Care to hear the oldest song in the world, from ancient Sumeria?

It’s not bad. Could be improved with a little Justin Bieber.

If you’re at all interested in music, you should come to the Common Cup Coffeehouse here in Morris tonight at 6. Wes Flinn and I will be talking about music and the brain. We’re trying something a little different: I know nearly nothing about music, but I have a degree in neuroscience; Wes is a guy with a Ph.D. in music theory, but is not a biologist. I figure that between the two of us we can come up with something interesting about how the brain deals with music.

Or possibly I’ll talk about music and he’ll talk about neuro, and the audience can drink coffee and laugh.

If Trump asks Carson to be his VP, the Repubs will have all the deadly sins covered.

My wife and I are going to see Deadpool tonight, I think (this may be one time the theater is overcrowded here in Morris). I’m concerned. This is one movie I’ve heard a lot of gushing hype about, and I have high expectations.

That usually means I’m going to be grievously disappointed.

Stay tuned, I’m going in to the 7:00 showing.

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I’m back!

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You can be an engineer, too!

It definitely has significant problems.

Southern Fried Science explains most of its failings. The sunglasses bugged me, too, and really, you cannot stuff tennis balls down a whale’s blowhole.

I know, that’s a shocking revelation.

Second shocking revelation: Saturday Night Live is capable of turning out funny skits anymore? Who knew?

I used to watch these with my kids, back in the day.

Buttercup was always my favorite. Watch out MRAs!

This is an amazing video, but I think the music was kind of an afterthought to the visual gimmick.

I’m also wondering how much they had to rehearse, and whether any of them suffered from motion sickness.

Ain’t gonna happen, guys.

A review at Ars Technica starts this way: “Dungeons & Dragons just celebrated its 42nd birthday…”. I said no, no way, this is a mistake, it can’t be — I started playing that game the year after it came out, in 1975, which was…41 years ago. Yikes.

I played regularly through college — we had a kind of loose gaming group who would get together every week or two for a long night of goofy fantasy role playing. I drifted away after graduation, though, for two reasons: I’d moved far away from old friends, and they kept tinkering with the game, adding new persnickety rules and turning it into an exercise in bookkeeping rather than storytelling.

The review explains, though, that the latest edition goes back to its roots, simplifying and streamlining the rules, which I think is a step in the right direction, even if I’ll probably never play it again (I now live even farther away from my old friends). I think it’s also cool that they’ve made the basic player’s rules available for free, even if they’re going to still stick the dedicated D&D gamer with an $85 bill for three books, the Player’s Handbook, the Dungeon Master’s Guide, and of course, the Monster Manual (D&D Core Rulebook).

So all I need is money, and time, and friends, and I could pretend to be 18 again. Now that’s real fantasy role-playing!