pharyngula

Oh, geez, Oklahoma. There was a weird court case there recently. Well, maybe not so weird, unfortunately—I could see it happening here. To make it short, an atheist girl in high school was kicked off a sports team because she wouldn't join in team prayers; abuse ensued; school officials lied; the…

Some of you may recall a movie of mating slugs I mentioned before…now here's a site with photos of the act. In case you're baffled, the strange translucent blue sheets hanging down are the interwined penises of the two slugs. Don't they make a beautiful couple? (Thanks, Craig Clarke! Does your…

There are always a few strange leads to cephalopod miscellany in my mailbag…people have this odd idea that I like tentacled molluscs. So here we go, a few strange things on the strange ol' internet. This t-shirt is anatomically incorrect! I'm not sure what that thing is, but it's no cephalopod I'…

When I criticized that Ron Numbers article, I should have mentioned there were lots of other peculiar little comments that I didn't bother to address. Jason Rosenhouse fills in the gaps. One of the things Numbers tried to argue was that creationists are pro-science because they pay lip service to…

Atrios finds it odd that, since 31% of Americans believe in astrology and it qualifies as a mainstream belief, that "people are falling all over themselves to mock someone who had a perfectly mainstream belief apparently shared by millions and millions of Americans." I just have to say that in my…

One of many open questions in evolution is the nature of bilaterian origins—when the first bilaterally symmetrical common ancestor (the Last Common Bilaterian, or LCB) to all of us mammals and insects and molluscs and polychaetes and so forth arose, and what it looked like. We know it had to have…

Then I guess I need to start typing faster. World o' Crap has a book out now. You know you want it: Better Living Through Bad Movies(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll).

…but I have to defend Rush Limbaugh. He was detained for having a bottle of Viagra at the airport? What was he going to do, threaten Palm Beach with his little gift from god? I think Limbaugh is a lying hypocritical scumbag, but what alarms me more here is the way airport security and customs has…

Quite a few people sent me a link to this Foxtrot comic with the remote-controlled squid. They were all just trying to tease me cruelly, because they knew it would be my favorite summertime pool toy, and they don't exist. I looked everywhere, but the closest I could get was a remote-controlled…

Here it is, the proof from breast ironing. Simple selectionist models can't explain why human beings would mutilate secondary sexual characteristics and genitalia, therefore god exists. We also know the Christian right is exactly correct: God really does obsess over people's sex lives, and he is a…

If you were still wondering what kind of scientist Batman is, here's the roundup, along with the best Batman origin story ever.

Well, I've never followed this "Jerome" fellow's stuff at MyDD, with the recent accusations that he may have done some dubious things in the stock market and was a promoter of astrology, but the Commissar thinks I'm going easy on him because the Left thinks astrology is an acceptable pseudo-science…

This really sounds delicious. Hand-grilled in iron molds by cooks behind a large display window, the octopus dumplings are made from wheat flour paste mixed with fish stock, spring onions and boiled octopus chunks, and drizzled with a sweet sauce, dried bonito flakes and seaweed. I could go for…

What is this, a few journalists have discovered blogs for the first time and have decided they just don't like 'em? This fellow Zengerle seems to see them as a threat to the Republic, and now some guy named Quin Hillyer at the American Spectator weighs in, with some devastating complaints. He is…

A reader sent along this tempting job offer. Job Title General Education: Biology Date 6/1/2006 Location NATIONWIDE, Min Salary $2,100.00 Max Salary $3,500.00 Job Type Contract Part-Time Job Description BIOLOGY Faculty compatible with a young-earth creationist philosophy to…

I hopped out of bed this morning, certain that someone would have bravely answered my challenge to support Coulter's 'science'. But no, the Coulterites have completely vanished from my mailbox, and the official tally of entries stands at 0 Maybe I just haven't given them enough time. It takes a…

After visiting the Body Worlds exhibit today, my short summary is that it was disappointing, but it wasn't all bad. I'll get the complaints over first. Here's the thing: I like my biology wet. It's supposed to be vital and dynamic and messy and complicated, but it all ties together into a lovely…

Quick! A few more carnivals to flog today… The Synapse #1, a new neuroscience carnival. Carnival of the Godless #43

The Myers clan is at Body Worlds today. Expect a report later.

Since it was brought up in the comments, I thought I'd bring back my statement on the "Brights." There’s a lot of noise on the net right now about The Brights, the idea that we can invent a pleasant new name for godless atheists and thereby improve our image. It’s being pushed by luminaries like…

If you aren't up on the latest blogging scandals du jour, just ignore this. I'm not on the "Townhouse" email list…in fact, I never even heard of it before. I only read the Daily Kos for DarkSyde. I think Markos is an inconsequential part of the community there. Markos has never told me what to do…

Here's a dilemma: I think Ron Numbers, the philosopher and historian of science, is a smart fellow and a net asset to the opposition to creationism, and I agree with him that a diversity of approaches to the issue is a good thing. My opinion could change, though, because I am experiencing…

I suspect that soon there will be at least one religious person who will claim he converted from atheism who I will believe. The Raving Atheist is getting ripe: he's been ramping up the irrationality for some time now, precessing like a top slowing down, and I expect that soon enough he'll flop…

I'm sure that everyone else who is a fan of the only program on television that features a hybrid arthropod-mollusc character will be pleased to hear that Zoidberg is coming back.

Nooooooooo! Harriet is dead. At least she lived a long life, making it to the ripe old age of 176.

Two short articles in this week's Science link the orb-weaving spiders back to a common ancestor in the Early Cretaceous, with both physical and molecular evidence. What we have is a 110-million-year-old piece of amber that preserves a piece of an orb web and some captured prey, and a new…

Cosmology is almost as interesting as developmental biology, and now you can read a short summary of the origins of the universe at Daily Kos.

Feeling musical this morning? Stephanie Ching sent me links to some lyrics. An old User Friendly cartoon combines Cthulhu, zombies, and brains, and then there's the unspeakable: this guy has written a song for John Tesh. If anything is going to rouse the sleeping Old Ones that lie in lost R'Lyeh,…

Sepiadarium austrinum, Southern Bottletail Squid Figure from Cephalopods: A World Guide (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Mark Norman.

I've been very, very bad at keeping up with all the carnivals, so here's a quick roundup. Carnival of the Liberals #15 I and the Bird #26 Carnival of Education #72 Skeptics' Circle #37 Carnival of Feminists #17 Circus of the Spineless seeks submissions! As usual, talk about whatever you want in…