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  1. A CNN anchor became violently angry after someone called him…

    the very model of a modern Major-General,
    with information vegetable, animal, and mineral,
    knowing the kings of England, and to quote the fights historical
    From Marathon to Waterloo, in order categorical;
    And very well acquainted, too, with matters mathematical,
    he understand equations, both the simple and quadratical,
    About binomial theorem he’s teeming with a lot o’ news,
    With many cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse.

    he’s very good at integral and differential calculus;
    he knows the scientific names of beings animalculous:
    In short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral,
    He is the very model of a modern Major-General.

    He knows our mythic history, King Arthur’s and Sir Caradoc’s;
    He answers hard acrostics, He has a pretty taste for paradox,
    He quotes in elegiacs all the crimes of Heliogabalus,
    In conics he can floor peculiarities parabolous;
    He can tell undoubted Raphaels from Gerard Dows and Zoffanies,
    He knows the croaking chorus from The Frogs of Aristophanes!
    Then he can hum a fugue of which he’s heard the music’s din afore,
    And whistle all the airs from that infernal nonsense Pinafore.

    Then he can write a washing bill in Babylonic cuneiform,
    And tell you ev’ry detail of Caractacus’s uniform:
    In short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral,
    He is the very model of a modern Major-General.

    In fact, when he knows what is meant by “mamelon” and “ravelin”,
    When he can tell at sight a Mauser rifle from a javelin,
    When such affairs as sorties and surprises he’s more wary at,
    And when he knows precisely what is meant by “commissariat”,
    When he’s learnt what progress has been made in modern gunnery,
    When he knows more of tactics than a novice in a nunnery—
    In short, when he’s a smattering of elemental strategy—
    You’ll say a better Major-General has never sat a-gee.

    For his military knowledge, though he’s plucky and adventury,
    Has only been brought down to the beginning of the century;
    But still, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral,
    He’s the very model of a modern Major-General.

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