pharyngula

The creationist fruit-loop du jour left another comment here in which he tried to taunt me with his proximity ("is Minneapolis-St. Paul close enough to Morris for you?") which wasn't very effective, since his IP address said he was commenting from a community college in North Carolina. And then he…

Feeling pragmatic? Is your focus entirely practical, on what works and what will get the job done? Are you one of those fighters for evolutionary biology who waves away all the theory and the abstractions and the strange experimental manipulations, and thinks the best argument for evolution is the…

Oh, no, I'm torn — I'm an atheist who thinks IQ tests are over-rated and over-interpreted, and here's a Danish study that claims that atheists have IQs that average 5.8 points higher than theists'. Actually, I'm lying and I'm not really torn at all. I don't buy it. I think IQ tests are loaded with…

Next time GrrlScientist comes to visit, we're going to have to record what she says early in the morning, and then play it back ten times faster — I have a suspicion that we'll hear birdsong. At least, that's the way this video art installation by Marcus Coates works. He had people sing strange…

It's an interesting argument, although to be perfectly fair, it ought to admit that everyone has their own bubbles of delusion — some are just less silly than others.

These stories about the Humboldt squid invasion off the California coast keep turning up — the latest from the San Jose Mercury News is broadly informative, and even cites a fresh new paper in PNAS. The work correlates the depth range of the squid with that of the Pacific hake, and also shows a…

There's always the quick and easy icepick lobotomy for rapid relief. All joking aside, follow the link: it tells of the infamous Dr Walter Freeman, who lobotomized thousands of people in this horrific fad of irreversibly ripping up people's brains to change their behavior. The story of poor Howard…

The Weekly World News, source of many an idle moment's entertainment while waiting in the grocery store checkout line, is about to become an ex-tabloid. Bat boy will be homeless. Ed Anger will have no outlet for his rage. Fox News will have no competition. American Journalism has lost a shining…

In a disturbing story, a Korean man fishing for octopus brought several aboard that were clinging to some pottery shards, which led to the discovery of rare 12th century Korean bowls left on the sea floor by a shipwreck. No word on whether the guardian cephalopods were going to receive a cut of the…

A correspondent just reminded me of this classic paper from the literature—it's the only contemporary scientific work I know of that managed to combine a discussion of the induction of a tissue by TGF-β and BMP proteins with a discussion of the Hebrew noun tzela to suggest that the book of Genesis…

You never know who might be wielding the knife.

Having read Mooney's Storm World last week, I can't be too disturbed by this bit of news: the pizza man who is fanatically devoted to the pope, Tom Monaghan, is opening his new planned town dedicated to Catholic values next Saturday. There will be no porn or contraceptives available in town, but I…

Perhaps I was a little too surprised at the utterly bizarre criticisms Michael Egnor made of my talk at the Minnesota Atheists this weekend — he wasn't there, he didn't know what I said, but he went ahead and tried to rebut what he thought I would have said anyway — that I was more interested in…

Fabulous news: the Palestinian and Bulgarian health care workers who were falsely accused by the Libyan government of infecting children with AIDS, who were sentenced to death, and who had their sentence then commuted to life in prison, have been given a pardon and released. They are currently in…

Creationism is only the beginning. Kansas is showing us a whole new way of thinking about everything on the curriculum.

I just got home a short while ago, and it's 90°, my shirt is soaked through with sweat, and the feeble breeze here isn't strong enough to provide any relief at all, but it is from precisely the right direction to stir the thick olfactory stew from the nearby swine farms to sluggishly settle on…

We should be quaking in our jackboots: a media counterattack is being launched against us wicked atheists. They have a website! American Vision is launching a relentless and systematic response to militant atheism. We've produced a brilliant 2-minute commercial that we plan to broadcast globally…

I'm busily tied up for the most of the day at the Twin Cities branch of the University of Minnesota — Skatje is taking the new student tour because she plans to transfer here in a year — but I also took advantage of this visit to get my own copy of Haryun Yahya's Atlas of Creation. My thanks to…

The first review of my talk yesterday is in! Too bad it is from somebody who wasn't there and who is a world-class fool. Yes, it's Michael Egnor again, and he's got a lengthy post up with the pretext of giving me advice on future talks, but is really an attempt to preempt my arguments and chide me…

So I'm hanging out at a coffeeshop prior to lecturing people with a primer on basic neuroscience and the limits of the adaptationist paradigm (in addition to telling a group of atheists that there are rational reasons for people to be religious—that'll be fun*), so you'll have to get your godless…

It's a personal tragedy that Tammy Faye has died, but someone else will have to let their mascara run. She and her husband bilked thousands of people, lied lied lied, perpetuated superstitious myths, lived lives of gag-inducing hypocrisy, and wallowed in outrageous self-pity when their empire of…

It must be funny pages day today—Doonesbury also gives us a good one that raises a good question about blastocysts. I wish somebody could give a nice, coherent, sensible explanation of the reasoning on this one. We've got swarms of people — including good Christian people who want to be parents —…

Today's Non Sequitur gives me a line I'll have to remember: "victimizing people with reason." No wonder people get peevish with me…I'm just a thug for rationality.

In an article that suggests you can judge a blogger by their commenters, we get a snap assessment of Pharyngula and you, the commenters: Pharyngula writes smart stuff that looks down on religion; he gets smart and dismissive commenters. I wouldn't reject that characterization, but there has to be…

The open thread produced a couple of interesting articles I thought worthy of highlighting. The first is a story from Canada about the growing godless movement. It's very positive and avoids the cheap tactic of presenting this as a scary or worrisome prospect. Ms. Gaylor [of the Freedom From…

Tomorrow, Sunday, at 1:00 in the Roseville Library, I'll be giving a talk on "There Are No Ghosts in Your Brain: Materialist Explanations for the Mind and Religious Belief". Come on down and argue with me! Now I have to get back to polishing this talk up. I suppose no more than ten powerpoint…

Fun stuff to read: Carnival of Education #128 The Ever-Present Past: Your Nearest Site Friday Ark #148 Carnival of the Liberals #43 Skeptics' Circle #65 Now write whatever you feel like saying in that empty box down below:

Don't let the sight ruin your breakfast, but you can catch me babbling on bloggingheads right now. Don't try to compare it to Sean Carroll's star turn, OK? Also note the traditional misspelling of my name. I'm thinking of doing a Prince or Madonna and getting it legally changed to just "PZ".

The Countess dropped me a note to say I might get a laugh out of this list of the 100 Unsexiest Men of 2007, and I had a brief, horror-stricken thought that the reason was because I was on it. That's the only reason I read the whole thing. Dick Cheney is only at 77? There's something wrong there.