PhDevin

Last night as I was talking with my sister the topic of all the junk that sits on our computers for years that we don't really know what to do with but we never look at and where did most of it come from anyway?

She emailed me a few items that she had on her computer that she thought I would find interesting, and she had some real classics.  I was really happy to see this one resurface, I don't think I even have it saved, having gone through so many computer hard drive crashes over the years. I really need to figure out some way to back up my system so that I can save all the random junk that collects on a computer over the years. Because you know, as you look back on it, some of that junk is pretty priceless.

"PhDevin"

Devin is a person

Who speaks in weighty terms,

He puts the Cossack curse on

Bacteria and germs.

In mystic laboratories,

With tubes, retorts, and sinks

He wins undying glories

By making stunning stinks.

Some newly figured datum

He uses to disclose

The secrets of the atom,

The ways of cellulose.

He can make soup from syrup,

Perfume from mutton fat;

His job's to sit and stir up

Synthetic-this and that,

When he, in finest frenzy,

Makes something sour and green,

He calls it Parabenzy-

-disulphoethylene.

Of Chemistry my knowledge

Is but a hollow shell;

I took the course at college,

But only learned one smell.

I believe my mother wrote this. Good one, mom! 
She had a little help, it seems.  

-->

* Adapted from the poem "As to Chemists" by Stoddard King, in his book of poems, Listen to the Mocking Bird, published in 1928, given to Alice H. Smith for Christmas 1928.