Friday 4 September 2009

A Full Deck of Simpsonised Skeptics

It was awfully nice of so many of you to stop by my blog to read Simpsons Top Trumps: Skeptics Edition.

My wife informs me however that you were all just patronising me and that I really shouldn’t be humoured, as it just encourages me to repeat my childish behaviour. Anyway, if I’d have known I was going to get so much traffic, I might have actually done a bit of qu
ality control to try and weed out a few of my more glaring spelling mistakes and deviations from the English Language in the initial post.

So this time around I have taken a bit more time. I’ve fannied around in Photoshop a lot more to try and improve on the limited configurability offered by the Simpsonizer machine, and I’ve got the wife to proof read the cards. Feel free to point and laugh at her if there are any spelling mistakes left, she’ll be delighted.

In the event that there is still an interest in viewing some more Simpsonised skeptics now that I have lost the element of originality, here's the second batch to make up the full deck of 52 cards ...


Notes: Thanks for the many suggestions I received for whom to do in this set, and special thanks to Adam Savage who was sad enough to actually email me a list of suggestions. You will notice that I have only included living skeptics, otherwise there are a lot of additional great names I would have had to include and I was already struggling to whittle the list down to a manageable size. Therefore apologies to all those great skeptics I have missed out, I shan't name you for fear of missing some more out again and getting stuck in an infinite loop of apologies. I will however be working on another post to pay homage to the skeptics who have shuffled off this mortal coil.

Finally

They do say the imitation is the greatest form of flattery so I was tres chuffed to read these 2 recent blog posts:

1. Dale Williams posted my very own Simposinized Top Trump card in lieu of my modesty preventing me from simpsonising myself. I was planning to include it in the above list, but there were no skeptics I was willing to substitute. Thanks Dale.

2. Some of you may remember that back in June, following the initial hearing in the Simon Singh versus BCA trial, I posted my pythonised version of the court transcript. I also followed this post up with a pythonised update to the subsequent quacklash. I had intended to post a 3rd update on the unfolding story of Simon Singh versus the BCA using the “Black Knight” sketch from the Holy Grail. I played around with it for a while but just couldn’t make it fit so I abandoned it. Then I noticed that Alice Sheppard (AKA PenguinGalaxy) had done an absolutely superb job of it here.



As usual thoughts, suggestions, spelling corrections, remarks and general abuse are all most welcome in the comments section

13 comments:

Crispian Jago said...

Just been reliably informed that Hitchens has quit smoking. Well I'm not changing his card. He can bloody well start smoking again to fit in with my caricature of him.

So save your comments on the subject. Unless you are the man himself

warren said...

I want to print these out and read Tarot with them.

Lindsay said...

Can these be purchased? My husband absolutely NEEDS these to be under the Christmas Tree this year. Please contact me if it's possible.

Alice said...

Friends, skeptics, rationalists - shouldn't we be putting together a website called Python Plagiarising for Singh? Or even a book - I bet it'd sell . . .

Glad you enjoyed the Back Knight - I certainly couldn't have done that for Simon Singh, but fortunately another Simon was around!

Unknown said...

dark text on a dark background? I'm skeptical that people can read this.

Anonymous said...

No offense to Dave, but I'm surprised to see he got a card ahead of Kylie (Podblack).

These are all absolutely brilliant though. Well done mate.

Tash said...

Loving Derren Brown's one :-)

Michael Kingsford Gray said...

Some of these are alarmingly accurate!
You might wish to sell your services to the local Coppers, in place of their (in comparison) pathetic Identikit renderings!
Did you have an internal struggle with your conscience choosing to include Lisa Simpson?
After all, the actress providing her voice is the antithesis of a skeptic: a totally indoctrinated and dangerous loon of the Scientologist' ilk.

Crispian Jago said...

Michael

The actress who plays Bart, Nancy Cartwright, seems to be a first rate loon, and has donated shed loads of cash to the Church of Scientology. I also looked up Yeardley Smith (Lisa Simpson) but found no evidence of wooery. If you know of some that I couldn't find, point me in the right direction.

Crispian Jago said...

Bastard Sheep,

Yeah appologies to Kylie Sturgess she should really have been included. I also wanted to include the other SkepChicks, and SGU & Skeptic Zone hosts I missed out. However, I choose Dave because I thought he'd make a more distinctive Simposon caricature and so I could take the piss out of his Big Pharma impressions and extensive blog advertising

Svetlana Pertsovich said...

http://www.workground.net/admin/spaw/img_popup.php?img_url=/gallery/banksy/56.jpg

By the way, it is famous and elusive gfaffity-artist Banksy ;)

Dave The Happy Singer said...

I might even blog about this, you know...

Michael Rose said...

http://twitter.com/dandennett