pharyngula

Sayed Perwiz Kambakhsh, a journalist in Afghanistan, has been arrested and condemned for downloading articles on the internet that are critical of Islam. Kambakhsh, a student at Balkh University and a journalist for Jahan-e Naw (New World), was arrested in October 2007 after material he downloaded…

It's still only a just-so story for the fascination some people have for LOLcats. I think this demands an experiment — we need to do something involving knives and laserbeams to the people who produce those ubiquitous images.

Because it is rather buried in the pile of comments at this point, I'll mention that Neil Shubin did respond in his guest post — check it out.

When I decide to take a break from the mad scramble of organizing my classes, I really shouldn't follow a whim and take a peek at Uncommon Descent. The lead article has this astonishing opening paragraph. Remember the dark days of vestigal organs? You know, back when there was a list of 180…

It's up! The newest edition of the Tangled Bank is at The Inoculated Mind.

Compare and contrast: science vs. creationism.

Ali G interviews four people with opinions about religion. It's a bit hit or miss, but listen for the bit at the end. Ali G wonders why so many nuns work as strippers on the side, and the easily offended Catholic priest says, "I don't think you can demonstrate that statistically…it's an absurd…

… try Denyse O'Leary sometime. She's now written a list of predictions from ID, and I don't think she understands the meaning of the word "prediction" in a scientific context. Eight of the nine are variants on the theme, "there will be no natural explanations for X," which, try as we might, reveals…

It's Tuesday, the 22nd of January, and this is the first day of classes at UMM. I'm teaching the introductory biology course again (Fundamentals of Genetics, Evolution, and Development), my big core lab course in genetics, and an upper level class in science writing, and that's enough. As is usual…

Ray Comfort has a blog, and one of his entries claims that the Bible is a science text, and that it is better than science. His style of argument is to first list a "fact" from the Bible (usually something that is completely open to interpretation, and he chooses to interpret it as being in…

Minnesota is going to be revising their science standards this year. Last time we went through this, it was a circus, with our education commissioner (the notorious Cheri Pearson Yecke) trying to pack the review committees with creationists and doing last minute swaps of committee-approved drafts…

It takes some confidence to charge into this: Hitchens will be debating Jay Richards (of the Discovery Institute), with Ben Stein as "moderator", in an event sponsored by the Stanford IDEA club. The creationists are stacking the deck against him rather thoroughly. I'm not enthused about the idea —…

The video clip below is from a game called Noah's Adventures. It's awful—Noah sounds like a drunk with brain damage, the graphics look like a preschooler tried fingerpainting with his feces, and the whole plot is ridiculous. Now here's the question: is this the work of a sincere creationist, or…

Maybe "wacky" isn't the right word — if you read through this collection of Russian jokes translated by Mark Perakh, you might find some are fairly funny, others are completely opaque and strange, and others drop with a leaden thump. One common seems to be finding a kind of morose humor in misery.…

Greg Laden, that romantic evolutionary gastronome has several good posts on the mess in Florida (and, by the way, here's a map if you're having trouble keeping track of all those counties). These are documents produced by the activist creationists down there, and they really reveal how inept and…

You should all be pleased to know that MAJeff has been mollyfied.

Simple, clean, direct, forceful:

This is very strange. After all the kerfuffle over that ridiculous online bookstore, they just sent me this message: Hi! Abunga CustomerService (CustomerService@abunga.com) has used the Abunga.com Email-A-Friend service to send you this message. Personal message: Please help us Empower Decency by…

Hey, it's been a while since I did one of these, so let's catch up! The Carnival of the Godless Freethinker Sunday Sermonette I and the Bird #66 Grand Rounds Carnival of the Liberals #56 Carnival of Education #154 Humanist Symposium #13 Karl Mogel will be hosting the next Tangled Bank at The…

It's a good source for comedy. It's surreally hilarious, if you think about it.

Dolphins are really, really good at blowing bubbles. (hat tip to Hank)

The Center for Inquiry in Austin hosted a meeting that asked the question, Will Texas Support 21st Century Science Education? The good news is that the place was packed, and there are a lot of rational, intelligent people in Texas who are fed up with the lunatics running the show and are motivated…

Alright, Mormonism is weird…but did you know there are some church 'scholars' who think Bigfoot is actually Cain? Here's a Bigfoot theory I haven't heard before. Apparently there are some in the Mormon church who hypothesize that Bigfoot may actually be Cain, condemned to walk the earth forever.…

Remember—every Sunday at 9am, you Minnesotans (and clever others) can listen to the Minnesota Atheists radio program on Air America. Tune in tomorrow — it's especially important since I've heard that Air America has actually already lost one advertiser because they had the gall to actually allow…

While it had its moments, and was based on a provocative and interesting series, I wasn't that impressed with The Golden Compass movie adaptation. Still, I'm disappointed that the decision has been made that the subsequent books will not be filmed. It apparently did very poor box office in the US,…

Today is the day of the North Carolina Science Blogging Conference, and I was pretty sure I wasn't going. This is also the weekend before the start of spring semester classes, and I'm going to be going mildly insane for a while. But then, someone has photographic evidence that I am there. This is…

I understand that we're currently running some ads on scienceblogs for an organization that promises to harness the power of religious institutions to solve environmental problems (I use an adblocker, so I'm afraid I haven't seen it). It's a nice sentiment, but you can imagine what I think of the…

Something different this week: click the image and see David Gallo present a series of short video clips of cephalopods in action.

Nerdism run amuck!