Hiawatha's research

Jason Holt jason at lunkwill.org
Wed Jun 16 13:28:13 PDT 2004


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"Hiawatha's Research"
Jason Holt <cypherpunks at lunkwill.org>
June, 2004, released into the public domain.
Dedicated to Eric Rescorla, with apologies to Longfellow.
("E. Rescorla" may be substituted for "Hiawatha" throughout.)

Hiawatha, academic,
he could start ten research papers,
start them with such mighty study,
that the last had left his printer,
ere the first deadline extended.

Then, to serve the greater purpose,
he would post these master papers,
post them with such speed and swiftness,
to gain feedback from his cohorts,
for their mighty learned comments.

from his printer, Hiawatha
took his publication paper,
sent it to the preprint archive,
sent it out to all the newsgroups

Then he waited, watching, listening,
for the erudite discussion,
for the kudos and the errors,
that the others soon would send him.

But in this my Hiawatha
was most cruelly mistaken,
for not one did read his papers,
not one got past the simple abstract.

Still did they all grab their keyboards,
writing with great flaming fury
of the folly of his venture,
of his paper's great misgiving.
Of his obvious omissions,
of his great misunderstandings,
of his utter lack of vision,
of his blatant plagiarism.

(This last point he found most galling,
found it really quite dumbfounding,
since for prior art, he'd listed
ninety-three related papers.)

Now the mighty Hiawatha,
in his office still is sitting,
contemplating on his research,
thinking on his chosen topic.
Wondering, in idle moments,
if he had not chosen wrongly,
the position he had taken
as a research paper author

And he thinks, my Hiawatha,
if he might not have been better
served by a more lowly station,
as a cashier at McDonalds,
as a washer at the car wash,
as a cleaner of the bathrooms.
Thus departs my Hiawatha.

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