pharyngula

This is an amusing tale of creationist hypocrisy. Ken Ham is complaining that one of his staff members was "ambushed", because he wasn't given a solo interview, but had to share the discussion with a critic (meanwhile, Ham has no compunction about "ambushing", in the same sense, scientific…

The Pope is on a grand tour of Africa, where he has been striking up a theme of — brace yourself — opposing superstition. The man who heads an institution with an official top exorcist is asking Africans to "shun witchcraft", and to reject fear-mongering talk of evil entities… In his homily, he…

Jerry Coyne says lots of basic (but well-stated) things about evolution, creationism, and education in an interview with American Scientist. Here's a taste: Some creationists seem to feel that it's the scientists who are being dogmatic here--that you're somehow invested in this idea or want it to…

Mary thought we needed more affectionate slugs around here. (from Margaret Morgan)

This week, I'll be heading off to Grand Rapids, Michigan for a few days, and more than a few of you have been asking me for the details. Here's my itinerary: Wednesday - March 25, 2009 4:00-4:30 pm - Interview with Jeremy Beahan - Reasonable Doubts Radio Show/ Podcast 5:00 pm - Check into Hotel:…

(via Dave Littler)

One of the challenges facing the country right now in this time of economic crisis is that we're also about to be confronted by the result of a decade of neglect of the nation's infrastructure, in particular, the chronic starvation of our universities. It's an insidious problem, because as…

A children's movie titled Lost and Found is out; it features a little boy and a penguin. Bleh, you say, penguins are so trite…there is nothing compelling in that. However, there is a scene in which the two protagonists are rescued by a friendly cephalopod. I must endorse this excellent attempt to…

The subject of Sunday's Atheists Talk radio (9am Central) will be denialism, in an interview with PalMD. This should be a good one, tune in. Call in and tell him how horrible those vaccines are, too — let's rile things up.

The physicist Bernard d'Espagnat has won the Templeton Prize. I don't think much of the Templeton; I think it's a rather devious organization that's trying to sidle in support for superstition under the guise of science. However, in this case I have to commend their choice for the nice remark he…

Even here in relatively enlightened Minnesota, we have loony paranormalists. John of Ghosts of Minnesota got to bring his skepticism along on one of those silly "ghost hunter" events in St Paul. Guess what? No ghosts.

Also, Casey Luskin demonstrates his inability to comprehend a science paper, again. Creationists are obsessed with the idea that every nucleotide in the genome (and now the transcriptome) must have a function, an idea that is actively rejected by the available data, so Luskin reads a Nature paper…

The John Kwok saga is getting very serious. He threatened to decimate my facebook friends, and has now gloated that the number of mutual friends of Kwok and Myers has now diminished by…3 (out of my current total of 4,793, which is actually a net gain of about 350 since yesterday). You can imagine…

We've been through this before. When New Scientist ran their misleading "Darwin was wrong" cover, we hammered at them and pointed out that they were doing us no favors — they were giving ammunition to creationists who would never read the contents, but would wave that cover at school board meetings…

Our spring break is almost over. I hope none of our students wasted their time fishing for souls for Jesus. Follow that link; it's a story on Salon.com of a young man who goes undercover at Liberty University and goes on a Spring Break proselytizing trip to Florida. It's depressing — mindless…

Perhaps the tables have been turned! I have received one report that Pharyngula has been blocked on government computers in Kentucky — can anyone confirm that? Apparently, you can read Ann Coulter, Focus on the Family, the Drudge Report, and Rush Limbaugh when you're supposed to be pushing those…

Yet more internet melodrama! Several of our unwilling contestants took a shot at the immunity challenge, to comical effect: they either completely failed to be aware of what people find irritating in their posting habits, or in one case, even plagiarized his answer. The result of the vote by the…

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

I'm trying figure out how this insane bill could even get a hearing. State Representative Leo Berman (R, of course) was peeved that the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board ruled that the Institute for Creation Research would not be allowed to grant degrees. So, he came up with an amazingly…

There's a fellow who has been posting as an atheist on various sites, and making unusual claims — unusual because I have never heard an atheist say anything like this. If a man wants to make a women his b****, so be it? So what if you don't like it, what if I do? If I want to do something, and…

I think you want to read Carl Zimmer's post on bat flight — it has lots of lovely slo-mo videos that show just how amazingly agile bats are.

I'm not going to say much about this since Ed Yong has an excellent write-up, but a new feathered dinosaur has been discovered, called Tianyulong. As you can see in this image of the fossil, it was bristling with a fuzz of thin fibers — proto-feathers. (Click for larger image)a, Main slab of the…

There is an undersea volcano erupting right now — and a fantastic photo set is showing the event.

Today we have to judge whether any of our contestants have met their immunity challenge. The challenge was this: The challenge for the seven surviving candidates is to write a short comment, 200 words or less, that reveals that they actually understand why their attitudes and pattern of expression…

Do you feel like you don't pray enough? Are you too busy working, or playing golf, or fornicating to actually take the time out to get down on your knees and praise the invisible man in the sky? Well, there is a service for you: Information Age Prayer. For the low, low price of $3.95 a month, they…

Who knows? Maybe they're right. They're planning a program for "Nightline" (which, I seem to recall, at least used to be a pretty good news program) which will probably get them some decent ratings. They're going to have a debate on the existence of Satan. Yeah, you heard that right…on a so-called…

The media are all agog at the fact that the Creation “Museum” has an exhibit on natural selection. Whoop-te-doo, I say — anybody who has been following creationism at all knows that they happily trot out this claim all the time. We've got all kinds of concrete examples of observed evolutionary…

The Canadian science minister who first refused to answer a question about his support for religion because it was querying his personal religion has now flip-flopped and said that he does accept evolution. Only it's a very twisted version of evolution. What does it mean when he says something like…

Forget clickers and powerpoint, I want these.

The Vatican astronomer made some strong comments against creationism…but I find them bizarre. Brother Consolmagno, who works in a Vatican observatory in Arizona and as curator of the Vatican meteorite collection in Italy, said a "destructive myth" had developed in modern society that religion and…