I wrote this about a month ago, but when I hit the Publish button I forgot to take the tick off Draft. As a result it's been sat there tantalisingly out of reach for you all, if you can really be tantalised by something you don't know isn't there.

First off, the Great Tantra Challenge. Nothing to do with Sting, this was the showdown between magic and rationality. In the blue corner, barking mad tantric magician Surinder Sharma. In the red, Sanal Edamaruku, President of Rationalist International and my personal hero for the day [in fact, my personal hero for March 20th - Ed].

The challenge was for Sharma to kill Edamaruku with tantric black magic. In India as in Glastonbury and Totnes, self-proclaimed magicians earn a good living from the fears and desires of the credulous, and Edamaruku wanted to show one up on TV across India.

It's a fascinating tale, well worth the reading, but Edamaruku suffered no ill effects (obviously), and the world is now fractionally less gullible than it was. Well done.

Ben Goldacre of Bad Science has been at it as well. He linked to this video explaining the physics behind homeopathy. When I say explaining, what I mean is saying things like "Well, you know that Energy is equal to mass times the speed of light. But as a friend explained to me, the whole mass of the universe could actually be fitted into a space the size of a bowling ball, so that equation actually reduces to Energy is equal to the speed of light."

I paraphrase. I have to, because the video has been taken down. Presumably it was just too embarrassing. So, Goldacre and Edamaraku. Who said there were no more heroes any more?

And now the fuckers are gonna get explained. It's the worst thing we could possibly do to them, and the best thing we could possibly do for everyone else.

But what's that, in the distance? It's the sound of whining. Once you've taken away religion, magic, quack science, what's left? What is there that makes life worth living?

Well, dog robots, obviously. Thanks to Zooillogix, for staying on top of this stuff so I don't have to.

[And because you're only getting this now, it gives me the chance to add in Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss in conversation].