[ExI] Monty Python and the Holy Grail

[Lee Corbin]

For those who aren't familiar with the movie (probably rather
few here), these references from Anne and  Kevin aren't
as obscure as they might seem at first:

> >  For all I know, it would.  But you seem to be viewing
> > reality from an extremely abstractified perspective, which
> > is all well and good if you're trying to predict the air-speed
> > velocity of an unladen swallow, but rather facile as far as
> > dealing with actual people.  
> 
> Is that an African or a European swallow?

I suspect that someone could easily write an English major's
senior thesis on the clash between science on the one hand
and "ancient ways" on the other in this movie. King Arthur
was the embodiment of everything that was traditional, and
he was over and over again confronted with the new-fangled
stuff called "science" that he had no use for.  

Yet at a couple of key junctures, he gives into practicality, 
and fights fire with fire, as in when he uses last phrase above,
which saves him from the Gorge of Eternal Peril. 

There are many truly hilarious scenes ridiculing the pre-
scientific viewpoint, and yet, I guess, also a number of
others commenting rather ironically on the occasional
over-use of abstraction/jargon in science.

Lee