Those of you who read my blog on a regular basis (thanks again, mom and dad) may recall that I felt compelled to comment when celebrities Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Harold Ramis passed away earlier this year. The sentiment was earnest, but it was also unsustainable. In steady procession, numerous other people, including soul singer Bobby Womack, Navajo windtalker Chester Nez, and English actor Bob Hoskins, have all passed away, and though I might have otherwise wanted to eulogize these remarkable individuals, I just never got around to it. This sort of selectivity is distasteful, suggesting as it does that some lives are more important than others. It reminds me of the most uncomfortable part of the annual Oscar telecast, the “In Memoriam” segment when those in attendance clap for faces they recognize, but not for faces they don’t. For that reason, I think I’ll restrict this blog to science and history for the time being, and leave tasteful eulogies of actors to more qualified people like Matt Zoller Seitz and the talented stable of critics over at RogerEbert.com. Before instituting this policy, however, I thought I’d share a link to this legendary music video from 1988, in which Bobby McFerrin, Bill Irwin, and the late, great Robin Williams extolled on the virtues of happiness a full quarter-century before Pharrell Williams did the same.