Now that FQXi’s mini-meeting is over, I’ve been looking for a witty way to sum up everything that happened. But I can’t do better than MIT’s Seth Lloyd, who wrote and performed a song to celebrate the gathering. So here it is, by popular demand, to be sung to the tune of “I've got a little list,” from Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado:

If ever it should happen that a theory must be...

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Seth Lloyd, MIT

Now that FQXi’s mini-meeting is over, I’ve been looking for a witty way to sum up everything that happened. But I can’t do better than MIT’s Seth Lloyd, who wrote and performed a song to celebrate the gathering. So here it is, by popular demand, to be sung to the tune of “I've got a little list,” from Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado:

If ever it should happen that a theory must be found,

I’ve got a little list, I’ve got a little list

Of whacky science projects that FQX(i) should fund,

They must none of them be missed, they must none of them be missed.

There's the hoary old conundrum folks call quantum gravity

The loopy kind, the stringy kind, we do not quite agree.

N=8, it sure does make a super symmetry.

Let's not forget the far out stuff of surfer dude Lisi:

If he can make it, we can take it -- put it on the list!

They must none of them be missed, they'll none of them be missed.

There's that precocious animal that's now just rather rife,

The string cosmologist -- I've got him on my list.

That cut-up pair of Boltzmann brains and gems of physics life,

the great inflationists -- I've got them on my list.

Genial Nobel laureates of a coruscating mind

With anyons and who knows what and also . . . never mind.

I doubt he'll be offended if I put him on the list,

so let's put him on the list, let's put him on the list.

The courageous entertainer with the non-puerile blog,

the science journalist: I've got her on my list.

The anti-cloning theorist and experimental god,

I think you've got the gist: I put them on the list.

But that annoying, rapping, quantum information theorist,

Just kick him off the list: he never will be missed!

Now you see quite clearly why FQX must survive,

Or else there'd be no list: the list would not exist!

Young scientists around the world would start to question life,

Require an analyst -- they really would be pissed!

So let's thank Max and Anthony for making this to be,

And Templeton and all you folks for helping us to see

That it really doesn't matter whom you put upon the list,

as long as there's a list, as long as there's a list.

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