pharyngula

So I took The Minnesota Purity Test, and got a score that says I'm 62.1% Minnesotan. Not bad for a non-native…but then, my mother was born here, and a lot of the test is more a measure of Scandinavian-American heritage. There are a lot of people in the Seattle area who would score well on this.

I got a request to identify this beastie washed up on a beach in Russia—there's a whole gallery of pictures, if you don't mind looking at rotting cadavers. Anyway, this one's easy. Everyone with kids will know the answer: sing along with Raffi and me… Baby Beluga in the deep blue sea, Swim so…

…but next time you get on a plane, you are allowed to bring along "personal lubricants". Yes, what it sounds like. National security will not be allowed to deter new recruits to the Mile-High Club.

Smarting from her failure to crack the top 1000 in the science blogger hot-or-not contest, Janet has declared a Nerd-off, in which us geeks, dorks, nerds, and poindexters compete to see who is the King or Queen of the pocket-protector crowd. I think I should get bonus points for bragging about it a…

While browsing through the UW Alumni magazine (yes, I read it; no, please don't ask me for money, I'm poor), I ran across a nice quote I thought I'd share: Imagine it like the software in a computer that is five years old…these [stem] cell lines are inherently inferior. We're forced to focus our…

My baby sister (she was in her thirties and had two kids of her own, but she'll always be my little sis) died a few years ago of one of those sudden, massive infections—the kind of unexpected reminder of bacterial dominance that killed Jim Henson. When I attended the funeral, I was reminded of…

But I like it anyway. It's a series of charts illustrating channels of communication of science. I appreciate the distinction made between "Average Citizen" and "Informed Citizen." Maybe there ought to be another box interposed between "Mainstream Media" and "The Average Citizen" labeled "Fox News…

This is exactly what I hear when someone tries to promote their favorite cult.

That's all I want to know. Thomas Kinkade's house is for sale, and at $359,000 for a smallish 3 bedroom home, it darn well better glow. Glow like a muthafricken' fairy castle.

This is an octopus sculpted out of butter. In the interests of fairness, I'd now like to see a cow made of fried calamari rings.

The results of the scienceblogger "hot or not" contest are up, and they're definitely screwy. What am I doing at #4? What's the matter with you people?

I'm teaching a course in developmental biology this term, and as part of the coursework, I'm making students blog. The idea is to force them to ferret out instances of development in popular culture, in their personal experience, and/or in their reading—I'm not asking for treatises, but simply…

One after the other, I got two requests to promote some worthy causes which need letter-writers to help out. Here they are: Save wilderness: Over the strong objections of Native people, wildlife biologists, sportsmen's groups, and the general public, the Bureau of Land Management remains intent on…

Since we biologists were just bizarrely accused of being like a bunch of animal rights activists, I am surprised that when I read that PETA opposes experiments on gay sheep, I find myself opposing PETA and thinking that the experiments sound cool and interesting and informative. I'm also a little…

Just in case my wife happens to check out the internets this afternoon, I'm sure she'll be interested in seeing the state of her yard. The plumbing crew came out this morning to repair our broken water main, and apparently to also plant a dead pagan king in a nice barrow outside our bathroom…

No. I think not.

A news article describes his last moments, and Rangel, MD gets technical. And please, everyone, we know he was brash and some people found him annoying…but we should all agree that death is deplorable, and there's no justice in it.

People would be more sympathetic to my interest in our tentacled co-residents of planet Earth if they realized it was a path to free ice cream, according to Lio, at least.

Carl Zimmer is one kinky dude—he has a new article on sexual cannibalism in the NY Times, and his expansion on the topic in his blog is also darned interesting, focusing on the scientific duels fought over adaptationism and exaptations in explaining the phenomenon.

Poor Francis Collins: now his book has been panned in New Scientist…by Steve Fuller. That Steve Fuller, the pompous pseudo-post-modernist who testified for Intelligent Design creationism in Dover. His criticism has an interesting angle, though. Collins is just like Richard Dawkins. Who knew? In…

Good news for Minnesota! Minnesota Citizens for Science Education has been officially launched. This is a new advocacy group with the goal of promoting good science education in our state. Specifically— A scientifically literate population is essential to Minnesota's future. To that end, Minnesota…

Have you ever browsed a sperm bank catalog? It's a real meat market. You get lists of men by height, weight, profession, ethnic background, etc., and if you like that 6'1" red-haired Lithuanian stockbroker, click, and he's in your shopping cart. They ship direct to your doctor (residential delivery…

Now you can play Scienceblogger Hot or Not. I don't know whether to approve or not.

People send me things that put lust in my heart. I want one of these. I want some of these, too. I need a seal like this so I can stamp all my official correspondence with it. Clearly, there will be a future need for Space Squid Conservationists.

Now this is a headline: Man lived to 112 on sausage-and-waffles diet. In addition to living that long, I have another dream: "All of his organs were extremely youthful. They could have been the organs of someone who was 50 or 60, not 112. Clearly his genes had some secrets," Coles said. "Everything…

The Crocodile Hunter has died. It is absolutely no surprise that it was an animal that did him in—he was pierced by a stingray—but it's still sad to see such an enthusiastic advocate for wildlife go. I'm not alone in feeling this way: it's a scienceblogs thing to regret this loss. And Skatje had…

At least, that is, it's new to me. Austin Cline summarizes a report in The Philosophers' Magazine by Michael La Bossier: [R]ecent studies of cloned animals reveal that current cloning techniques produce animals that are as distinct in their personalities as animals produced by Ânatural means of…

There are plenty of outspoken atheists in the United States—read the latest Carnival of the Godless #48 for a small sampling—but you can still find many mainstream journalists writing about them as if they were peculiar aliens living under a log with other unsavory and oddly constructed organisms.…

Wow, I'm impressed: The J Train finds a small guttering flicker of reason on WingNutDaily. It's an article by a conservative Christian opposing public prayer at football games—he'd been in Hawai'i, where he'd been shocked to discover that pre-game prayers were given by Buddhist monks, and he found…