Terry Jones has died. His achievements as a Monty Python, and as a writer, director, and actor in other realms, are well and duly celebrated. He was a very nice and good person. And rather funny. We were lucky to have collaborated with him on some small things. Here are two performances of bad poetry […]
Tag: Monty Python
Recent Progress in ‘Monty Python’ studies
Monty Python has not, repeat not, been ignored by academia. Here are links to but a few of the scholarly studies which look at, examine, discuss, evaluate, appraise, assess, analyse and otherwise probe the Monty Python oeuvre, and its wider, and narrower, implications, entailments, illations, connotations, inferences, and ramifications. ● Monty Python and the Mathnavi: […]
‘Silly Walk’ studies (#2)
The Movement Lab at Ohio State University, US, is not the only academic institution to have experimentally evaluated ‘Silly Walks’ (see Part 1 of this series). On the other side of the Atlantic at the Department of Motion Science, University of Muenster, Germany, researchers Sook-Yee Chong, Heiko Wagner and Arne Wul have also performed a study. […]
‘Silly Walk’ studies (#1)
“Humans have around 50 muscles in each leg, which are arranged in a way that allows us to move in numerous ways. The flexibility of movement in human legs is expressed, for instance, through the different styles of dance that have existed throughout the ages and humorously through TV sketches such as ‘The Ministry of […]
Contemplating death — not so bad after all
Some might jump to the conclusion that ruminating about death and destruction is a major downer – with potentially deleterious consequences for individuals and society at large. But a joint US/Dutch research team have published findings which shine a positive beam of light into this potentially murky area. With the sombre implications of Terror Management […]
Joking about accountants – a netnographical approach
Unfairly or not, some have characterised the rôle of accountants in popular culture as dull and boring. And the bottom line is that there is a plentiful stock of jokes about them. But a provisional audit of the scholarly literature reveals that researchers been extremely economical in accruing an inventory of accountancy-humour papers. In fact, […]
Improbable TV: “The Tay Bridge Disaster” in Ukrainian
Here’s a new episode — #McG-002, “”The Tay Bridge Disaster” with Dr. Elena Bodnar — of the Improbable Research TV series. It’s the 2nd of many episodes featuring the bad poetry of William Topaz McGonagall. William Topaz McGonagall, who died in 1902, is widely regarded as the worst poet ever to write in the English language. The […]