This one's been floating around the intertubes, at least those parts of the intertubes I frequent, for several days now at least. But it's so good that I just can't resist posting it myself.
I had no idea John Cleese had a video podcast...
More like this
So I've been bumping into this idea on several blogs (idea? or is it a cult? ... I refuse to call it a meme, sorry Richard). I have some trouble understanding what it all means. Is it hard, as in hard core?
To help us understand the meaning of all this rhetoric, they (a bunch of hard core German…
Well, February has come and gone, Black History Month is over for another year, and we've had the first round of the Diversity in Science carnival. I am sure some of you who blog may have thought about contributing to this carnival but didn't for a variety of reasons. Maybe, like me, you had…
I watched the translucent white balloon, perhaps escaped from some baby shower or wedding, float against the clear blue sky. If it had been a cloudy day, I might not even have noticed it up there. It was one of those clear Colorado days, with nothing to stop the incessant waves of heat, pouring…
The title pretty much says it all.
One of the reasons I wanted to get the Ten Years Before the Blog series done was that I'm incredibly burned out on everything right now, and I need to step away from the Internet for a while. There are too many things that aren't getting done, and I just can't…
just after the gene for squandering work time reading blogs...................
"Right next to the gene that makes you go to see Nicholas Cage movies - so that's another mystery explained."
That made it worthwhile.
I understand now or is that my genes talking?
Right next to the gene that makes you remember a multitude of Monty Python sketches like the scene in "The meaning of Life" where the administrator Michael Palin walks into the birthing room and says; ahhh, I see you are using the machine the goes PING!
You must know about all his training videos?
http://www.johncleesetraining.com/index.html
I especially remember "who sold you this, then: from the 70's.
Around 1992, a woman in my lab and I were kidding each other and she told me I was being illogical; I replied that she cannot know about logic since the gene for it is located on the Y chromosome. Without missing a beat she retorted (yeah, it's right next to the Jerk gene!"
A couple years later Nature (in jest) asked readers to submit locations of genes on the Y-chromosome. They then published a map identifying genes such as the shopping-suppressor. Of course, that led to hate mail.
I know it was tongue-in-cheek, but it really does bother me that Cleese's character confuses causal determinism with genetic determinism. It also bothers me that he asserts that QM has done away with causal determinism.
It was still cute, though, and as a Python fan, I can forgive these annoyances.
Ah, that is a hoot. Thanks for posting it--I hadn't seen it before.
Amazing video! Thanks for posting it! I will subtitle it to post on my blog too!