I hate the UK so much.

I second that emotion. :-(

I suppose I'd start worrying if I saw Dawkins on "Doctor Who" all the time, accompanied by Roxana (actress Lalla Ward aka Mrs. Richard Dawkins) and K-9 (voiced by John Leeson of course)!!!

On a more serious note, I think I was the only "Doctor Who" fan present at one of Dawkins' Barnes and Noble appearances here in New York City earlier this decade, and took advantage of that to introduce myself to Ms. Ward, who graciously signed my copy of Dawkins' book (I think she might have sketched K-9 too!!!).

Cheers,

John
(aka "Jekyll and Hyde of Paleobiology" courtesy of Uncommon Dissent IDiot Borg drone DaveScot Springer)

John - Wear your title proudly. If DaveScot has a problem with you, you must be doing it right.

Get a bit torrent client like Azureus http://azureus.sourceforge.net/ then go to some place like The Pirate Bay and search for something like "BBC" http://thepiratebay.org/search/bbc/0/99/0

Download and enjoy!

Hi J-Dog,

You bet I am! And, I see that, like me, you haven't forgotten his master's birthday.

Cheers,

John
(aka "Jekyll and Hyde of Paleobiology" courtesy of Uncommon Dissent IDiot Borg drone DaveScot Springer)

Yep. We all have a direct phone to Dawkins. Think of commissioner Gordon and Batman. We send the big scarlet A light up to the sky and Dawkins comes in his BiologyBike to kick some credulous ass.

But No. We don't get them all the time. Not as nearly as much stuff like this on TV. Probably the reason I selectively download the stuff I want.

BTW- Abbie, the internet is your friend.

Hi Abbie,

Let us thank ourselves for having these eloquent scientists who can discuss science and make it comprehensible to almost everyone:

Francisco Ayala
Brian Greene
David Grinspoon
Kenneth R. Miller
Lisa Randall
Oliver Sacks
Neil de Grasse Tyson

So we may not have Dawkins, and we have no longer Sagan, Gould and Mayr, but still, we have eloquent scientists who can explain science quite well.

Cheers,

John
(aka "Jekyll and Hyde of Paleobiology" courtesy of Uncommon Dissent IDiot Borg drone DaveScot Springer)

I hate the UK, too. I have students who are starting to wear chav hats and matching shorts. The Brits need to keep that shit to themselves.

BitTorrent for the win!

No, I mean I want this kind of thing on TV, on 'basic' channels!

How come Brits get skeptic TV, but we get Sunday morning church services or Tila Tequila??

*continues pouting*

Hi Abbie,

You can thank the Feds. They allowed for a completely free market laissez-faire approach to television back in the 1940s and 1950s. Meanwhile in the United Kingdom, it chose instead to have television heavily regulated by the central government, hence the establishment of BBC TV. So while the British get "Upstairs, Downstairs" and "Doctor Who", we are treated instead to "Desperate Housewives", and such Xian television stalwarts as Pat Robertson's show.

On an entirely different note, I am looking forward to trying your chicken tikka masala some day.

Cheers,

John
(aka "Jekyll and Hyde of Paleobiology" courtesy of Uncommon Dissent IDiot Borg drone DaveScot Springer)

Yeah, lowest common denominator...

and I do mean lowest.

On the other hand, the get British news services, where they beat the everloving crap out of every tabloid scare-fest they can scrape from their shoes.

I have to do some media monitoring where I work, and Brit news is even worse than American. It makes me want to start stabbing people in London...

Never mind Dawkins...when are we going to get Japanese-style game shows? I wanna see a bunch of little kids with steaks tied to their heads in a room with a Komodo dragon!

What is skeptic TV. In Britain it would be called sceptic TV. Do you mean a channel or just sceptical programming.

I can remember there as a kid watching Open University in the mornings, too, though I think that has largely gone by the wayside.

Even when I first moved to Canada, it wasn't that bad. I felt nerdy, but I loved that crazy-haired geology guy on Access television with his talk of volcanoes and plagioclase feldspar.

A little later on, we still got things that were goofy, but still sciency, like Beakman's World and What Will They Think Of Next?

Now all we have for science is Daily Planet (good but dry)... maybe Mythbusters. Flipping channels, we have yet another woo-looking show, Psychic Kids... arglbargl!

*laugh* We actually get more Japanese game show tie-ins than science: we have MXC, of course, Sushi TV, I Survived a Japanese Game Show and a North American derivative, Wipeout.

I'm jealous of the Brits getting to see Dawkins and in general hear David Attenborough narrating things :)

Magpie- what I have seen of US news convinced me that UK and USA news were as bad as each other, and my memories of the last 20 years of UK news made it clear that UK news used to be much better, but followed the USA in the downwards incredulous populist spiral, leading to a lack of news.

How come Brits get skeptic TV, but we get Sunday morning church services or Tila Tequila??

hey, just remember we britons get songs of praise and all the same chat-shows as you do. it's not all good.

But we do get Takeshi's Castle, and for that I am forever grateful.

I did not know Dawkipoo was a dogperson.

Boooo

:pouts:

There are good news programs to be found on British TV. Just do not look for them on either BBC1 or ITV. ITV is by the far the worst. I have never forgiven them for putting news of David Beckham's broken toe as the top item.

Channel 4 news is good.

And Songs of Praise, which goes out on BBC1 Sunday teatime is good as it reminds me that we have really really stupid people in the UK.

We did get a couple of programs by Dawkins last year on BBC1 entitled 'The Root Of All Evil'. The programs were pretty good, but all the complaints afterwards were even better. All four of them...

Well Abbie, if you go here you can preorder the video which is out on the 25th. of August, I just treated myself :). Though I don't know if they will post to the states or what it will cost for postage (they do post to Europe) plus you need to note that they are region 2 DVDs.

http://www.play.com/Channel4/DVD/DVD/6-/Search.html?searchstring=dawkin…

I suppose I'd start worrying if I saw Dawkins on "Doctor Who" all the time, accompanied by Roxana (actress Lalla Ward aka Mrs. Richard Dawkins) and K-9 (voiced by John Leeson of course)!!!

That would be Romana. Call yourself a fan :P

Dear MartinM,

Yikes! I think the keyboard I was typing from was controlled by Davros himself. Yes, of course, I met Romana, the Doctor's fellow Time Lord.

Cheers,

John (aka "Jekyll and Hyde of Paleobiology" courtesy of Uncommon Dissent IDiot Borg drone DaveScot Springer)

Dear MartinM,

P. S. I met Lalla Ward at a booksigning here in New York City for her husband Richard Dawkins years ago. What I meant to say above was, "Yes of course, I meant Romana, the Doctor's fellow Time Lord".

Cheers,

John (aka "Jekyll and Hyde of Paleobiology" courtesy of Uncommon Dissent IDiot Borg drone DaveScot Springer)

Matt Penfold said:

And Songs of Praise, which goes out on BBC1 Sunday teatime is good as it reminds me that we have really really stupid people in the UK.

Aw, come on, Matt, without Songs of Praise there would be no SONGS OF PRAISE (WITH SUBTITLES).

I miss getting Time Team, which was briefly on the History International channel in the US. Channel Four's website has streaming video of it, but they don't stream outside the UK.

The problem is that channel 4 (who have commissioned his past work and I presume also this show) also air lots and lots and lots of utter utter shite, especially religious and anti-science programs.

They think it is all very risque but it's just pure bollocks.