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Daniel Lieberman, chair of the newly-created Department of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard, talks about the skull.

I’ve been interested in the human skull (and its contents) since I fractured mine at age eight. The headaches were horrific, but I had an excuse to get out of P.E. class. “My neurologist says. . .”

Jedi Master and I are inordinately fond of our respective brains and worry about protecting them from deterioration. He says meditation would help, but I cannot meditate—when I try, I am asleep in 30 seconds. On the other hand sleep keeps your systems running smoothly. It keeps your memory sharp and allows your new memories to transfer to the long-term memory bank.

I think the trick is to keep learning new things, preferably stuff you’ve never done. Like an alien language or a new sport or higher math problems. (This was also my excuse for buying two pairs of high-heeled shoes when I never wear heels.) Or learning to write with both hands. In college whenever I was bored unconscious at a lecture I took notes backwards or wrote with my left hand. It’s turned out to be a useful skill because now I can sign official documents in different ways nyahahaa.

Dr. Cuanang the neurologist says there may be something to this as it would encourage dendritic arborization in the brain. From what I understand the nerve cells in our brains are like trees and we should let those trees grow and branch out and form gardens of information.

Now I’m going to watch Steve Martin’s The Man With Two Brains. My favorite Steve Martin movies are:
1. All Of Me, with that virtuoso sequence in which Steve Martin impersonates Lily Tomlin impersonating Steve Martin)
2. The Jerk
3. The Man With Two Brains
4. Roxanne, his retelling of Cyrano
5. The Spanish Prisoner—technically David Mamet’s not Steve’s, but Steve made a great villain. Think of a menacing Edu Manzano.