sharing a birthday with George H W Bush, who did his best to screw up the world and then made sure of it by passing the torch to George Dubya Bush. Sheesh! I was going to say something snarky about one of the bigger names born the same day as I was, but the best known personality on that list is Anne Frank, and I am NOT going to poke fun at Anne Frank, nosiree! You gotta be more insensitive than I am to be irreverent with a person whose claim to fame is that she was a “diarist and victim.” Even I am not impish enough to mock one of the world’s most famous victims. RIP, Anne. RIP.

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    2. Strange bedfellows, to be sure, Steve. It looks like you’re at that fork in the road– which muse will you follow?

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  21. I’ve got some doozies. Momofuku Ando – inventor of instant noodle soup (looks like Ramen noodles). I wouldn’t have mentioned him but the name is too good to keep to myself.
    On the same day and year, Bernard Arnault, who was the 17th richest man in the world in 2005.
    March 5, pretty exciting, huh?
    On a more enviable note, our granddaughter was born two years ago yesterday on my husband’s birthday. She’s someone you could be proud to share a birthday with!

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  22. St. Patrick. Sort of. Growing up, it was important to me that people remember my birthday so I cheated by six minutes and claimed St. Patrick’s Day (it’s really March 18). It’s worked out OK, though, because some folks know the real date and others don’t, leaving them with two whole days from which to choose. This Saturday, I’ll be closer to 70 than ever before and it’s the first “0”
    birthday that feels like it’s on the edge of old. Nonetheless, I’m calling the 70s “late middle aged”.

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  23. I discovered that some of my favorite TV personalities share my birthday, including Cloris Leachman, Johnny Galecki (Big Bang Theory’s Leonard) and Grandpa Munster himself, Al Lewis. Acclaimed film director/wackadoo Lars Von Trier shares my birthday, as does Kirsten Dunst, the star of his most recent film. The list also includes Scientology leader David Miscavige, Willie Nelson, and animator/filmmaker Bill Plympton, who is quite awesome. The only person born same day and same year as I was happens to be a porn star named T.T. Boy. His credits apparently include a little masterpiece titled Anal Heartbreaker. It’s truly an honor to share my date of birth with this accomplished thespian. Truly.

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    2. I’ve never understood how the Academy can give awards to such obscure categories as “best documentary short” and then completely ignore the most industrious and profitable category of film: porn. Poor T.T. will never claim an Oscar.

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  24. Some of the more notables born on my day…
    Ray Bradbury, Claude Debussy, John Lee Hooker, Kristin Wiig (SNL)… there’s also a Backstreet Boy and a Jamaican rapper by the name of Beenie Man. Closer to home (and far more interesting) is the fact that, of the three houses on my block & on my side of the street, all three of us share the same birthday! What are the odds of that?

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  25. All 3 of my sisters have the same birthday, so I have felt comparatively alone. Believers in the zodiac could explain what I have in common with Greta Garbo and the US Marine Corps. Just learned that I should be careful that Joseph Kony doesn’t steal our mutual cake. Luckily MrsFields shares the day too so we could have warm cookies instead.

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    1. Out of curiosity, was there a special date, occasion, or anniversary for your parents which might explain how three babies were born on the same date???? The odds of this happening have simply got to be astronomically low!

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      1. It’s not quite as cool as it sounds…2 of them are twins and they were born 6 weeks early on my sister’s birthday. It is also 3 days before Christmas so there is a lot of overlapping hoopla

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    2. I know at least 30 people with my birthday, once three of us on a faculty of 45 plus two more in the support staff.

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  26. Authors/Journalists – Edward Bellamy, Joseph Campbell, Erica Jong, Leeza Gibbons, Thomas Lanier (Tennessee Willams), A.E. Housman, Bob Woodward.
    Business leader – Duncan Hines
    Performers – Alan Arkin, James Caan, Kenny Chesney, Diana Ross, Bob Elliott (of Bob & Ray), Johnny Crawford (The Rifleman), Jennifer Grey, Keira Knightley, Vicki Lawrence, Leonard Nimoy, Martin Short
    Others – Sandra Day O’Connor! And Egyptian King Fuad I.

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  28. Dale will never do this, I do not think, but that poem belongs in Rhyme Wave. It is very clever and scans very well with some tough words.

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  29. Greetings! I don’t even have to look this up — Mahatma Gandhi and Groucho Marx share my birthday. Guess I should look it up to see who else. My husband also shares his birthday with his older brother (by 2 years).

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    1. Oh — and my youngest sister is married to a dear man who shares the exact same birthday (date and year).

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  30. Walt Whitman (That’s the one I knew), Clint Eastwood, Joe Namath, Brooke Sheilds – it’s an interesting list. I was surprised.
    I remember a PHC long, long ago, on my birthday, in the sculpture garden of the old science museum, at which Bill Holm read some poems by Walt Whitman. It was wonderful. I suppose other things happened, too, but really that’s what I remember.

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    1. Locations and times – what is it in me that meets them all, whenever
      and wherever, and makes me at home?
      Forms, colors, densities, odors – what is it in me that corresponds
      with them?

      – W.W.

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