There’s a new series on the TNT channel called “Perception”... http://www.tntdrama.com/series/perception/

Don’t get excited, it’s just another police drama that focuses on a consultant (like “Bones”, “Numb3rs”, yada yada yada), only in this case the consultant is a neuroscientist.  What?  Yes.  I can’t imagine how a neuroscientist can solve cases, but there you have it.  Another weird twist is that he hallucinates.  The episode I saw, he hallucinated a conversation with his apparently dead wife and another with Joan of Arc!  Even more unfortunately, he claims not to believe in God, BUT he got into a shouting match with his hallucinatory Maid of Orleans, during which he said how “sick and evil” God was for allowing teenagers to get brain tumors.

So what we have is not a real atheist, but a stereotypical television version of an atheist.  Why do they insist on doing this?  With more and more of us coming out of the closet, can’t they at least try to portray us fairly?

Sounds like a cheap character stereotype that will force the writers out of ideas after one season.

Unfortunately, T-A, it sounds as if they’ve run out of ideas before the first episode. 

Occam

Neuroscientist seems to be the hot tag these days. We have been touring colleges the past 4 years as several of my kids have applied and gone off to school. Although all of my kids are science majors the tours were generic liberal arts college tours and despite that almost a third of the student tour guides were “neuroscience” majors. It got to be a bit of an inside joke each time we started a tour and the guide would announce his/her name and major. It seemed a bit odd to me until I questioned one of the students about the seemingly disproportionate number of students studying this subject and she was surprisingly honest. She said “Well I’m pre-med but if I don’t get in at least I have a major that sounds cool”

Geez, whatever happened to the nice normal old-fashioned pre-med majors like chemistry, zoology, bactereology, physics, mathematics where they could actually get a job if they didn’t make it into med school? 

Occam