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Anti-Semitism Entertainment/culture Evolution History Holocaust Intelligent design/creationism Movies Politics Pseudoscience Religion Science Skepticism/critical thinking

The fall of Ben Stein

You know, even though I know he’s been a Republican talker for a long time, that he worked for the Nixon administration as a speechwriter and lawyer, I’ve always kind of liked Ben Stein. My wife and I used to like to watch Win Ben Stein’s Money, and he was quite amusing as the principal […]

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Entertainment/culture Movies Science fiction/fantasy

Greatest. Movie. Ever.

While trying to avoid working on my grant yesterday, I was idly flipping channels. I had planned on killing a few minutes while psyching myself up to go back into the Bat Cave that is my office, ignoring a gloriously perfect sunny day with temperatures in the low 80s, to do battle with the grant […]

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Entertainment/culture Humor Movies

Saturday morning YouTube

Time to take a break from science and medicine again. The Rambo movies happen to be a guilty pleasure of mine. Little did I know that there was a Turkish knockoff of the character: I particularly love the rocket launchers in this one. Their “action” has to be seen to be believed.

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Entertainment/culture History Humor Movies Popular culture

Casual racism in the 1930s

After having been pointed yesterday to a video of an old Betty Boop short that strongly suggests that Boop may have been a homeopath, I couldn’t resist clicking on the links to a couple of other old Betty Boop cartoons. One of them reminded me of just how different our culture was 72 years ago […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Entertainment/culture History Humor Medicine Movies Popular culture Quackery

Betty Boop: Homeopath

While reading through a mailing list I belong to, I came across a link that demonstrates that alternative medicine has been ingrained in popular culture since at least the 1920’s and 1930’s. Indeed, I never realized that that icon of flappers, Betty Boop, practiced homeopathy. Don’t believe me? Well, here’s incontrovertible evidence in the form […]