the movie in which there is supposedly no US audience interest

You may recall a few months ago there was a bit of a flap regarding the movie Creation, which concerns itself with Charles Darwin's dilemma over the implications of his discovery of the principle of evolution by natural selection.

Despite respected leads Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connelly, despite picking up accolades at various festivals, and despite the obvious topicality of its subject matter, the movie had significant difficulties finding a US distributor. Could this be because potential distributors were worried (justifiably or not) about the possibility of a major kerfuffle from religious extremists? Or could it be, as the faux-Xtian right maintained, because no one in their right minds in this country would want to go see a boring biopic about a long-dead scientist?

Well, this morning, just after 9.00, I received from the NYC branch of the Center for Inquiry an RSVP e-mail invite to a preview screening of the movie on Monday evening. It took me a few minutes to consult with Pam as to whether we'd both like to go, but I wrote back fairly quickly with my response: yes, we'd like a couple of tickets, oh yes, pretty please, yes we definitely would, you bet.

We were too late: already, after a matter of minutes on a Saturday morning, all the tickets had been snaffled.

Some lack of interest, eh?

Bogus Science reviewed again . . .

. . . and this time by Ken MacLeod, no less, on his blog The Early Days of a Better Nation. Here are some extracts:

John Grant's Bogus Science gives much of the genuine pleasure I used to get from Fortean Times, with a far more bracing scepticism, and a harder line on the damage done by indulging credulity. [. . .]

Grant's book ranges widely, from ancient and modern geocentrists and flat-earthers to inventors of perpetual motion machines, promoters of zero point energy, discoverers of Atlantis [. . .] and hunters of Bigfoot [. . .], taking in a lot more along the way. There's something very satisfying in seeing that every design for a perpetual motion machine (weights! magnets! no, wait, water . . .) that I ever scribbled on the back of a physics jotter in high school was anticipated centuries earlier by people much cleverer than myself.

[. . .] Beautifully produced, endlessly entertaining and highly recommended.

Cockahoop, moi?