pharyngula

Spring break starts…NOW. I'm done with classes for the day, and just have to make a trip out to St. Cloud to pick up my son for the weekend and my obligations are temporarily over, sort of. Way back at the beginning of the term when spring break seemed far, far away, I scheduled an exam for my…

Darksyde's latest Science Friday is an interview with Michael Grunwald on the subject of the Florida Everglades. It's a mostly bad news with threads of forlorn hope scattered throughout, like most environmental news. The bad news is that the ecosystem is in a state of near-collapse. Lake…

That was the best line in Larry King's interview of Jon Stewart. I didn't quite get the point of the interview, except as a study in contrasts: the dumbest and the smartest man in the news, and both are dealing in completely fake news. Stewart did do an excellent job of putting King in his place,…

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

Well, this isn't a big surprise: Rick Santorum is writing a foreword to a book…this book, Darwin's Nemesis, a volume that praises Philip Johnson, father of the Intelligent Design movement. Santorum has a very confused history with ID: he was the author of the Santorum amendment, an attempt to…

Never mind me, I'm running around with classes and meetings today…here are a few quick links. The 29th Skeptics' Circle. The Tildification of Norwegianity. The Terry Writing Challenge—there's real money involved. An in-depth interview with PZ Myers. I and the Bird. Intelligent Design subverts…

I've been savoring this lovely used book I picked up a little while ago, The Book of Spiders and Scorpions by Rod Preston-Mafham, and am appreciating more than the fact that it is full of beautiful photography of spiders and lots of general information on arachnid behavior and physiology; it's…

Robert F. Kennedy Jr, what the hell is wrong with you? I also refuse to pay any attention to the ghastly Huffington Post—it's an example of the worst excesses of left-wing credulity, as represented by that fraud and quack, Deepak Chopra.

And it's caught on tape. He was briefed the day before Katrina hit, heard Brown say this was "the big one", that it was a bigger threat than Hurricane Andrew was, that there was great risk of loss of life, and that the topping of the levees was of great concern, and then would say with a straight…

In my talk on Tuesday, I suggested that if we really want to teach the controversy, we ought to put the Norse creation myth in our classes. I had no idea the plan would be so popular.

Some things are just too stupid for words, but lots of people are emailing me about this fool's plan. A Las Vegas masonry contractor wants to amend the state constitution to require various inane ideas about evolution be taught to kids. He wants to enshrine his ignorance in the Nevada constitution…

Here are a couple of accounts of encounters with creationists that are amusing to read. Jobe Martin. Jobe Martin is, well, a radically insane classic young earth creationist, whose favorite arguments are all ancient chestnuts, like the receding moon and the woodpecker's tongue and other such tripe…

If you live near Austin, on 9 March there will be A Debate on the History of Life on Earth with Sahotra Sarkar and Paul Nelson. I scowl disapprovingly on the debate format: it means half the time is going to be wasted with some creationist babbling on stage. The topic, "Can the history of life on…

We laugh at the yahoos on the Kansas Board of Education who are dragging their state down the drain with bad science education, but don't confuse that with laughing at Kansans. There are some very smart people down there. I am very impressed with this op-ed by Cassie Gentry—she very effectively…

Afghanistan doesn't look pretty, and this cuts awful close to home for a teacher. Teachers are the main targets. Some have been beheaded, others shot in front of their classes. The years of fighting the Russians, the subsequent civil war and Taleban rule has produced a "lost generation" in…

We have a new Tangled Bank at Aetiology: Tangled Bank #48. It's kind of grungy this time, somehow…does Tara wear a lot of flannel and come from Seattle?

Powerline. Round about these parts, that name is pretty much a synonym for stupid, and I see they're doing a good job of maintaining their reputation. You'd think they'd learn that whenever they step into the domain of science, their level of ignorance is even more palpably apparent than usual.…

People are so cruel. I was busy all evening with this talk (which went well, I think), and lots of people flood my mailbox with news of the giant squid at the NHM. You know I can look out my window and see everything covered in over a foot of snow. You know I'm about as far from any sea as you can…

While I am intensely distracted—I'm freaking out a little bit over this Cafe Scientifique presentation I have to do in a couple of hours, and since I'm also the organizer I've also got to set up all the AV gear in a new venue and miscellaneous other mundane tasks—I'll let everyone talk among…

Creationists sometimes try to argue that what we consider straightforward, well-demonstrated cytological and genetic events don't and can't occur: that you can't get chromosome rearrangements, or that variations in chromosome number and organization are obstacles to evolution, making discussions of…

Followers of that hateful lunatic, Fred Phelps, have been making the news for picketing military funerals in Minnesota. Apparently, because the US tolerates (sorta) homosexuality, they feel that they should hit up random funerals and cuss out the dead for dying for homosexuality. Now our state…

The DI has long had this goal of getting their work published in mainstream science journals; unfortunately, they don't want to bother with that unpleasant business of trying to do real research. Give Up Blog has examples of their prodigious output: 5 abstracts that have been published in science…

It's up: a taxonomically organized and prettily illustrated collection of posts about invertebrates. You know you must go read it.

I've followed some of the doings of the Scientology cult, and it wasn't that long ago that criticizing the Religion That Elron Built would win you a lifetime supply of harrassment; they have long memories. Back in our naive youth, my brother and I made the mistake of taking one of their "tests"…

We shouldn't be surprised when the Bush administration jiggers the scientific books: In short, Oregon State University scientists reported in Science magazine that some logging practices may contribute to forest fires, rather than curbing them as conventional wisdom leads us to believe. The report…

Unbelievable. Orac and Matt have found an amazing carnival: Darwin is Dead. It's short; you can read all 5 entries in about 5 minutes, and I promise, it won't kill more than a few thousand brain cells. My favorite entry is the same as Orac's, but for a different reason. He seems to have missed this…

This sounds fun: a music theatre production illustrating Darwin's theory of evolution. Based on Haydn's The Creation, Darwin's Dream imagines the founder of evolution meeting modern children and challenging them to explore how his theory has advanced since his death in 1882. Their quest takes them…

Bone is a sophisticated substance, much more than just a rock-like mineral in an interesting shape. It's a living tissue, invested with cells dedicated to continually remodeling the mineral matrix. That matrix is also an intricate material, threaded with fibers of a protein, type II collagen, that…

Here's a request from gnosos: "Dr" Hovind is giving a speech on my campus tomorrow night in a 450 seat auditorium. Usually, questioners only get 15 seconds at the mic at these kinds of things, and I'm trying to think of a question that approaches one of his many glaring errors in thought in a…