pharyngula

We haven't had enough fossil penguins here, so let me rectify that deficiency. Below the fold you'll find a reconstruction of Waimanu, a 61-62 million year old penguin that was discovered in New Zealand. Oh, and Carl Zimmer has posted a photo of the bird with its skin and feathers on.…

I slept in this morning, got up, had a bowl of oatmeal and a glass of orange juice, and read about the probability that we'll go to war with Iran. I sat down in my easy chair and put my feet up and read that yesterday was the 38th anniversary of My Lai. As long as I'm looking at old atrocities, new…

I've been reading Hazen's Gen-e-sis: The Scientific Quest for Life's Origins (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll). I haven't finished it yet, but it led me to appreciate this post and this diagram more. Isn't that the truth? What creationists see as a weakness, that we have so many ideas (and so many gaps), we…

More SF indulgence, excuse me: Gary Farber has been reading Heinlein's rediscovered "first" novel (brief summary: it's very bad), and Kevin Drum raises the question of correlation between early SF preferences and later political biases, with Heinlein inspiring conservatives and Asimov motivating…

Paul Nelson has actually responded to a challenge in a timely fashion. I am shocked. Of course, his response is ineffectual and wrong, so ultimately I'm not too surprised at all. Josh comments on Nelson's reply. I'll just pile on. Nelson complains that the question of whether ID should be taught in…

Darksyde speculates about aliens… with illustrations by Carl Buell and others.

Kansas Citizens for Science has a troll who brought up a post of mine, and a reader asked for a clarification…so I made two short comments in reply. That prompted a comment here from someone named "Dave". Mr. Myers, at Kansas Citizens for Science we are fighting a tough battle to have the present…

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

Both Twisty and Amanda seem a bit weirded out by this news that the fetus can be viewed as a kind of parasite. This story has been around long enough that a lot of us just take it for granted—I wrote about the example of preeclampsia a while back. There are worse feminist-troubling theories out…

The money is all in the god racket. Cambridge University cosmologist and mathematician John Barrow was awarded $1.6 million yesterday to do research into whether God is sitting at the control panel behind the Theory of Everything about the universe. He won the 2006 Templeton Prize for Progress…

Call it fate, destiny, synchronicity, or astounding cosmic coincidence, but I have to report a series of highly unlikely events, a whole collection of chance occurrences that, multiplied together, defy reason and point ineluctably to some kind of universal force. These events are spread out over…

We need more mathematical analysis to counter the claims of creationists, and here's a good one: Mark Chu-Carroll has started a new weblog titled Good Math, Bad Math, and it right now is an excellent post that takes apart Dembski's mangling of the NFL theorem. Recommended, and welcome to blogtopia!

Leon Wieseltier (you remember preacherly, pompous Leon, right?) is getting raked over the coals by the readers of the NY Times, including Dennett himself. It's very entertaining. (via Butterflies and Wheels)

Check out these compendia of blogginess and comment on them, or anything else that strikes your fancy. Skeptics' Circle I and the Bird Carnival of the Liberals

Nah, I thought this has got to be a joke: The Pentagon's defence scientists want to create an army of cyber-insects that can be remotely controlled to check out explosives and send transmissions. But no…there is actually a DARPA call for proposals. DARPA seeks innovative proposals to develop…

Juravenator starki is a new small theropod dinosaur from the late Jurassic—the specimen is exceptionally well-preserved, and retains fossilized imprints of its skin. The surprising thing about it is that its anatomy puts it smack in the middle of a large clade of coelurosaurs, members of which are…

Since the announcement has gone public, I'll mention it here: I get to be the Scientist Guest of Honor at ConFusion, a science-fiction convention in Ann Arbor, in January of 2007. I'll be there with Howard Waldrop and Elizabeth Moon—I'll be the nerd hardly anyone has heard of before. Sign up now…

Paul Nelson responds to Amanda Marcotte, who mentioned that the poor quality of his debate explains why Nelson thinks ID should not be taught in schools. Amanda, Sahotra and I spent three hours talking at an Austin bar the night before the debate. I reiterated to him what I've said for years: I'm…

…and never read People magazine in quite the same light again.

It's a battle between the Bible and a secular Constitution. On Wednesday, March 1st, 2006, in Annapolis at a hearing on the proposed Constitutional Amendment to prohibit gay marriage, Jamie Raskin, professor of law at AU, was requested to testify. At the end of his testimony, Republican Senator…

Look! It's another massive edition of the Tangled Bank!

Via Leiter Reports, it's Google Mars! Hey, just an odd thought…the distance to Mars is such that communications have a lag of tens of minutes. When I move to the new colony after I retire, am I not going to have a hard time browsing the weblogs any more? I'd send a request to go to a page via http…

Atrios was getting some heat (most of it misplaced) for saying he was sick of the Christian whiners on the Left who make up stories of their martyrdom in the Democratic party—the same nonsense I was snarling about. While Atrios can say he's not hostile to religion—he's just apathetic—I can't, and…

Attendees of the Sarkar-Nelson debate are speaking up at Pandagon and The Ethical Werewolf. As I expected, it sounds like it was a bit of a farce, and that Sarkar did a fine job. I'm getting a little tired of making this concession every time I speak of him, so let's get it over with. Paul Nelson…

In my hands I have a remarkable artifact sent to me by the mysterious Finback: I don't know quite what to call it: a bobble-tentacle? I should get some adhesive and attach it to the dashboard of my car, I think. And thank you, Mr Finback!

Evolution 101 has a brief definition of evo-devo.

How about selling off Kansas? It seems a little harsh to me. How about if we give it in trust to Josh and Pat until everyone comes to their senses?

Lots of people have been emailing me with this story of yet another Ark expedition. It's a routine lunacy that comes up all the time—probably the most irritating part of it all is the way MSNBC filed it under their tech/science section. It's nothing of the kind: it's mere pareidolia, the product…

Notice: I made it back! Yesterday was one of those days where too much is crammed into too short a time. I taught my 8:00 class, slalomed down icy roads to St. Cloud State University, gave two talks (an afternoon talk on my work on ethanol teratogenesis to the biology department, an evening…

The thin-skinned Religious Left whimpers some more. What is it with Kevin Drum and his constant sucking up to the delusional fantasist wing of the Democratic party? Usually it's Amy Sullivan, but this time it's Steve Waldman who gets to be the representative pantywaist for poor oppressed…