"We Broke a Crash Test Dummy! That's a Red Letter Day!"

Man, I love Mythbusters. Those guys have the world's coolest job. Well, OK, it's not a job I'd want, because I'm mechanically inept, and a complete weenie to boot, but, man, it's fun to watch. They fire chickens out of canons! They trash cop cars by remote control! They put tinfoil in the microwave! And they're clearly having such a ball doing it that it's impossible not to get caught up in the enthusiasm.

Plus, Adam feels almost eerily like he might have been assembled somehow from a composite of a bunch of people I went to college with, and their folklorist has the same set of Star Trek beanie critters as I do sitting on her shelves.

It's also great to see a show on TV that takes a scientific, skeptical, hands-on approach to folklore, urban myths, "news of the weird" and, you know, that stuff that "everybody knows." Especially when there are so many shows that are cheerfully willing to present any old uncorroborated bullshit as if it were self-evident fact. There was, in fact, an excellent interview with these guys in the most recent issue of Skeptic magazine, which is what led to me tracking down the DVDs in the first place. Definitely recommended, both the magazine and the DVDs, though the latter are kind of hard to find. I had to order them through The Discovery Channel Store.