Warning: This logo does not always mean skepticism is ahead.

I don’t like Showtime very much.  It’s a personal thing… I used to work for them, well I worked for a company that was partnered with them, the whole thing collapsed on us and now I find it very easy to see what’s bad about the company’s programming.  Here’s my typical line about a Showtime program: “I do something bad.  But I do it for good reasons.”  Hey look!  It’s “Weeds!”  Sure, Nancy sells pot, but she does it because her family needs it!  Look!  It’s “Californication!”  And Hank may be a real womanizer, but don’t you see how much he loves his daughter?  And hey!  “Dexter!”  He may be a serial killer, but he only kills bad people.  “Nurse Jackie!”  It’s time to flip the formula and make it about a person who’s kind of bad, but she’s doing something good!  How original.  But anyway, off that tangent – the one show on Showtime that I have always been able to unambiguously support is Penn and Teller’s show, “Bullshit.”  For eight years, these guys have been managing to put out a show that, when it talks about a subject with scientifically verifiable information, takes a hard-core skeptical view, and does it in an entertaining fashion.

And now that I’ve praised them a little… I have to make a complaint.  I recently watched the first two episodes of this new season (their eighth) and I really thought the arguments they were using were pretty weak.  … continue reading this entry.