pharyngula

Ladies, there are people who want your menstrual blood. It contains stromal cells, which are a multipotent adult-stem-cell-like population that might be a useful source of fairly plastic, proliferative cells. This distant possibility has prompted one company, C'Elle, to offer to collect, test,…

I was shocked to open Current Biology and find the leading news article was titled "Call to atheists," and it was actually a pleasantly neutral article that simply reported on Dawkins' efforts to organize atheists and promote a positive view of secularism — I guess I'm simply so used to so many…

It's puzzling: he's a rich and successful engineer, but I don't see any particular virtue to his participation at SfN, and judging by these remarks, he just exposed himself for an ignoramus. During the time Andrew S. Grove spent at Intel, the computer chip company he co-founded, the number of…

Here's a cool idea: pick a color palette for your website by sampling photomicrographs. There are some nice color samples there; I think I'd go with something along the lines of a DIC image of a zebrafish embryo, which would have lots of blues, a few weakly saturated yellows, and an occasional…

What do you do when a child is born with ischiopagus? Sell her to the circus? Turn her into an object of religious veneration? Try surgery to correct the condition as much as possible? This little girl born with six legs and two arms had the option of all three; she's currently being…

This is a darned good talk that addresses a lot of the bogus arguments against The God Delusion…and it's pretty darned funny, too. Watch the whole thing. He's very strident, shrill, and ranty. Right.

Iconoclasts- Enlightenment Posted 47 Minutes Ago Comedian/actor Mike Myers talks about how enlightenment actually means "lightening up" when he sits down for a one-on-one conversation with philosopher Deepak Chopra in this clip from the next episode of Iconoclasts. Airs Thursday, November 8th @…

Perhaps you haven't noticed, but we've got a serial spammer in the comments. This twit, calling himself Peter Moore (also known as Ken DeMyer, or Kdbuffalo, as he was known on Wikipedia before being banned there), is repeating himself over and over again, asking the same stupid question, never…

Matthew Chapman's suggestion that the presidential candidates have a debate on science is naive, idealistic, and a step in the right direction. It will never happen, because the issues of science we could talk about are not up for debate, and I don't think any of the candidates in any party are…

As long as we don't have to respect his authority or consider him infallible, we can say hello to The Quantum Pontiff. Although…computer science? What do we need their kind for? Shouldn't we be getting more biologists here?

I thought Beyond Belief II was an excellent, stimulating, provocative meeting, but I'm somewhat discouraged about writing it up in detail because everything was taped and will be available on the web very soon … so I don't want to be entirely superfluous. I've already described the first day,…

Sandwalk has been up and running for a year — stop by and say congratulations!

Go vote! These are my choices, and you all should follow your own consciences. Best individual blogger: I vote for Lindsay. Best blog: I vote for Raw Story (yeesh, but this category is stocked with some really awful right wing crap). Best comic strip: I vote for xkcd, of course. Best online…

The residents of Minnesota are now officially over-represented on Scienceblogs: Greg Laden has joined the fray.

The scienceblogs team seems to be forming a united front on at least one specific issue: in support of research in the face of animal rights extremists. This is prompted by the case of a researcher in drug addiction whose home was vandalized by domestic terrorists, and who has written an op-ed…

Don't you just love how Mike Behe is getting a serial reaming from a 'mere' student?

No way — I've seen Gas and Little Monsters, so this review of his sex ed movie, Where did I come from? gets that part wrong. I think the video and the book Where did I come from? aren't actually that bad; it's cutesy, it doesn't take the whole ridiculous business too seriously, and it gets the job…

If he isn't already on it, that is. Here he is interviewing Antony Flew. Flew gives the impression of being a nice old man in a muddle. Strobel is a badger for Christ.

I have not been shy about my contempt for the crackpot, Roy Varghese — he's one of those undeservedly lucky computer consultants who struck it rich and is now using his money to endorse religion. He's a god-soaked loon who pretends to be a scientific authority, yet he falls for the claim that…

This collection of carnivals has a theme: savage, wild, weird animals. Friday Ark #163 I and the Bird #61 Circus of the Spineless #26 Humanist Symposium #10 Don't forget the Tangled Bank! Another edition is coming up on Wednesday at Paddy K — send those links in to me or host@tangledbank…

It must come with the name that Revere has to sound the warning — we've got anti-god/anti-religion movies available now, and more on the way. I'm a little surprised that movies that preach moral responsibility (don't torture people, don't imprison them without trial, don't ship them off to…

I have been sleeping the sleep of the dead—it turns out that if you don't bother to sleep for 40 hours you get really tired and when you lie down your brain shuts off. This is very good to know. It means I've been completely ignoring Pharyngula for a long, long time, and wow, did the comments pile…

All right, I won this once already, crushing the starry-eyed vacuum-head before, but I see he's trying to be competitive in the polls again. Doesn't he realize that I need merely reach out with a single tentacle to effortlessly nullify his efforts? This year, I think I'll rest on my laurels and…

My travels are done for a whole week now (according to my calendar, I'm going to have to go to Washington DC next week), and I'm very, very tired. I'll put up some of my thoughts on the Beyond Belief conference later (short summary: exhilarating!), but for now I'll acknowledge the wonderful time I…

I'm surprised to see Pharyngula has been nominated for Best Science Blog in The 2007 Weblog Awards — I hadn't been paying attention at all. I am a bit disturbed by the company I'm keeping over there, though: I'm in the running with a couple of conservative junk science blogs. Go vote for one of the…

I really do have no sense of shame, and since Halloween has just gone by, I have even more opportunities to pander to the cute. How about a dog? Or how about … adorable little kids? Have no fear, the conference ends today, and I'll be turning off the saccharine drip.

I'm off at this meeting and neglecting the site a bit, so when you've got little time and you want something cute to make everyone go "awww," what do you do? Find a picture of a cuttlefish, of course.

While I'm here in San Diego, I'll also be giving a talk/hosting a discussion at the Scripps Institute on Friday at 3:00. The title is: Sharing science: education, activism, and advocacy I'm planning on telling the attendees the secret to getting a million visits per month to their blogs. No,…

I'm having a lovely time here at Beyond Belief 2 — you should all be here (and of course, you will be; as they did last year, everything will be available after the meeting on the web.) It's an eclectic mix of all kinds of interesting stuff outside of my usual range: yesterday, we had terrific…

I came across this interesting meme: google for the image that comes up first for your name. I was a little surprised by what "pz" returns, but I think it is entirely appropriate. Really…you don't want to cross me. Doing an image search for "PZ Myers" returns a photo of me and Richard Dawkins…