Last night marked Barack Obama's first night as leader of the free world, so naturally, he spent his time getting down with his presidential self.

Obama and the First Lady attended the Neighborhood Inauguration Ball, just one of 10 events the Obamas attended Tuesday night. The Neighborhood Ball was the first inauguration event to be open to the people, and the first ball the Obamas visited on their whirlwind night. The Ball featured performances by Jay-Z, Sting, and Stevie Wonder, among others, and was broadcast on ABC. It was a fitting moment for the new president to include regular people in the inauguration festivities and turn the Ball into a celebratory concert people of all ages could enjoy.

At the Neighborhood Ball, the couple danced to Beyonce performing Etta James' classic "At Last" and later, Obama threw down some old school moves with Aretha Franklin and other attendees (see below). It is the rare president who can do "the bump" with class. As Obama settles in today and begins work on a million different issues, including suspending some of the military trials at Guantanamo, remember this image and know that we clearly entered a new age:

According to Ferenc Szasz, a professor of American and Scottish culture at the University of New Mexico, rap music, that hallmark of modern American culture, actually comes from medieval Scotland. Because in addition to kilts, golf, and throwing logs, the Scottish are also well known for spitting those phat rhymes.

More specifically, Szasz's argument is that rap battles are derived from "flyting," in which two people insult each other via vulgar, satirical rhymes. This practice was so popular, poets would perform in front of kings, such as the Flyting Of Dunbar and Kennedy, performed in front of King James IV in the 16th century.

Centuries later, flyting crossed the Atlantic when Scottish slave owners traveled to America and passed the practice onto their African-American slaves. According to Szasz, the American version of flyting first appeared as a war poem published in Vanity Fair in 1861.

Watch the clip below of Eminem battling in 8 Mile (NSFW because of the language) and then compare it to the text of Dunbar and Kennedy (supposedly also NSFW if you can actually understand it). The two should be similar in terms of the use of obscenities and clever word play as well as the competitive nature of the activities, in which only one performer is judged to be the winner.

And do not be surprised when in retaliation, New York City claims that Sean Connery is from the Bronx.

8 Mile:

Whether you're a brother or whether you're a mother, you can save lives!

A study from the University of Illinois medical school attempted to determine whether the Bee Gees' classic "Stayin' Alive" (see/hear below) can actually help people perform CPR. According to the American Heart Association, people are supposed to perform 100 compressions a minute when trying to revive someone. It turns out that at 103 beats a minute, "Stayin' Alive" has the perfect rhythm for dancing and performing CPR. In fact, whether listening to the music or just thinking of the song, subjects in the study performed more chest compressions than are considered necessary, which is sort of a "more the merrier" situation.

The study on how you can tell by the way a man uses his walk, he's a woman's man, was inconclusive.

I don't play an instrument. I don't have a working iPod or CD player. In an entertainment journalism class, we had to do a song critique, and while most of the students picked Bob Dylan or an indie band with meaningful lyrics, I chose Europe's "The Final Countdown." Fun fact: the phrase "the final countdown" is sung 16 times.

So I am not what you would call a music aficionado. Or a musician. And I know VH1 has been trying to save the music for years, but Guitar Hero has accidentally wandered across a way to get people actively engaged in music in a way that doesn't actually require any musical skills. Thanks to GH, I have been a rock god for two years now. Fun fact: though the GH guitar does not have strings, you can get callouses if you play too much.