Recently, I have been reading physicist Alan Lightman’s Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine, which is lovely and thought-provoking and perhaps a wee bit pretentious. However, in the latest chapter I read, things took a turn. Lightman posed the following situation, which he refers to as the Smart Ant Conundrum:

Imagine a colony of highly intelligent ants. Suppose further that this ant colony lasts for a hundred years. Normal ant colonies last only 20 years or so, when the queen flies off to spawn another colony, but let’s assume that a long dynasty of queens have followed each other to replenish this particular colony. Each individual ant lives only a year, so there have been many generations of ants in this colony. This is an old colony. Over the century, these brainy ants create a great civilization. They build advanced structures underground. They compose music. They create paintings and theater. They write books and record histories of their society. They develop science and make theories about the cosmos, both inside the ant hill and beyond. They have emotions and intimate relationships. Then one day, a flood comes and totally destroys the ant colony. Totally. There is nothing left – no ants, no ant books, no ant paintings, no remnants. Nothing. Everything is completely destroyed. There’s no trace left in the universe of this magnificent ant colony. The question I ask myself: Did the ant colony have any meaning? And now, after the colony is gone, with no record of its existence, does it have meaning?

Yikes. I mean, geez dude, I’m just trying to make it to the weekend so I can sleep in for an extra 45 minutes before the cat starts attacking me and demanding his breakfast. I wasn’t prepared for a thought experiment about the meaningfulness of my existence, or lack thereof. This will require another cup of coffee.

One point to consider is that clearly this genius ant colony has never heard of using the cloud for data storage. If the colony of Pennsylvania is ever wiped off the map by a massive flood (thanks for nothing, New Jersey), Scott and I can take solace in that the meaningfulness of our existence is as secure as the structural integrity of whatever building houses the back-up servers on which the CMEpalooza archive resides. Our legacy will live on!

Speaking of CMEpalooza, the agenda for CMEpalooza Fall (Wednesday, October 18, write it down) will be coming out soon, hopefully by the end of the month. Scott would like everyone to know that his sessions are ready to be announced and I am the one holding up the works, which, while annoying, is also accurate. I wonder if any of those brainiac ants knows anything about ChatGPT…

Whenever you have an event as large and prestigious as CMEpalooza, you expect that the masses will come calling when you are celebrating a milestone, as we are right now in the midst of 10 years of our biannual event.

And yet shockingly, The View never contacted us. Silence from the major news network. Heck, we would have settled for a guest spot on Inside the NBA’s pregame show (Derek has always wanted to yell at Charles Barkley for saving his best season once he left Philly) (note from Derek: true.).

Perhaps all of these outlets weren’t properly programmed into my phone, so when they came up as “Potential Spam” or “Unknown Caller” (which always triggers an “Ignore” response), they moved onto the next guest instead of leaving a voicemail.

I even bought a ticket to sit in the audience on Saturday night to watch Bill Maher at one of our local venues. I made sure to remind his booking agent via Twitter several times that I would be in attendance and available to come onstage to talk with Bill about the ways that CMEpalooza has impacted our big, bad, funny world. And yet, the show came and went with nary a wave. Perhaps they just couldn’t see me way up in the bowels of the venue? Yeah, yeah, that’s it.

Frankly, it was all a bit demoralizing. How will America survive without hearing more insight from Derek and I about the many valuable lessons we have learned over this last decade? Surely, a generation of our youth–struggling for sense and purpose in this big, bad, funny world–will be motivated by the story of CMEpalooza’s humble beginnings. But without an outlet beyond our own walls, how would we get this message to them?

Thankfully, our old friends at the Leading Learning podcast series came to the rescue. When they reached out a few months ago asking if Derek and I would do a reprise of the most popular podcast in their history that we recorded back in 2017 (we’re assuming – we didn’t actually ask), we didn’t hesitate to say yes. After several months of editing–you’d be surprised how much Derek can talk once he gets on a roll–we’re proud to announce that this latest podcast is now available. You can access it wherever you listen to your podcasts (but preferably not in the shower–that would be really weird).

If you don’t have the time to listen, or you simply cannot stand our voices, there is even a handy transcript available. I would tell you here about some of the topics we cover, but then you wouldn’t be quite as likely to listen to the podcast, would you? I can tell you that we did not discuss the following topics that are nonetheless near and dear to our hearts:

1. Delis
2. Richard Pryor’s best movies
3. The differences between the Amish and Mennonites (note from Derek: I’m an expert.)
4. Best arcade games in 1980s pizza shops
5. The NBA playoffs (yes, we’re still angry)

Thanks again to the big brains at Leading Learning for making us sound somewhat coherent. I know that ain’t easy.

Oh, somewhere in this favoured land the sun is shining bright,
The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light;
And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children grin,
But there is no joy in Paloozaville—the Sixers lost again.

Yes, it’s sad times in Paloozaville (again.) Our beloved Philadelphia 76ers lost (again) to their archrival Boston Celtics (again) in the second round of the NBA playoffs (again.) I won’t bore you with the details…oh, well, OK, I’ll bore you with a few of the details.

The Sixers were ahead 3-2 in the best-of-7 series after an unexpected Game 5 victory. They only needed to win one more game to take the series and relieve some of the angst of long-suffering Sixers fans. As is my wont, I took to social media to share my anxiety.

The day before Game 6, I was feeling a bit nervous.

What, you thought I only write haikus about CMEpalooza?

The day of Game 6, things were going great.

Then, unfortunately, they had to play the game, which, obviously, they lost. I handled it well.

Fortunately, there was a two day break between Game 6 and Game 7, so I had time to recover and rejuvenate. The morning of Game 7, also Mother’s Day, I woke up refreshed and full of love for all humankind.

Almost all humankind. And not a haiku, just to be clear.

Sadly, they again had to actually play the game, the result of which has already been well documented. Scott and I have been in mourning ever since.

On the bright side, I updated the CMEpalooza Archive with all the sessions from CMEpalooza Spring 2023. We’ve got like 500* sessions archived over there, so head on over and peruse at your leisure (we definitely don’t have 500 archived sessions. I made that up. But we do have a lot. Someone should count them.)