pharyngula

I just got word that there will be a vigil outside Michele Bachmann's Woodbury office, tonight at 7, with students coming in by bus from SCSU. This is to protest her opposition to SCHIP and, I presume, her support for the war. You've still got time to join them! Her office is at 6043 Hudson Rd,…

Perhaps you are interested in knowing how to survive the end of civilization in an alternate universe. Or perhaps you'd like to know how to take advantage of the apocalypse to shape this universe into an alternate reality. Then you are part of the rarefied market for A SteamPunk's Guide to…

I admit it, I'm often very harsh and critical of science reporting — it's important stuff, so it's infuriating to see it done badly. Rather than my usual angry growl, though, I'll recommend this first-rate collection of constructive suggestions for what we can do to improve the media.

Yowza — Afarensis got put in charge of maintaining the links page at the Panda's Thumb, and he has put together a huge collection of various resources for the evo-creo wars. It even includes pseudoscience links — you've got to appreciate a cataloging scheme that lumps Uncommon Descent and the…

UMM recently hosted the University of Minnesota board of regents, and we got a look at the status of the whole U of M system. It's not a happy story. We have an administration with ambitious goals (that's good), but they seem to be a bit divorced from reality — they want to turn us into one of the…

I just got back from Madison, which is mad about Halloween, and then I was emailed this exceedingly cool Halloween costume idea: dress up as a jellyfish with flashing LEDs. It looks easy: here are the full instructions, with the traditional hot glue gun and soldering iron, but no duct tape, which…

Someone compiled a list of the most popular Minnesota blogs. Pharyngula is number two. That would be OK, except that number one is that awful exercise in Bush sycophancy, Powerline. I'm sorry to have to put this burden on you, but you're going to have to read this site twice as often, and you're…

Great Christina explains why there's nothing with atheists being angry. We've got cause.

Tara has a real horror story: a geneticist failed to follow procedure in mailing some samples, sharing some harmless commercial strains of some innocuous and common bacteria with an artist, the kind of thing that a bureaucrat would reasonably respond to with a hand-slap and insistence that the…

Tsk, tsk, Canada. I know you caught this disease from your southern neighbor, but still… this is a sorry state of affairs. The Alberta government has been quietly increasing funding to faith schools -- to 100 per cent in the case of "alternative" programs -- and allowing creationism to be taught…

Oh, yeah…"because my daddy told me not to." Darn kids. No respect for the dogma of their elders any more.

Prepare yourself for the true religious wars: I'm asking for advice on a new laptop. I usually stretch out the usefulness of my computers for four or five years, and it is now time for me to invest in a new laptop. I'm planning to purchase the new tool sometime around the end of this month, when…

The godless seem to be making some people desperate and angry and worried — the stupid arguments have just been flooding in, and I've had to exercise some restraint, or every day would be a day for yet another long "religiots are nuts" post. So I've saved them up and will throw them out with fairly…

Here's an interesting essay on why people don't accept evolution: it's not simply a consequence of a conflict between religious teachings and the conclusion of science, but is also a conflict created by the nonintuitive way that evolution works — that a very small selective force operating over…

Scientists love empiricism and evidence-based demonstrations, so elderly urologists flaunting their erections seems like an effective presentation technique in the right context. And here I've always just relied on boring ol' PowerPoint.

Everyone reads Genesis, the racy bits in the Song of Solomon, the various Jesus tales in the Gospels, and when you're really stoned, Revelation. But what about those more obscure chapters, where some old time prophet with a funny polysyllabic name raves against extinct city-states and tribes who…

We got back from Madison later than I'd expected yesterday, and it's no fun to have to scramble to compose a lecture in a car, and then rush to assemble the data after midnight for an 8am class. But I have survived! Now I have to go drink a few liters of good black coffee, and while I do that, you…

This is mere satire, but it would be much more interesting if Ben Stein were to challenge Newton, rather than Darwin. It would be just as absurd, but I think physicists need more abuse than just a few flaky zero-point energy guys and the New Agers using the word "quantum" in every sentence. And hey…

Somebody recorded the Hitchens talk, and has uploaded the first parts of it to YouTube. I've put what's currently available below the fold; this only covers about half of the talk, I estimate. I know there has been a lot of talk about his state of sobriety, but it's all baseless. He looked…

We're about to leave lovely Madison, Wisconsin and the Freedom from Religion Convention. So here's a short summary: it was a good meeting and I was impressed with most of the speakers; Christopher Hitchens "pissed off" most of us as he promised to do, and the organization of the meeting could have…

Here's a simple little video game: Michael Behe vs. The Mousetraps. It does need some sound effects, and it's far too easy for Behe to get ID points.

One source of fuel hydrocarbons in the 19th century was the whaling industry. I guess that won't work in the 21st century. According to industry website SaveTheWhales.org, a sperm whale could produce 2000 gallons, or 47.6 barrels, of oil. Thus a touch of long division tells us that we will need to…

Nice bumper sticker.

This one won't cost you a thing: vote for Shelley Batts to win a scholarship. She's a freethinking neuroscientist — she's on of us. Give her a click, that's all we ask.

Last night, I attended talks by Katha Pollitt and Julia Sweeney here at the Freedom from Religion Convention, and I learned that the godless are a happy, humorous, good-natured group — even if I weren't philosophically inclined this way myself, I'd want to be a member of this community. Then this…

I unashamedly stole that title from Warren—it was just too good to pass up. If I was an opponent of framing before, I'm afraid my views have now hardened far more: one Framer thinks Al Gore, winner of the Nobel, is a flop. What does a person have to do to convince the framing crowd that they're…

As you read this, the Trophy Wife™ and I are zooming down I94, on our way to a pleasant weekend together in Madison for the Freedom from Religion Convention. Our hotel does have wi-fi, so have no fear — I won't be out of touch. And perhaps I'll have tales of Julia Sweeney and Christopher Hitchens…

When they say "Judeo-Christian", they actually mean "Judeo-Christian," and they actually hope it means "Jews-for-Jesus-Christian" someday. It's all good as long as it translates into more book sales to bigots.

Al Gore and the IPCC have won the 2007 Nobel Peace prize "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change". Now run for president, Al — we need someone with the…

Now you must donate to my DonorsChoose challenge. For the honor of the godless. One of those pathetic appeasers has made this an issue of the charity of atheists, has accused us of being "cheap bastards", and claims that his weak-kneed, wobbly camp of wooly-headed apologists for delusion are more…