Did anyone else see the piece on Brain Gym on last night's Newsnight?

I'd be interested in opinions in the plundering of Ben Goldacre's Bad Science columns that was last night's Newsnight piece on Brain Gym [if you're quick you may get to view the video piece].

My sense is that what Brain Gym does (e.g. the actions it gets children to do) are not in themselves unhelpful. The relaxation, the exercise, the physical co-ordination issues it encourages: all in themselves seem fine. They help focus, distract those from other problems or just plain allow some space for de-stressing so that actual physical, scientifically measurable things can happen which DO help the body.

Where my problem does come is in how much can be claimed for it on an inherantly scientific basis: brain buttons etc do not to me suggested a particularly evidence-based scientific analysis of how the body and brain work.

"Today is a lovely day"...: Mark Everett and parallel worlds

Thanks to the wonders of - say it quietly - a moderately well functioning Freeview box, we finally caught up with the absolute gem "Parallel Worlds, parallel lives" - a BBC4 programme on Mark Everett of the Eels and his father, Hugh Everett III, who developed the parallel world theory. As a topic that I love in Science Fiction, and as a musician I have several albums by, this combined the best of all worlds in one show.

Nicely reviewed by doyen Nancy, it was a really charming piece of work. It even drew Cloud away from resolving problems with his laptop for the hour (he spent the first 30 mins in the doorway hovering to leave before saying "fuck it" and sitting down). It was also very watchable by non-scientists. I certainly felt much better informed about physics and quantum mechanics by the end, and that is no mean feat!

If you get chance to see it on a repeat, do watch it.

Wongablog shoots and scores against a particularly annoying fish in a barrel

It's easy to do, but it is an incredibly annoying fish.