Two Brits, late 1950s early 1960s, droll wry wits singing around a piano for the guests. One of our family songs was The Hippopotamus. Your family can sing the chorus too.

Now, you really have been tremendously nice, posterity would be proud of you, and perhaps you'd like to help us even more now by joining in the last chorus of this next song. You don't have to if you don't want to, if it embarrasses you, but it would be rather a pity if you don't sing tonight because tonight, by way of encouragement, attendants will be passing amongst you with rawhide whips. This is one of the first songs Donald and I wrote together, it turned out to be a lucky day for us. Today is also another rather splendid day as today is the 50th anniversary of that marvellous day when Alloykin, the Russian chessmaster, played King's pawn to Knight 7th. This caused quite a stir as they were playing bridge at the time. In honour of this, and because I can't think of any other way to get round it, Donald is going to sing the second chorus of this song in Russian. This is the very first of the animal songs, some people think the title of this song is irrelevant. But it's not irrelevant, it's a Hippopotamus.

A bold Hippopotamus was standing one day
On the banks of the cool Swhalimar
He gazed at the bottom as it peacefully lay
By the light of the evening star
Away on a hilltop, sat combing her hair
Was a fair Hippopotami maid
The Hippopotamus was no ignoramus
And sang her this sweet serenade:

'Mud, Mud, glorious mud
Nothing quite like it for cooling the blood
So follow me, follow
Down to the hollow
And there let us wallow in glorious mud'

The fair Hippopotama he aimed to entice
From her seat on that hilltop above
As she hadn't got a Ma to give her advice
Came tiptoeing down to her love.
Like thunder the forest re-echoed the sound
of the song that they sang when they met
His inamorata adjusted her garter
And lifted her voice in duet (in Russian)

(in Russian, DS sings, MF translates)

'Mud, Mud, glorious mud
Nothing quite like it for cooling the blood
So follow me, follow
Down to the hollow
And there let us wallow in glorious mud'

That should improve our cultural relations

The bold Hippopotami began to convene
On the banks of that river so wide
I wonder, now, what am I to say of the scene
That ensued by the Swhalimar side?
They dived all at once, with an ear-splitting splosh
Then rose to the surface again
A regular army
of Hippopotami
All singing this haunting refrain:

'Mud, Mud, glorious mud
Nothing quite like it for cooling the blood
So follow me, follow
Down to the hollow
And there let us wallow in glorious mud'

Tim O'Reilly asked: "What other sites would you like to see offering SOAP APIs to their data?"

I answered:

First, I wish for U.S. Federal Government apps. Open up wsAPIs for the budget, to the library of congress, to congressional behavior, to America's Job Bank, to Commerce Business Daily, IRS, SEC and the hundreds of regulatory agencies, OSHA, USGS, environmental databases. We spend billions to collect and host an amazing collection of useful data and services. Some are web exposed. wsAPIs may be the key to making them more useful to more people in new and exciting ways.

Second, Monster.com (NYSE:TMPW). More than half of all time spent in online job searches are spent on this site; comparable to Amazon's and Google's mind share. Expose job posting and listing, resume posting and listing, and company profiles. Watch new ways evolve for fitting people to work. Can't you see looking for the resumes of people who read both "C# Essentials (2nd Edition)" and your column?

Third, organizations with high velocity data. Weather, Traffic, Sports, News, Wall Street. The last ten years have been about aggregation and distribution for these folks. The tide is adding analysis and interpretation: web service APIs can help that along.

For example, add context to that news story about the Taliban: who has a financial stake in Afghanistan, who has been writing about them, prior news coverage, books citing the Taliban, movies shot about them or in the country, people with Taliban or Afghanistan on their resumes.

My goal is to get a more complete, timely and accurate picture faster. Can we collapse the time it took to understand the Enron failure from months to days with tools like this? 

Just for fun: iMDB, the internet movie database (owned by Amazon so Tim O'Reilly may have some pull there).

Tom Negrino: What she said. Also what she said in this post about Alton Brown's cookbook, I'm Just Here For the Food. I'd also add that The Best Recipe, which is the flagship cookbook for Cooks Illustrated, is hands down the best cookbook I own (it's a compendium of recipes from several years of the magazine).

I can't swear to the books, but I do like the practical chemistry lessons of Alton Brown's FoodTV show.

[aka food]