pharyngula

Can you stomach a little more Jim Pinkoski? He's ranting in the comments most amusingly. You guys LIE about Java man, you LIE about Lucy, you LIE about the horse ancestary chart, you LIE about fetuses mimicking evolution stages, you LIE about upright trees sticking through different geology layers…

I've been having some fun with a bizarrely didactic creationist comic book by one Jim Pinkoski that purports to explain all the flaws in evolutionary biology. What it really is is the most astounding collection of bad creationist arguments I've ever seen gathered in one place. I've been trying to…

I promised to show you some more of Pinkoski's A Creationist's View of Dinosaurs and the Theory of Evolution, so here we go. Pinkoski's book is actually reasonably representative of the majority opinion held by creationists; the arguments in this book aren't what you see openly presented by most…

How nice—having an open thread overnight provided me with some entertaining reading this morning! Henrik Aasted Sørensen mentioned this fascinating description of a creationist comic book—it has an account of evil angels leading the dinosaurs on a last-minute assault on Noah's Ark, and announces…

Penguins on the freeway—that must have been an interesting sight. A truck overturned in Texas, releasing the animals, and several were taken out by passing cars. The good news is that there was also an octopus in the truck, and it came through the accident unharmed. I'd kind of like to know the…

Here's an idea: a young woman takes a picture of herself every day, and assembles it into a movie. It's off to an interesting start, but she's at a developmental stage where the changes aren't happening very rapidly, so she pretty much looks the same at the beginning as at the end.

Alex has a quick cheat sheet for the different kinds of RNA…but wait! Where's mtRNA?

Apparently, everything is sectarian. Now I learn that Windows is the Christian OS, to my vast relief. I'll stick with my secular humanist Mac OS X, with its Darwin core and its demonic platypus mascot.

Zeno has this quote from an acolyte of D. James Kennedy, Dr. Paul Jehle, and I have to shake my head in disbelief. I was taking calculus. I was a mathematics major and I was at a Christian college that was called Christian, but was not Christian.... I asked a question to my calculus professor: "…

I've been getting swamped with links to this hot article, "Evolution reversed in mice," including one from my brother (hi, Mike!). It really is excellent and provocative and interesting work from Tvrdik and Capecchi, but the news slant is simply weird—they didn't take "a mouse back in time," nor…

What do you do with a local politician who claims that public education is her #1 issue, while accepting money from supporters of the Alliance for the Separation of School and State? That's our Michele Bachmann, claiming to be a supporter of education while endorsed by people who say this: I…

Shelley has something for people with a tentacle fetish. Are there any of those around here?

Any New Jersey readers out there? Anyone from Seaside Heights? Why didn't you tell me? I had to find out about this exciting event in the grocery store checkout line. I was most interested to learn that it ravaged the shore line during a recent storm, but seems to have put most of its effort into…

The burning question is, do I get one if I go mad?

This is the week of the Stevens County Fair, right here in bucolic Morris, Minnesota. It starts on Wednesday, 9 August and runs through Sunday the 13th, so you all still have time to start heading out this way. It's your classic rural fair: there will be accordions, deep-fried anything on a stick…

We seem to be talking about breasts a lot this week, don't we? Abel Pharmboy raises a provocative ethical question: is it crass or is it reasonable for breast cancer researchers to ask Hooters to promote breast cancer awareness? I'm of the opinion that we ought to get every penny we can from them,…

I won't post this lovely print directly, since it might not be safe for work—not because it shows breasts, but because if any of your passing colleagues know anything about molluscan anatomy, they'll realize that that cephalopod is gnawing on her head and be horrified. (hat tip to Leslie Madsen-…

Our behind-the-scenes whip boss at Seed, Katherine Sharpe, mentioned this comic, and after I was done laughing, I had to post it. It could be our new motto.

Over at the Panda's Thumb, there is a sharp rebuttal of the creationists' complaint about junk DNA. Read it, it's useful. It leads to a bothersome and more general point, though. Despite its connotations, the phrase “junk DNA” (originated by Susumu Ohno in 1972) does not intend to convey an…

Collins has another published interview in Salon. It's sad, actually—in every new interview, he says pretty much the same thing, but he digs himself in a little deeper. I ordered his book the other day, and now I'm beginning to regret it; it's beginning to sound like trite Christian apologetics…

Let's start the week with another open thread, and a few carnivals. The Synapse 1(4) Carnival of the Godless #46

There is now an online petition to save the Australian Lungfish. Take a moment and put your name on it! Also, it's not just the lungfish—as Monika Dieker reminded me, there's also the Mary River Turtle at risk.

Here are a few miscellaneous cephalopod-related things people have sent me lately. Here's a squid kokigami template, and assembly instructions. I confess: I was wondering what the heck it was for, until I read further. Oh. My. Good hygiene and kokigami go well together. A town in Japan is building…

Darren Naish has a fine summary of the hypothesis that the megabats are flying primates. It's a tangled tree we're flitting about in here.

Foreign Dispatches posts some digital camera recommendations, with explanations. I just went through a fair amount of research before going out and getting a new camera myself a few weeks ago, and it's all good—most importantly, his best choice is the same camera I got for myself, the Nikon D50.…

As a public service, I provide here an extremely rigorous and intense test of your irony meters. Please set your resistance values to at least one gigOhm, make sure all shielding is in place, and please have a fire extinguisher and first aid kit handy. If you are using some cheap off-brand meter,…

I've visited Boulder, Colorado a few times—it's a wonderful place, and at least so far it's got Gary—but usually when I hear about the state it's all about lunatics like Dobson and Coors and about megachurches and our air war for Jesus, and now…some overendowed Christian charity based in Colorado…

The Invasive Species Weblog is running a contest to come up with an appropriately punalicious title for an entry…and Jenn is awarding real prizes.

Even if you have a formless, gnawing dread that he might actually win, at least he'll split the Republican vote. (via Tild~)

I think this is my favorite Pink Floyd song of them all: