pharyngula

My daughter works at our small town movie theater, and she's got the inside scoop: apparently the locals are boycotting The Golden Compass. Attendance is down, almost the only people going are university students, the owner has had calls from people in the community complaining about the movie.…

The inimitable Peter Irons has been hot on the trail of the Nathaniel Abraham case, the ditzy creationist who is upset because he got fired from an evolutionary biology lab. There are some interesting tidbits below, specifically the fact that Abraham claims the job ad did not make reference to…

They keep catching me on my bad days!

OK, astronomers and physicists, get to work. This movie is supposed to be a refutation of modern science, but it's full of bogus claims like, 'Since 98% of the sun is hydrogen and helium, the earth ought to be 98% hydrogen and helium.' There is a lot of similar trivially idiotic nonsense, all…

The belts and straps and chains slipped that day! I had no idea there was a cameraman hanging around at the time. It's a nice T-Shirt anyway.

As Sheril hinted earlier, there is now a formal call for a science debate by the presidential candidates. A CALL FOR A PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE ON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY Given the many urgent scientific and technological challenges facing America and the rest of the world, the increasing need for…

The Fall semester is winding down — this is the last week of classes — so it's time to start thinking about the Spring term. Ugh. I don't want to. This term has been driving me sufficiently insane as it is. But anyway, if you're a student thinking about all the money you'll have to be spending on…

Scienceblogs is expanding in a new direction — they've opened a new counterpart, Scienceblogs — Wissenschaft, Kultur, Politik. Take a look; it's got the familiar Scienceblogs layout, and it's got a new collection of bloggers, and it's all in German. Very cool! I can only stumble through the titles…

The UMM Freethinkers are having a meeting tonight, at 7PM, in Imholte 101. Our very own Michael Lackey, professor of English and author of African American Atheists and Political Liberation: A Study of the Socio-Cultural Dynamics of Faith(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), will be giving an informal talk on…

But you haven't, have you? He's still around, and still occasionally trying to get comments past my filters here. He has a blog — Evolution Is Finished, with one article with no real content, and a few comments, mostly by John A. Davison. He's still whining repetitively at ISCID. He was going on…

There are some rational people in Florida, as Robyn Blumner's column makes clear. Not only does she mock Texas for their foolish harrassment of Christine Comer, but she goes on to point out the disastrous consequences of Republican religious meddling, and that Huckabee is going to be more of the…

This is weird. Am I dreaming that I'm blogging what I'm dreaming about? Or am I blogging that I'm dreaming about what I'm blogging about? (hat tip to Adam Cuerden)

It would seem like sweet poetic justice if James Watson were found to be 1/8th African, but I'm afraid I don't quite believe it. This is news coming from a company called deCODE genetics, an Icelandic outfit that analyzes an individual's racial background on the basis of various genetic markers.…

Two serious shooting incidents this weekend — one at Ted Haggard's old church in Colorado Springs, another in Arvada, Colorado — is awfully troubling. No word on motives yet, but I hope the crazies aren't erupting into random violence against each other. (I'm getting a lot of email about this, but…

I'm giving my students a take-home exam tomorrow, and one of the questions references this paper: Stoleru D, Peng Y, Agosta J, Rosbash M (2004) Coupled oscillators control morning and evening locomotor behaviour of Drosophila. Nature 431:862-868. I'm just providing the link here to simplify finding…

Then you might want to read this—it looks like it was a trojan horse for a spammer. I notice that some of the more web-savvy bloggers edited out the sneaky code when posting it, but the rest of you might want to look back at the code. (hat tip to Coturnix)

Cruise the web starting with these most excellent entry points. Carnival of the Godless #80 Friday Ark #168 Carnival of Education #148 Skeptics' Circle #75 Revere's Sunday Sermonette — there hasn't been enough outrage at the unconstitutional vileness of Romney and Huckabee. Now tell me…

Would you care to attend Fred Phelps' Westboro Baptist Church for a morning? Philip Bloom has a short documentary in which he used a hidden camera in the Phelps compound. It's as you might expect: raging howls of a sermon, condemnations and hatred, people hoping that millions of others die and go…

Here's a useful formula devised by Jessa to evaluate creationist hate mail, called the Creationist Rant Absurdity Phenomenon Index: CRAP Index = M + 10(µ + Ω + I) + 10(F + σ + ρ) + (H)(1.0 x 106) Where: M…

Arthur C. Clarke turns 90 next week — so go leave him a birthday greeting.

One Day You Will Learn Everything About Santa Claus. That Day Remember Everything The Adults Have Told You About Jesus.

There are a few novelties in this one: a) it's in Florida, not Texas; b) it's a creationist in the department advocating creationism; and c) she didn't get fired for writing it. You can read the whole thing at Florida Citizens for Science, but here's the stupid part. The science standards that are…

Here are a few ideas. Myself, I don't have a “Mohammed”, but I have decided to call any trip to the bathroom a Hajj.

Here's an interesting take on The Golden Compass: it's a Protestant movie. I can see that.

This is an amusing reversal. Connecticut Valley Atheists put up a Winter Solstice sign in the town square, in the same place that was reserved for Hanukkah displays and nativity scenes, and while some people think it's just fine and fair, others are freaking out. On Friday, a town crew erected a…

Hey, somebody went to the Cephalopod Appreciation Society show in Seattle — and Tikistitch came back with pictures! I love the idea of suede squid draped decoratively about the house, but at $2500 each they are a little bit out of my price range. She has also discovered a Japanese fashion doll with…

You really don't want to know what goes on inside a slaughterhouse. That way, you'd never hear about toxic pig brain mist. In a rapid-fire process that is noisy, smelly and bloody, severed pigs' heads are cut up at the head table at a rate of more than 1,100 an hour. Workers slice off the cheek and…

Remember that awful, nonsensical "Letter from Hell" on GodTube? It was a particularly contemptible example of the evangelical impulse — the message was that not only will you suffer horribly in hell if you are naughty, but all your friends will, too…and it'll be all your fault. Would you believe a…

I suspect that many reviews of this movie are going to begin with some variant of the sentiment, "I was disappointed." This one is no exception. It's just not a very good movie; it's one that packed in lots of miscellaneous detail from the book it is based on, but thereby threw away the core of the…