Nobody, but nobody, could resist linking to this. Why? Let me say only this: sex in an MRI machine.

Kinda like ’snakes on a plane’, only opposite. Btw, the comments are as entertaining as the article itself.

I’d hate to be a weather forecaster. You do an excellent job of understanding weather systems that are inherently unpredictable (chaotic, in fact) using physics that isn’t always very well understood, yet everybody thinks you’re rubbish because the view out of their window isn’t what you said.

Having said that, there are times when the whole thing is a foregone conclusion. The rules should be rewritten: chaotic, but cloudy during eclipses.

Today is Percival Lowell’s birthday, and Google have both changed their logo and created Google Mars. I had a poster of that same relief map on my wall during the Beagle and Rover landings a couple of years ago. There are pins showing the locations of Spirit and Opportunity, too.

Percival Lowell was an interesting guy. After Schiaparelli claimed to have discovered calani - translated into english as ‘canals’ but more accurately ‘channels’ - on the surface of Mars Lowell pushed for them as evidence of intelligent life on the planet, creating detailed maps, and even a globe, of their distribution.

Lowell’s theories were challenged as more powerful telescopes became available. Unfortunately, maps drawn by different astronomers failed to match, and many failed to see the canali at all. No less than the great (but ever so slightly crazy) Alfred Wallace debunked the claims. It was eventually demonstrated that they were an optical illusion.

Lowell spent much of the latter part of his life searching for Planet X, a world he predicted based upon variations from gravitational theory in the orbits of Uranus and Neptune. He never found anything, but Pluto was discovered 14 years after his death.

It’s ironic that both of Lowell’s major interests turned out to have merit, although his reasoning was flawed in both cases. Mars does indeed have a system of water channels, although not created by any intelligent beings and not visible from Earth-based telescopes. Pluto is not in fact Planet X, as the problems with Uranus and Neptune’s orbits were to do with incorrect values for their masses being used in the equations. Pluto is too small to affect the major planets to any detectable extent.

Lowell also did much for the promotion of astronomy, however, and it seems likely that he instigated much study of Mars. Although the idea of water on the planet was very unlikely, some questions remained until probes visited the planet in the 1960s. He is also credited with inspiring the search which lead to the discovery of Pluto, and he founded the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, which is still in use today.

I’m not at home right now, and don’t know whether I’m blowing this out of all proportion, but a story just appeared on BBC News saying that the UK science education is going to contain creationist teachings. Specifically, the OCR syllabus says:

Teachers are asked to “explain that the fossil record has been interpreted differently over time (e.g. creationist interpretation)”.

Um, why?

A spokesperson for the exam board said candidates needed to understand the social and historical context to scientific ideas both pre and post Darwin’s theory of evolution.

“Candidates are asked to discuss why the opponents of Darwinism thought the way they did and how scientific controversies can arise from different ways of interpreting empirical evidence,” he said.

“Creationism and ‘intelligent design’ are not regarded by OCR as scientific theories. They are beliefs that do not lie within scientific understanding.”

The National Curriculum, meanwhile, says the following:

Classes should also cover “ways in which scientific work may be affected by the context in which it takes place (for example, social, historical, moral, spiritual), and how these contexts may affect whether or not ideas are accepted.”

I can see their point, but the language seems a little lax. If this is just a matter of mentioning that before Darwin the favoured explanation was from design, but that the theory of evolution has rendered this null and void, then fair enough. But “the fossil record has been interpreted differently over time” leaves the door open for post-Darwin arguments, which have no evidence and should most definitely have no place in the science classroom.

“[H]ow scientific controversies can arise from different ways of interpreting empirical evidence” is more sinister. If this is a direct reference to creationism “vs” evolution, then I don’t like it at all. That particular debate is not a scientific controversy if you define this as meaning a disagreement within the scientific community. Science says evolution - full stop. It’s other people saying that creationism has any basis, and they do this entirely outside of the scientific method. Graduated evolution vs. punctuated equilibrium would be what I think of as a scientific controversy. Saying that fundamentalist religious claims contribute to ’scientific controversy’ is dangerously close to the “teach the controversy” argument used in the US to try to force intelligent design into the classroom. By that argument I could claim that gravity is caused by invisible monkeys holding us on the ground, argue with a scientist about it, then demand it be discussed in the classroom.

I don’t think I like this very much. I haven’t read OCR’s syllabus properly yet, but the BBC article suggests the language is weak. If so, it’s a foot in the door for anti-science campaigners.

There’s a fascinating Independent article today (best be quick before it becomes pay-only content) on the evolutionary causes of blonde hair. I always thought that the lighter hair colours would be something to do with uptake of sunlight, much like skin colour, but it seems that’s not the case. Researchers think that sexual selection in times of food scarcity resulted in blonde-hair genes spreading due to their increased appeal to men. I’m not sure whether this appeal is attributed to the colour itself, or just being different from others.

Hair’s interesting. The classic image of stereotypical male fantasy has long blonde hair. Why long? Steven Pinker, in How the Mind Works, says:

Luxuriant hair is always pleasing, possibly because it shows not only current health but a record of health in the years before. Malnutrition and disease weaken the hair as it grows from the scalp, leaving a fragile spot in the shaft. Long hair implies a long history of good health.

Explains why we all care so much about which shampoo we use
Happily, times change. I’ve generally always been more attracted to brunettes, and I wonder whether that’s because most of my relatives have darker hair colours. It would make sense that genes that control hair colour would generally co-exist with genes that cause attraction to said colour, right? Do people from predominantly blonde families prefer blondes?

The Independent article also contains this paragraph:

Experts said that as relations between men and women have evolved, men may have become more attracted by brains, represented in their psyche by brunettes, than the more physical charms of blond hair.

Look, I didn’t say it. I put that in mainly to annoy Lynsey

Not content with attacking evolution, creationists are now turning their attention to astronomy. Bad Astronomy has an excellent write-up, but I’ll paraphrase here.

The New York Times reports that a NASA public affairs official, appointed directly by the Bush administration, wrote the following:

In October, for example, George Deutsch, a presidential appointee in NASA headquarters, told a Web designer working for the agency to add the word “theory” after every mention of the Big Bang, according to an e-mail message from Mr. Deutsch that another NASA employee forwarded to The Times.

…

In October 2005, Mr. Deutsch sent an e-mail message to Flint Wild, a NASA contractor working on a set of Web presentations about Einstein for middle-school students. The message said the word “theory” needed to be added after every mention of the Big Bang.

The Big Bang is “not proven fact; it is opinion,” Mr. Deutsch wrote, adding, “It is not NASA’s place, nor should it be to make a declaration such as this about the existence of the universe that discounts intelligent design by a creator.”

It’s the same old nonsense about the definition of ‘theory’. And this is likely to cause uproar, because this is a religious agenda directly interfering with a scientific body. And, again, the main aim is to alter education.

The Big Bang¹ is also most definitely not “opinion”. There’s a very large body of evidence supporting it, and no other reasonable explanation. The only other contender, steady-state theory, has fallen by the wayside because predictions from BBT have been shown to be accurate.²

I suspect that creationists will have more of a struggle attacking astronomy, and that’s why it’s remained unmolested for so long. 1% of the static on an untuned television is directly caused by the afterglow of the Big Bang - the microwave background radiation originally attributed to pigeon droppings. The presence of this radiation was predicted thirty years before its discovery, and it’s the kind of accessible fact that newspapers love to print. Creationists may have a hard time getting around that with ‘god did it’. But then I continually underestimate their skill at manipulating language, so what do I know

1. or, as the more enlightened know it, the Horrendous Space Kablooie [↩]
2. sentence edited as it didn’t make sense [↩]

The second of three BBC2 documentaries on alternative medicines was shown this evening. Last week’s covered acupuncture, and I thought it had good and bad points. After describing the theories of acupuncturists, Professor Kathy Sykes¹ conducted a controlled experiment into the pain-relieving benefits of acupuncture, and found positive results. I was impressed with the methodology and the scientific attitude, but at the time I thought the show wasn’t long enough to adequately explore the topic. Acupuncture claims to be able to heal pretty much everything, after all. The logical extension would, it turns out, have overlapped with this week’s show.

The acupuncture episode ended up with an actual effect, but this time the topic was faith healing. This included mass religious healings (in Norwich!) as well as ’spiritual healers’ on the NHS. The first 10-15 minutes showed interviews with people who claimed to have been healed, as well as doctors who have seen beneficial effects. Prof. Sykes began to investigate the methods and theories behind the practice, but ran into something of a brick wall. The only explanations that could be given were of a mystical energy which were manipulated via unknown methods. She said that there is currently nothing in science to suggest this is true, but then headed to Arizona and a government-funded study which claims to have detected these energies. This was most entertaining.

She’s a physics professor, and her reaction to the gobbledygook she found was great to watch. She was told to place her finger onto a GDV camera (which I can’t find any references to outside of pseudoscientific energy fields) and details of the magnetic, electrical and ’scatter gas’ emissions from her finger were then shown and it was judged that these consisted of the aforementioned ‘energies’. Prof. Sykes was somewhat incredulous at this, but then she was shown a software program which mapped her ‘aura portion’. This, she discovered, was built in conjunction with faith-healers who can see the aura visibly. Outside of the laboratory, she admitted that this had actually angered her, and with good reason. You can’t claim to be scientific if you assume the effect under investigation exists.

Having established that there was nothing to the theories, Prof. Sykes then began explaining what could be causing the beneficial effects, and this was by far the most interesting part of the show. I knew something about the placebo effect, but not the power it’s been shown to have in experiments. I knew that students will get drunk on water if told it’s alcoholic, and there was a similar experiment shown involving caffeine. Further to that were studies demonstrating that surgical procedures in which nothing is performed (for example: the chest is opened, the motions are acted out, but that’s all) have the same effect as actual operations. Even more than that, sufferers of Parkinson’s disease were shown to experience actual physiological changes due to placebo alone, and it was suggested that this could be key to the whole process. Parkinson’s is related to a lack of dopamine, and this was released under placebo tablets and relieved symptoms. Dopamine, however, is released in humans and animals during periods of expectation, so it’s suggested that dopamine could, via methods currently unknown, be triggering other parts of the brain to react when placebo appears to help with other types of disease. This last theory hasn’t been shown to be true, however.

It turns out that the placebo effect has some fascinating depth: four placebo tablets will have more effect than two; some colours work better than others (no details, sadly); the ritual surrounding the placebo - the perceived complexity of the procedure, I’d guess - has a large effect. Most important, however, is the attitude of the practitioner. It seems that somebody who appears confident and assures you that their treatment will help will in themselves contribute significantly to the effect²

The whole benefit of faith-healing was put down to placebo, as you’d expect, but the show raises fascinating questions. To what extent can the placebo effect help? Is suffering to an extent illusory? Could the placebo effect make somebody feel better, if they are in fact still degrading? Also interesting, but not ethically-testable, is the negative placebo effect - could people get ill simply by being told that they will?

You have to wonder, mind, if there’s a case for not making this information widely known. If you want to harness it in medicine, surely the best technique is to implement it without telling people? Of course, maybe that’s already happening…It’s the only morally-justifiable conspiracy I’ve ever heard
Next week’s show confronts my favourite of all the alternative medicines: homeopathy. The craziness is actually quite inspired - I don’t think I could come up with anything as contrary to reality if you asked me! Although the final result is a given, it’ll be interesting to see the approach the show takes.

1. recognisable from BBC4’s Mind Games, which I didn’t realise for aaaaages [↩]
2. I knew somebody who suffered from glandular fever at secondary school, and afterwards began to exhibit the signs of M.E, which is apparently quite common. She put her recovery entirely down to a new doctor who assured her that he was going to ‘get her better’ - she vividly remembered the conversation. Not scientific, but interesting [↩]

BBC1 just now: “This is an amateur astrologer’s telescope”.

No. No it’s not. It’s not and it’s not and it’s not. It’s not. I’m extremely skeptical that astrologers have ever used telescopes.

Astrology = system of divination that uses the position of the planets, moon and sun in the twelve Zodiac positions at the moment of one’s birth to gain knowledge of the future; bullshit
Astronomy = the study of celestial bodies and the universe as a whole; wonderful

‘course, I can see how people mix up the words, which is probably what happened. There must be a clever way of remembering, like stationery / stationary’s ‘e for envelopes’.

Hmmm. All I can come up with is:

Astrology has ‘log’ in it. Logs are brown, and so is shit.

Well, it works for remembering which colour a plug’s live wire is…You think that’d make it into textbooks?

Update:

Other suggestions:

L for Lies (by Ed)
L for Libra

From Canada’s The Star, via Pharyngula:

There is a third possibility that comes to mind. ID could stand for Incomplete Design. What if the Designer is just beta-testing us to identify the bugs before rolling out Homo sapiens 2.0? Sure, we have lives that are nasty, brutish and short, but the designer doesn’t really care and we have to muddle through so He can come up with something better for the next roll-out. And we’re powerless to complain, because the Designer has a monopoly. I call this the “God as Microsoft” option.

Unfortunately, all the other deities are already being snarky about Life 2.0.

I tried to let this go, but it’s been gnawing at me all evening. Norm, in my opinion one of the clearest writers on the net, today linked in full agreement to the following paragraph:

So why can Professor Dawkins only see the bad in religion? Why is he incapable of making an objective, “scientific”, study of it, in all its diversity? Why is he unable to make distinctions between the many different forms of religious belief? I do not know the answer to these questions, but I do know this apostle of reason, when confronted with the word “faith”, suddenly becomes irrational, careless of truth, incapable of scholarly analysis. I really think it must be some sort of virus, and I wish my colleague a speedy recovery.

It’s from a theologian’s response to The Root of All Evil shows from the past couple of weeks. The rest of the article is your standard misunderstanding and illogical argument, and I think the above is, too. The above is the response I see most often, and it’s regularly put forward by people whose views I strongly agree with on other matters. I can’t help thinking that they’re missing the point, though.

It’s not that Dawkins sees only the bad in religion, it’s that the good is entirely indistinguishable from the bad. When religious texts are just as full of hate and barbarism as they are tolerance and peace, and the whole thing is on a foundation of no evidence, how are you going to tell some people that their behaviour is wrong, while simultaneously telling others that their behaviour is correct? Both good and bad come from the same doctrine, it’s just that the interpretations differ. That is the argument that religion overall is harmful.¹ It’s not being blinded to the good parts and only taking notice of the extremists, it’s pointing to the logically inconsistent nature of the whole institution.

The next argument would be that those who simply believe in a deity without subscribing to any particular religion are doing no harm, and that’s where the argument about stifling rational thought comes in. I’ve covered that already, and there’s no need to repeat it.

I’m not simply following Richard Dawkins wherever he leads, it’s that I’ve yet to see anybody counter the above argument. I think it’s possible that the above is too idealist for the world we actually live in, and that’s what Norm etc. mean when they object. I’ve seen neither Dawkins nor anybody else make any serious proposals for actually solving the problem, but I see no issue with pointing out the logical inconsistency.

It seems morally decent to stand up for those religious folk who do good deeds, but I don’t think it’s logically consistent to accept and encourage them, while saying extremism is clearly wrong. The challenge is to extract the good from religion and put it forward as a way of living with a decent moral foundation, and not something that just relies on the word of nonexistent deities.

1. edit: re-reading a day later, this isn’t quite what I meant [↩]

Tomorrow at 0900GMT NASA’s Stardust probe will, hopefully, drift slowly to ground on the salt flats of Utah, carrying with it a sample from Comet P/Wild 2. This sample was collected as the comet passed by at 6km/sec, or 6 times faster than a rifle bullet, and contains particles which should help considerably in the understanding of both comets and the formation of the solar system. The last time a probe like this returned the results weren’t so good. Solar wind atoms were recovered from the Genesis probe, however, so it wasn’t a total loss. The NASA team say they’ve tested the Stardust systems as best they can, but all they can do now is wait. Unlike Genesis, this probe is to land on the surface rather than requiring entertaining helicopter-based mid-air snatches. The probe’s current position can be seen here.

Assuming everything goes to plan, the sample returned will contain both samples from the comet as well as particles from the space around it. The latter will be in extremely small quantities, and due to the size being smaller than a grain of salt will be extremely difficult to find. It’s estimated that over 30,000 man hours will be needed to find these grains, but instead of employing ‘a small army of microscopists’ to analyse over 1.5 million images they’re turning to the internet community. Much like seti@home, volunteers can download a small program then analyse data as it’s released by NASA. Space.com says:

According to the Stardust@home plan, if two out of four volunteers claim to find a dust track the corresponding image will be sent to 100 more volunteers for verification. Should at least one-fifth of those reviewers affirm the find, the image will be kicked up to a team of UC Berkeley undergraduates trained to spot aerogel dust tracks.

Must sign up for that. Using this technique it’s anticipated that the project should be completed by the end of the year.

While we’re talking about all things astronomical, isn’t it fantastic that the Mars Rovers are still going, one martian and two terran years after landing? They were only meant to survive six months or so, but have coped through two martian winters, in the process finding conclusive evidence of a once-liquid surface, as well as vast amounts of geological data, the first dust devil ever seen on another planet, a martian eclipse, a a meteorite and even a bunny. Opportunity has driven just over 4 miles, while Spirit’s at 3.75. Amazing!

My personal hero today is Judge John Jules, who said:

We find that the secular purposes claimed by the board amount to a pretext for the board’s real purpose, which was to promote religion in the public school classroom

in a 139 page document ruling that intelligent design cannot be taught in US schools in Dover, Pennsylvania.

I’m only just back home and am haven’t had a chance to read up on it yet, but it made the front page of BBC News. Although I don’t like to see intelligent design getting exposure, I think that ignoring the issue hasn’t been very successful in preventing its spread.

The BBC does commit the classic media mistake of bending over backwards for impartiality by including a comment from a reader saying ‘both sides of the debate should be taught.’ Would such a quote be placed alongside an article about the flat-earth society? Of course not. The whole point of the article is that the notion has been judged to be religion in disguise - including such a quote is missing the point entirely, and gives credibility where none is due. It’s science, not politics, and public opinion has no bearing on scientific findings. I suppose it’s the classic question: is the point of journalism to present the arguments, or to expose the truth?

Damn, I always digress when talking about ID. Must get a grip on that.

I read about this a few days ago, but J-walk blog reminded me. The Kansas Board of Education, famously lobbied by Pastafarians, just voted to allow intelligent design to be taught in school science lessons. Crazy quote number one:

The new standards say high school students must understand major evolutionary concepts. But they also declare that the basic Darwinian theory that all life had a common origin and that natural chemical processes created the building blocks of life have been challenged in recent years by fossil evidence and molecular biology.

That’s total and utter bollocks¹, but when you’re a republican Christian you don’t let little things like the truth get in the way of spreading the doctrine. Then, though, comes this:

In addition, the board rewrote the definition of science, so that it is no longer limited to the search for natural explanations of phenomena.

Oh, ok. I can’t seem to find the new definition, sadly. What could it now possibly mean? The search for explanation in any form? Should intelligent falling be in the curriculum? Why the hell not?

I like it when people play with words and think they’re winning the argument. A common creationist strategy is to attack the definition of scientific terms. Aside from being entirely spurious, it’s not even a proper logical technique. If you claim that the word ‘cat’ in fact derives from the Latin for ‘giant space monkey’, it doesn’t stop the fact that cats exist. The concept of a cat is not negated by manipulating the language that refers to it.

I know I’m extremely anti-religion, but this is an entirely separate issue and mustn’t be confused with atheism. It’s the subversion of education, and it affects everybody. It’s simply unacceptable for anything other than the truth to be taught in schools. The ridiculous thing is that science and religion are not mutually exclusive. It is entirely reasonable for you to decide that an all-powerful being created the universe, given that nobody has any clue. It’s as likely we’re all grains in an elf’s teapot, but that’s beside the point. The proviso is that you revise your opinions as evidence comes in. It was through this process that the world wrenched itself into the modern era, and millions of people were saved by medical advances, and standards of life improved immeasurably for billions. Education should be about provable reality², not the world as some people would like it to be.

If cigarette companies lobbied education boards to stop teaching children that smoking was bad for them, on the basis that there are alternative viewpoints, would that be reasonable? How can people be expected to survive in a logical world if their education has failed them? If evolution doesn’t happen, why should we bother worrying about bird flu? The virus doesn’t evolve through mutation, so how can it pass to humans? How can it be ok to teach information that is entirely untrue? This isn’t a a matter of interpretation - “Darwinian theory…[has] been challened…by fossil evidence and molecular biology” is simply not the case, unless by ‘challenge’ you mean ’somebody said it wasn’t true’. How can the world continue to improve if knowledge is stifled? It’s dangerous and ridiculous, and needs to be fixed.

People will say that this is Kansas, an incredibly conservative ultra-religious state in the heart of the US, so of course this kind of thing is going to happen. Most parents there teach their children creationism anyway, surely? And those who disagree can just tell their children the truth, right? No, for three reasons. First of all, parents don’t necessarily understand the issues. If one person is sent to school under the impression that they’re learning the truth, and nobody tells them different because they simply don’t know, that person has been failed. Secondly, education is there to teach the truth, and it’s morally wrong for that not to happen. Thirdly, this is a victory for creationists, and they can use it as a launching post. Mentioning that what you’re lobbying for is now the education policy for an entire state will get the attention of many people, and if they’re not aware of the issues at stake they will take it seriously.

If churches are allowed to fund UK schools and said schools are allowed to have more say over their curriculum, as is suggested in the new education reforms, this could easily spread to individual schools over here. Religious belief is an incredibly powerful motivator, and those who would subvert education will not stop at one victory, or one country. I think that we as reasonable people have to fight this, and should not wait for the battle to come to us.

How can we do this? Explain the scientific method to those who don’t understand science, and think it’s a closed-minded group of nay-sayers out of touch with the real world. Promote the flying spaghetti monster. Write letters to newspapers who, in a desperate need to ‘give both sides of the story’, present intelligent design as the underdog against the big mean world of science. We can fight our corner in small chunks, and that should, eventually, have an effect.

This turned out to be longer than I’d anticipated, and thanks for reading. As you may have guessed, it’s something I feel very strongly about! For more information, Pharyngula and The Panda’s Thumb are excellent places to start.

1. don’t take my word for it, see the links at the end for sites devoted to proving my ever-so-eloquent assertion [↩]
2. provable, in this sense, meaning ‘all evidence points towards this being the case’, which is as close as science can come to being certain [↩]

I’ve spent the last hour reading SuperMemo’s fascinating article on sleep. I can’t vouch for the quality of the scientific references, but the information certainly seemed self-consistent and reasonable. In it the author identifies two factors which cause sleepiness:

• circadian component - sleepiness comes back to us in cycles which are usually about one day long
• homeostatic component - sleepiness increases with the length of time we stay awake

and claims that sleep is possible only when the ‘peaks’ of each rhythm coincide. High homeostatic / low circadian tiredness results in tossing and turning, with a high body temperature and your thoughts racing. The opposite is evidenced by a total lack of energy and willpower, with sleep not helping even if manageable.

The article states as fact that the function of sleep is for processing of information without external stimuli, rather than rest. Indeed, it claims that the physical energy gained by sleeping is comparable to that gained by eating an apple. Studies have apparently shown conclusively that sleep deprivation has been causally linked with memory retention.

Ok, so far, so obvious. What’s most interesting are the inherent problems with the sleep patterns of the majority of people. Key to this is that the circadian rhythm has been shown, in the majority of cases, to be 24.5 - 25.5 hours long. The reason for this isn’t obvious, but is likely to be the evolutionary result of millions of years of seasonal daylight variations. Whatever the cause, it’s been demonstrated to be the case. The advent of artificial light and the move to strict 24-hour days throws this system out of whack. Hence 50% of adults have trouble sleeping and getting up on time.

The article readily admits there’s no easy solution to this problem. There is a way to fix sleep patterns, but fitting it in with real-world interactions isn’t easy for the majority of people. The recommendation is, quite simply: go to bed when you feel you’ll fall asleep within 20mins, and wake naturally. This is called ‘free-running sleep’. Clearly, this will cause your waking hours to wander. The author debunks various myths that counter this idea: it’s entirely possible to sleep when the sun is up, if the body is actually tired; the body will not ‘ask for’ more sleep than necessary (as it will with food) if it gets the chance, although this may happen in the initial stages of adjustment; it’s not healthy to have a regular rhythm if you’re fighting the inherent rhythms of the body¹.

The article arouses suspicions on occasion, quoting the ‘half-life of caffeine’ for example, and I’d like to read more on the subject, but it’s a fascinating idea. I highly recommend reading the entire thing - if you do, please let me know what you think.

It would be terribly difficult to adapt such a system - I’m not sure how I’d cancel a lunch date upon realising I’ll be asleep - but it’s very tempting to try out. Maybe I could give it a go during November while I’m writing my novel.

1. ugh, this sounds hokey, doesn’t it [↩]

It’s late, but before you go to bed you should really look at pics 1,2,6 and 7 from this series. Amazing stuff.

Then, if you feel the need for electric guitars, dwarves and a heroic wise-man, this is the link for you.