pharyngula

This latest eruption of Wakefield's infamy has prompted a poll on vaccinations. The anti-vaxers have made a feeble effort, and Orac has already sent his minions, but I think we can push the evidence-based position even higher. You know what to do. Do you think vaccines are related to autism? Andrew…

They're discussing Venter's nifty new toy on Edge, and I've tossed my own contribution into the mix. It's a response to the doomsday fears I keep seeing expressed in response to the success of this project. I have to address one narrow point that is being discussed in the popular press and here on…

Randy Stimpson is someone a few may recall here: he was a particularly repetitious and dishonest creationist who earned himself a spot in the dungeon. One of the hallmarks of his obtuse way of 'thinking' is that he is a computer programmer, and so he was constantly making the category error of…

These conventions are popping up all over the place. Every time I mention one, I know there'll be a bunch of people complaining that it is too far or too expensive, but the hope is that one will be in your region and in your price range. This one is in Montreal on 1-3 October. One huge relief: the…

Andrew Wakefield has been found guilty of more than 30 charges of medical misconduct and has been struck off the role of medical practitioners in Great Britain. I'm sure he's not hurting, though: his celebrity friends will love him more, and his price for speaking engagements has no doubt just shot…

This story about antelope trickery struck a chord with me. When attempting to mate, the male will snort and stare as if he's spotted a predator, to make the female hesitate to move away. Guys, have you ever taken a girl to a scary movie in hopes that she'll want to hold your hand and snuggle up…

There was a terrible plane crash in India — a plane overshot the runway and plummeted off a cliff to explode. 158 dead; 8 survived. You can guess where this is going: Koolikkunnu Krishnan, one of the survivors, chose to spit in the dead faces of all the casualties and sneer at their families. "I've…

Angela Wright had a serious heart attack two months ago; she seems to have had a history of cardiovascular problems, because she'd also had a series of blood clots in her leg that required a partial amputation about 20 years ago. Her very supportive family seems to be the pious sort. They dropped…

The author of that phenomenally influential Mathematical Games column in Scientific American (if you are of a certain age you will remember it well), Martin Gardner, has died at the age of 95. 95 is a very interesting number, but then one of the things we learned from Gardner is that they all are.

Somebody ought to publish this 15 page comic about the anti-vaccination movement…and send it around to pediatricians' waiting rooms.

I've been following the reaction to the synthesis of a new life form by the Venter lab with some interest and amusement. There have been a couple of common directions taken, and they're generally all wrong. This is not to say that there couldn't be valid concerns, but that the loudest complaining…

The evil bastards have gone and done it. The right-wing dbags on the Texas board of education have approved their decrepit curriculum — you know, the one that has decided that Thomas Jefferson was persona non grata, while Joe McCarthy is a true American hero. It's a tragedy for the nation, because…

The ancient, wizened thread might be 2,300 years old, or 21,700 or 27,000 years. Isn't it nice to begin a quiet Saturday morning with a stomping of an old jailbird and fraud?

I'd mentioned before that the Royal Ontario Museum was sponsoring a talk by that pseudoscientific goober, Deepak Chopra — perhaps Ken Ham had been unavailable — and as you might guess, quite a few people are dumbfounded that a respected museum was bringing in a quack. You can help protest: Larry…

(Bath mosaic from Herculaneum, 79CE. From Joe Wilkins.)

Nototodarus hawaiiensis, Hawaiian flying squid Figure from Cephalopods: A World Guide (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Mark Norman.

Cynthia Dunbar, one of the wingnuts on the Texas board of education, is a revolting human being. She delivered a 'prayer' before a meeting that is an excellent example of grandstanding piety. She seems to be lecturing god on American history…her version of American history. Of course she wasn't…

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It's a poll about whether the Bible is an accurate historical document…and the people who think it is have a slight edge right now. Now, as I post this, that is. I have a suspicion that that will change very quickly. Genesis en Eksodus verteenwoordig volgens prof Willie Esterhuyse nie historiese…

Friendship is beautiful.

Draw Mohammed Day is over now, and we're getting the reactions now. Some people didn't get it, including Greg Epstein. There is a difference between making fun of religious or other ideas on a TV show that you can turn off, and doing it out in a public square where those likely to take offense…

Way back in the 1970s, a Spanish songwriter named Javier Krahe made this short satirical video. Let's take a gaunt Christ for every two persons. Remove the spikes and take the body from the cross, which will be left aside. The stigmas can be stuffed with bacon. Uncrust with warm water and dry…

TAM London 2010. 16-17 October.

We just hit the one millionth comment on Pharyngula, and it's Ichthyic. Protein synthesis: just sequence the DNA of something that already makes said protein and write it back out to a bacterium. If necessary, fiddle with the sequence before writing it out. http://www.iptv.org/exploremore/ge/what/…

Awww, it's my very first Islamic threat…and it's pretty tame compared to the Catholic rantings I get. MUSLIM!! Do you know by doing such things like drawing the cartoon of Our Holy Prophet will make us aggravated!. If I`ve ever come across you I swear I will relieve myself with this burden.…

Get in the mood for this bit of news, the synthesis of an artificial organism by Craig Venter's research team. Here's the equivalent of that twitching hand of Frankenstein's monster: Those are two colonies of Mycoplasma mycoides, their nucleoids containing entirely synthesized DNA. You can tell…

We're hearing the first stirrings of a big story: Craig Venter may have created the first organism with an artificially synthesized genome. Conceptually, building a strand of DNA and inserting it into a cell stripped of its genome is completely unsurprising — of course it will work, a cell is just…

Once again, the overflowing thread must spill over into a new vessel. Speak amongst yourselves as you are accustomed, but you might want to also weigh in another issue. The comment threads are getting a bit fractious in general, and I keep hearing calls to ban so-and-so, throw whoever into the…

It's that day when everyone should draw Mohammed. You can just do the traditional stick figure, or you can get fancy — I like this one, a kind of Mohammed transitional series in which you have to draw the line where blasphemy occurs. I can't draw. The only thing I could think of was to sketch out…