pharyngula

That gadfly of the science communication world, Randy Olson, has a new movie out, Sizzle: A Global Warming Comedy, and many bloggers all over the place are putting up their reviews today. I tried something a little different. The other day, I invited a group of people from Morris, Minnesota to…

Nick Matzke, one of the world's leading experts in detecting absurdities in creationist texts, has discovered a real howler from Casey Luskin. Luskin is complaining that he, Junior Woodchuck lawyer for an intellectually bankrupt propaganda mill, can't find the wrist bones in Tiktaalik when Neil…

So that's what I am now? The Minnesota Independent has an interview. It probably won't soothe the inflamed mob.

So I have this new policy of posting email that threatens violence with full identifying information. I may have to retract that, since it looks like it's getting abused. The idea was that I would have a public record of the threat, and that the smart people commenting here would be able to do a…

Yeesh, not only am I busy at this meeting, but two factors are conspiring to keep me away from the web. The internet service in this hotel is abominable — I've tried both the wireless and wired access, and it's like trying to read the 21st century internet over a 300 baud modem. I tried to edit a…

Please STOP SENDING EMAIL TO THESE INDIVIDUALS. There are too many of you, the over-reaction is excessive, and you are not doing our reputation any favor. See this message for more. Some of you may have noticed the little promise over in the left sidebar. I reserve the right to publicly post, with…

I'm going to be tied up in work and meetings most of today, yet there are all these new people still flooding the site, begging for entertainment and objects to rage against. Since many of them can't seem to get beyond the first article at the top of the page, and since, judging by my most recent…

Tune in to Atheists Talk radio this morning at 9am Central — the ever-entertaining Robert Price will be on to talk about pop mysticism. If you will it, it will be so.

Whoa. We had a long evening of it here at the Atlanta Pharyngufest — we closed the place down at almost 2am, and these ferocious Southern skeptics were still arguing philosophy and religion as I was staggering away (thanks to Pradeep Satyaprakash for the ride home!). They win. Here's a quick pan of…

By their actions you will know them. We have had a number of raving angry Catholics in various threads here…or have we? I've had a moment to clean up a few threads and post some of the stuff that was held in comment moderation, and discovered that Naz, k8, promo, baker, PZ is a fool, Burns,…

This should enliven your morning: Abigail Smith and I did a Bloggingheads diavlog the other day, and now you can watch us chatter away. I know you've all been wondering what Abbie looks like in person. (One odd thing about recording these, though: we are conversing over the phone, but we don't…

I have arrived at the airport to discover that my flight to Atlanta has been cancelled, and I've been rescheduled to a later flight. No big deal, except that now I'm stuck in an airport for five hours, and I'm now scheduled to arrive in Atlanta at 5pm. This means I will almost certainly be late for…

I'm expecting a busy, busy day tomorrow — I have to get up painfully early to drive to Minneapolis and fly off to Atlanta. Y'all remember we've got a Pharyngufest at Manuel's at 6, and I expect everyone to come on down and say hello. I am not looking forward to another run through TSA. There may…

You asked for it, I deliver. Here's a good chunk of the opposition email that I've received in the last two days; not quite all of it, though, since I got bored and a lot of it has just been going straight into the trash. I've tried to cut out most of the identifying names and so forth, but if I…

The Catholic League has issued another press release. In addition to disparaging the theory of evolution as the "King Kong Theory of Creation" (which is a bit peculiar, since Catholicism does not take a stand against evolution), he accuses me and my ilk (that's you, fair readers) of hysteria while…

These campus freethought groups are growing fast, and the SSA is a national umbrella organization that advises many students — it's a great cause. They are trying to raise money to contribute towards more student support — help 'em out!

Aaargh, you keep filling up threads! I'm closing this one, you can continue the discussion here, if necessary.

Sepioteuthis sepioidea Figure from Cephalopods: A World Guide (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Mark Norman.

While everyone here is distracted by the debate over whether a cracker is tasteless bread dough or a sacred slice of man/god meat, the right-wing source of outrage du jour is a widely published photograph of an Iranian missile test in which one of the missiles was clearly photoshopped into the…

One of the best things about following the antics of creationists is that it gives you a better appreciation of the creative power of the human mind…which isn't anywhere near as powerful as reality. Here's another example of creationist rationalization that doesn't hold up well under even casual…

I was interviewed on The Inner Side last night — if you live in Houston, you may have already heard it. If not, you can get the mp3 at that link.

In a great big ugly oops, the A/V geeks at TAM6 were not true geeks in that they screwed up and lost all the audio of an entire day's worth of recordings at the meeting. This is bad, because it means all the clever slams and insults given to Phil Plait will not be passed down to posterity. If you'…

So far today, I have received 39 pieces of personal hate mail of varying degrees of literacy, all because I was rude to a cracker. Four of them have included death threats, a personal one day record. Thirty-four of them have demanded that I be fired. Twenty-five of them have told me to desecrate a…

Because performance all over scienceblogs starts to suffer when a comment thread gets too long, I'm closing the thread in which I grievously insult a cracker…but if you must, you can continue here.

Greg Laden has created a festival of LOLcats for the latest edition of the Tangled Bank. Should I be appalled or amused? Science is serious business! We never laugh, we're all supposed to be like Mr Spock!

The Catholic League is preparing a stake for me. They're going to go straight for the jugular and threaten my job — notice how they repeat that you can access my post from my faculty page, nicely avoiding the fact that the post they find so offensive is not hosted on any university server, and that…

There is a new social network site for godless folk, called Atheist Nexus. Good idea, except that there may be a little problem. A few doubting atheists (how could they possibly be suspicious?) investigated the site before signing up, and discovered some discrepencies. The fax number and mail…

This is horrible news. Some faction of the religious right has called for a boycott of McDonald's fast-food — because they were a sponsor of the 2007 San Francisco gay pride parade. They claim it's not about hiring homosexuals, or allowing homosexuals to eat at McDonald's, or about how homosexual…

Guess who's next in line to get a certain famous fossil? The Pacific Science Center will be exhibiting Lucy between October and March. Even if I can't arrange it, I expect you lucky Pacific Northwest residents to all make the pilgrimage.

For another example of the religious expressing absurd beliefs, you must listen to this conversation between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox — it's astonishing. Dawkins just probes with a few pointed questions, and Lennox, a theologian, babbles on and on and on, asserting the most amazing things.…