Hurtling Through Space

Following on in the skeptical mission of illustrating, italicising and underlining how utterly stupid, dangerous and ludicrous homeopathy really is, here’s something from the very funny That Mitchell & Webb Look BBC comedy sketch show:

That Mitchell & Webb Look – Homeopathic A&E

It’s not just water wizardry it mocks, of course, but palmistry, astrology, chakras, crystal healing and other forms of bollocks. I love the homeopathic beer. Very clever stuff.

Interestingly, both David Mitchell and Robert Webb are alumni of the Cambridge Footlights. The Footlights count among its former members legendary people like Clive Anderson, Alexander Armstrong & Ben Miller, David Baddiel, Tim Brooke-Taylor (Goodies), Graham Chapman (Python), John Cleese (Python), Peter Cook, Hugh Dennis & Steve Punt, David Frost, Stephen Fry & Hugh Laurie (Fry & Laurie, Blackadder, QI, House, etc), Germaine Greer, Eric Idle (Python), Clive James, Simon Jones (HHGTTG), Bill Oddie (Goodies), John Oliver (Daily Show with Jon Stewart), Sue Perkins, Griff Rhys Jones, Emma Thompson, Sandi Toksvig, and Mark Watson. Basically every piece of TV and film comedy to have come out of the UK in the last 50 years.

Hat tip to Skepticblog.

This is so good it deserves a post all to itself: Scooby Doo (the ultimate skeptic show that we’ve seen since we were kids) versus the zombie apocalypse!

Looks like Shaggy, Fred and Daphne didn’t make it… Velma and Scooby are going to have to clear up the mess themselves.

Being the not-so-closeted nerd that I am, I spent some of New Year’s Eve formatting ebooks I own for my new Kindle and watching season 1 of The Big Bang Theory.

If you’ve not heard of The Big Bang Theory, it’s a sitcom about a group of professionally-successful but nerdy guys who haven’t outgrown their teenage game-playing, comic-consuming and socially-inept lifestyles. The main characters are Sheldon (neurotic former child genius who works as a theoretical physicist), housemate Leonard (also a former child genius who works as a experimental physicist), Rajesh (astrophysicist and female-induced mute), Howard (aerospace engineer and creepy wannabe ladies’ man), and Penny (waitress with the showbiz dream) . Penny is the pretty and “normal” neighbour to contrast the others, and is also the (not entirely unwanted, it seems) object of Leonard’s attentions.

You get the idea. It’s the Hollywood sitcom formula with a nerdy twist, but it really works.

Another part of the show that I like is the theme song by the Barenaked Ladies, who are probably best known for their song One Week. The theme to The Big Bang Theory is the best TV show theme I can recall as it suits the show so well, being itself funny, intelligent and actually related to the show (lyrics here):

Barenaked Ladies – The Big Bang Theory

If you’re on the lookout for an intelligent sitcom to get your teeth into, I recommend that you check out The Big Bang Theory. There aren’t many shows that have me laughing aloud every 2-3 minutes.

Or maybe I’m more of a nerd than I thought…