pharyngula

Katherine Kersten is Minnesota's own version of Glenn Beck. She's a 'columnist' (literally true, since she is given a regular column to fill with right-wing nonsense) for the Star Tribune, and is a regular embarrassment. She recently aimed her smear-gun at the University of Minnesota, in a deranged…

This is a fascinating article about Hitler's library: he was an avid collector and reader, and part of his collection still exists, and you can even stroll down to the Library of Congress and ask to browse through the stockpile. The bulk of the books are about military strategy and tactics, and a…

I think I like this woman. Nell McCafferty rips into representatives of the Catholic church, asking, "What's holy about the Vatican?" and insisting that they ought to set aside the titles of "Father" and "Grace" and so forth, because they've betrayed them. I love the Irish when they get that fire…

I'm going to be on radio station KPFK, 90.7 FM in LA, at 10:15am California time (12:15 Central time). You can also listen in via the web. This is a left-wing Pacifica station, so I'm sure they'll be piping it into all the California shopping malls in place of Muzak, so if you're out shopping,…

In March, there's going to be a massive atheist conference in Melbourne, Australia. It's going to be excellent, with speakers being brought in from around the world, and with mobs of delighted godless Aussies gathering to celebrate and discuss secularism (I know some of my readers here will be…

Michael Young was a nasty old Christian bigot who lived a long life and left his fortune to his relatives. Apparently,though, fundamentalist hate isn't necessarily heritable, and one of those relatives, who I think is named Anthony Perry, established the Michael Young Fund, and is handing out the…

Or I would have roasted one yesterday. I wonder if you can get free-range turctopus?

Vampyroteuthis infernalis

They have successfully spawned. Say hello to Huxley Laden!

The thread continues. Since we were last debating the merits of pie, I give you…evil pie. Probably rhubarb. I have no idea what those subtitles say, but it's probably something horrific.

I know, it's Thanksgiving in America, and I've already been curmudgeonly enough for you—but I have to do you the favor now of ruining your appetite with this tale of institutionalized child abuse in Ireland. It involves the Catholic Church, of course (and isn't that unsurprising ennui just another…

By way of the endless thread, I have discovered this marvelous quote from Andy Schlafly. There's a broader point here. Why the big push for black holes by liberals, and big protests against any objection to them? If it turned out empirically that promoting black holes tends to cause people to read…

Sorry, I don't believe in Thanksgiving Day. This whole notion that one should have vague and aimless feelings of gratitude for the nature of one's existence is just too weird, and the bow-your-head-at-the-table and radiate-blessings-at-the-cosmos tradition is pointless and silly. Don't get me wrong…

I've met him a few times, and that's the impression I get in person and in his writings, and I certainly can't object to that. I haven't yet read his new book, Good Without God, but I'm pretty sure I'll come away from it as I would from a heaping plate of marzipan and sugar cookies and chocolate…

Want another reason to avoid debating creationists? It's like giving a mangy, limping, scab-encrusted starving fleabait cat a saucer of milk — you'll never be rid of the whimpering dependent. Ross Olson of the Twin Cities Creation Science Association has taken to pestering me and Mark Borrello with…

And wouldn't you know it, right there in the title it announces that I'm mild-mannered. Next time, I swear, I'm gonna…I'm gonna…I'm not sure what I'm going to do. Maybe I'll take off my glasses. Maybe I'll cuss, darn it. I've got to do something to shed this teddy bear reputation. A tattoo, you…

Yet more skeptics have spoken out: Randi, Orac, and Novella, on the case of the Belgian man who is claimed to have awakened from a persistent vegetative state, and is even, supposedly, writing a book about his 23 years trapped in an unresponsive body. It's possible that he has recovered to some…

There is a Seventh Day Adventist college, La Sierra University, which has horrified church leaders because their biology department is infested with evolutionists. It just goes to show: educate an intelligent person in biology, and they can't help but accept evolutionary theory as the idea best…

Don't miss it next year: Rebecca Watson reviews Skepticon II, both the talks and the social scene. And if that's not enough, Carl Sagan's Dance Party recorded a podcast with several of us while we were there. People are asking if the talks at Skepticon were recorded. Yes! The whole two days are…

We've had an infestation of insane trolls today who have babbled incoherently about who knows what…I think Keith Knight has captured them perfectly.

The media can't let today pass by without doing something stupid, so here are a few unfortunate faux pas from our news outlets. Newsweek has published a dozen reasons to celebrate Darwin. The first? Darwin wasn't an atheist! Huzzah! He also wasn't a Jew, let's celebrate that! The second isn't much…

Today is the 150th anniversary of the publication of Darwin's On the Origin of Species, and a few sites have taken notice. A new science blog, The Whirlpool of Life, opens today. CNN has published a brief retrospective from Richard Dawkins. It focuses entirely on "militant atheism", which is odd…

So Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort showed up at UCLA to hand out their vandalized editions of the Origin, and Kirk got caught on video (with horrible sound and video quality, unfortunately) getting rhetorically bitch-slapped in an argument with a UCLA student. Be proud, California universities, you're…

You may have heard the recent news about a Belgian man who was diagnosed as being in a persistent vegetative state after an accident, but who now has been miraculously discovered to have actually been conscious for the last 23 years, trapped in a partially paralyzed body. How horrific, and how…

This excellent article in the Chicago Tribune documents the abuses of science by quacks. Legitimate researchers identify certain properties of autism — markers for inflammation in the brain, for instance, or correlations with testosterone — and write up papers that even go out of their way to…

Uh-oh. This episode of Mr Deity will fire up some denunciations. Take a deep breath, and remember, he's satirizing religious attitudes. Listen through to the end, though — he has an excellent suggestion. This weekend is Thanksgiving, and instead of sitting through another football game, put a Mr…

Ross Olson of the Twin Cities Creation Science Association has sent me the results of the survey that was given at the debate. He is trying to spin it as supporting the claim that this kind of debate was "useful" — but I'm unimpressed. About 500 people attended, 290 returned the survey. The survey…

Enjoy. This is part of a whole series at Symphony of Science.

One of the peculiarities of my recent debate with Jerry Bergman was that he announced his definition of irreducible complexity, which he claimed to be the same as Michael Behe's…and under which carbon atoms were IC. It was utterly absurd. A reader wrote to Behe to get his opinion. I recently…