Eddie Izzard on the Daleks

Based on my personal experience, there seems to a correlation between skeptical thinking and science fiction. I attend functions of a group of skeptics, sometimes physically at local venues, and at other times online with people around the world and I find that a large number of them are aficionados of science fiction and are knowledgeable about the minutiae of those stories.

Recently I created some mild astonishment within this group by saying that I had never actually watched any complete episodes of favorites like Star Trek, The Twilight Zone, or Dr. Who. I knew about them of course and had read about them and seen the odd clip of something from them. It is not that I avoid them. I do read the occasional science fiction but had never had any great interest in seeing science fiction on TV or the big screen. This surprised others who seemed to expect that with my science background, I would find them appealing.

One thing that had always puzzled me were the Daleks, the evildoers in the Dr. Who stories. They seemed to me to be laughably comical and totally not frightening. Eddie Izzard shares my puzzlement as to what the creators were thinking when they created them as conical objects with flat bottoms, like pepper and salt shakers, who moved on wheels and had weird appendages where arms would be.

So much available, so little to watch

In a comment to my blog post reviewing the film The Penguin Lessons, commenter jimf wrote:

I understand it was an offhand comment that had little to do with the post, but I can’t agree that Netflix has “seemingly infinite options”. I find the vast majority of Netflix content to be virtually unwatchable. The majority seems to be either mindless filler or hopelessly violent “action” pictures, or worse, stars Adam Sandler. Most of the comedy specials are flat and predictable. And good luck trying to find any classic pics made prior to 1960.

I actually agree with jimf. After all, I did not say that Netflix had “seemingly infinite good options”. The trope of people wasting their time surfing the site, trying and failing to find something that they really want to watch finally settling for some dreck just to kill time, has become a cliche.
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South Park trolls Kristi Noem and ICE

In a recent episode, the animated comedy show South Park severely trolled puppy murderer Kristi Noem, the head of the department of homeland security.

Two weeks ago, South Park kicked off its 27th season with one of its angriest, most politically daring episodes. The animated sitcom, long a magnet for controversy, incurred the wrath of the current US administration for its brutal and graphic send-up of Donald Trump as a petty, micro-penised dictator, as well as parent company Paramount’s cowardly capitulations to him.

All of this is to say that the new episode, titled Got a Nut, is coming in hot. And for the most part, it lives up to the hype.

The episode follows two different stories: in one, the show’s resident bigot, Eric Cartman, is outraged to learn that fellow fourth grader Clyde has risen to prominence as a white nationalist podcaster who makes offensive claims about women, Jewish people, Black people and other minority groups to goad them into debating him in exploitative viral videos (“WOKE STUDENT TOTALLY PWNED”). Of course, Cartman isn’t angry on behalf of any of those groups; he’s mad that Clyde is ripping off his gimmick and reaping all the rewards. He decides to muscle in on the act, styling his hair after Kirk’s signature coif (“the stupidest haircut I’ve ever seen,” says one character), trolling college girls on social media and proclaiming himself a “master-debater”.
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“What’d he say? Blessed are the cheesemakers?”

The Scots know how to amusingly mock Trump during his impromptu press conference in Scotland.

Tom Lehrer (1928-2025)

The mathematician and musical satirist has died at the age of 97. The link gives some of his better known songs but the ones I like best are his parody of My Darling Clementine

and the song about Alma Mahler Gropius Werfel.

This was somewhat unfair to Alma, portraying her merely as someone whose chief talent was to work her way through many famous men. She was, in fact, an accomplished composer and author in her own right.

Balancing the universality of humanism with one’s specific ethnic heritage

I found this interesting short clip of the versatile physician, writer, director, documentarian, comedian, and public intellectual Jonathan Miller, who died in 2019 at the age of 85, talking with Dick Cavett about how he views his own Jewish ethnicity. I found completely relatable his views about subordinating the ethnic and religious heritage into which he was born to a more universal sense of humanity.

The exchange is well worth watching for anyone trying to navigate rejecting ethnic and religious sectarianism and embracing solidarity with the human race as a whole, without giving the impression that they are disowning or are even ashamed of being born into a specific heritage. As he said, the only time he feels it necessary to tell anyone that he is Jewish is when they turn out to be an antisemite.
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Steve Coogan blasts the UK Labour Party

Back in 1961, the ground-breaking British sketch comedy revue Beyond the Fringe featuring Alan Bennett, Peter Cook, Jonathan Miller, and Dudley Moore took British comedy by storm, breaking old patterns and inspiring a new generation of comedians including the Monty Python troupe.

In the opening sketch, they had a commentary on America.

At the 2:57 mark, Jonathan Miller explains to Dudley Moore, who is on the eve of a trip to the US, the two-party system here, saying “They’ve got the Republican party, you see, which is the equivalent of our Conservative party and then there’s the Democratic party which is the equivalent of our Conservative party.”

That joke worked in 1961 because at that time there were significant differences between the Conservative and Labour parties in the UK, which were not reflected in the Republican and Democratic parties here.. It would not work as well now because, thanks to the neoliberalism of Tony Blair and now Keir Starmer, the Labour party is becoming indistinguishable from the Conservatives.

Actor Steve Coogan has blasted Starmer and the Labour party of betraying its supporters and warned that when angry voters see that neither party is looking after their interests, they will move towards Nigel Farage’s Reform party. His analysis rings true to what we see in the US as well.
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