pharyngula

…on a crustacean? Kiwa hirsuta is a new decapod crustacean discovered living near hydrothermal vents in the Pacific. It's eyeless as well as hairy. I'm sure there's a dumb blonde joke in this somewhere, or since it was discovered by a French team, something about unshaven armpits. I wonder how low…

That strange raspy rumbly sound you hear is the frozen earth shifting as Minnesota edges away from that deranged state to our west.

There's a bizarre "interview" with David Berlinski at one of the ID blogs. What's bizarre about it, and the reason I have to put "interview" in quotes, is that the interviewer and interviewee are both David Berlinski. It is nothing more than a pompous exercise in preening his ego; he arrogantly…

Please forgive me: you've probably all forgotten Fred Hutchison, the incredibly delusional right-wing paragon of hubris, but I've got to bring him up again. He wrote one of the more painful diatribes against evolution on Alan Keyes "Renew America" site (yeah, that Alan Keyes; you know we're deep in…

(via Feministing)

First Gabe and Tycho, and now Josh…it's so cute. I bought my very first Mac in 1984, the 128K model, with an external disk drive. I later upgraded that to an amazing 512K of RAM, with a 30MB hard drive. I'm a truly godless man, but if I have anything close to religion, it is the Cult of Macintosh.

DFLers, today is the day for the precinct caucuses. Here in Morris, we're meeting in Old Number One Southside at 7 PM—be there! Most importantly, Pete Wyckoff is running for the chairmanship of the Stevens County DFL party. We need to get a scientist elected for the position, since this is our…

I was just thinking there was something especially weird about that Wilkow rant against abortion. He's asked whether life begins at conception, and he replies with an irksomely stupid question of his own: "…scientifically speaking, when a sperm and egg comes together, what happens? Is death created…

Minnesota had a vampire running for governor, which was pretty messed up…but Pandagon has found a couple of real prizes among the new crop of candidates, Merrill Keiser and Larry Kilgore. Keiser is anti-abortion and anti-homosexuals—he thinks homosexuality should be punishable by death. Kilgore…

We're going to have to rethink all monotheistic religions, actually, since a study now proves the universe was created by a committee. The most extensive analysis yet undertaken of the structure and contents of the universe conclusively proves the universe was created not by a single entity, as has…

One wonders exactly how desperate or deluded a young biology graduate would have to be to accept this job? Position: Biology Salary: Unspecified Institution: Liberty University Location: Virginia Date posted: 3/6/2006 Biology: Liberty University invites applications for: Faculty member with Ph.D…

Seed sent me a copy of this book, What We Believe but Cannot Prove : Today's Leading Thinkers on Science in the Age of Certainty(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), and I've been browsing. It's a collection of short essays (sometimes very short) on assumptions held by individual thinkers without solid evidence…

This Spring Break thing is overrated, I think. My usual day is so cleanly circumscribed and planned that I have a feeling of liberty: my PDA goes off to tell me I have a class or meeting, my little to-do list warns me of impending deadlines, and when I'm in between tasks, I at least have the…

Amy Sullivan is not one of the people I want advising the Democratic party…unless, that is I suddenly decided I wanted to be a Republican, and was feeling too lazy to change my voter registration. She's got one note that she plays loudly over and over again: Democrats need to be more religious. Why…

He's been nominated for some category or other in the Koufaxes—I think it's "Most consistently creative misspellings of a blogger's name"—but no one has voted for him yet. Somebody out there must appreciate philosophy and science and is willing to toss him a bone, right?

The Da Vinci Code is opening up some interesting contrasts—like creationists who suddenly find scholarship and expertise in a discipline to be worth something. Just to correct one false impression: the blogger that led to the article does plainly state that he "has no truck with creationism".…

I'm stretched out in my easy chair getting ready to watch the Oscars this evening, when this horrid 'news' profile about Brokeback Mountain and middle America comes on. I found it offensive: they seem to have sought out the most narrow-minded representatives of this part of the country—your…

The 35th Carnival of the Godless seems a bit…impromptu, this time around.

Josh Rosenau managed to get a few words with Barack Obama. He only had five minutes, but it's interesting stuff—it's too bad there wasn't time for some questions about science or science policy!

If you're a fan of kitsch and Christianity, don't read this article. You'll think it starts out OK… Thomas Kinkade is famous for his luminous landscapes and street scenes, those dreamy, deliberately inspirational images he says have brought "God's light" into people's lives, even as they have made…

Doonesbury is perfect today. Ever had this problem? Then what you need is…situational science! The Discovery Institute should love it, too—respect for the side of the scientific argument that is completely unsupported by any evidence is exactly what they are demanding.

Ken Ham shows his sleazy colors a little more. Ham and Answers in Genesis have split from the organization that included Carl Wieland of Creation Ministries International. Big deal, you say; so what if a gang of creationist wankers can't keep their act together? The interesting thing is why Ham…

In case you were wondering, GrrlScientist has a link to Billboard's list of number one songs, so you can find out what people were listening to on important dates in recent history. For instance, in the month when I was conceived, the number one song in the US was "Teddy Bear" by Elvis Presley, and…

Ummm, well…seven eight Koufax nominations is rather flattering. These are the semi-finals, though, so it may well be that none of them make it to the finals, and to then actually win one is an even more unlikely eventuality, but hey, here I am. If you want to vote, all you have to do is follow the…

Unlike Orac, I'm happy with the ship I've been assigned; I suspect Chris wouldn't mind ending up on the good ship Serenity, either, although Chad might have some gripes (oddly, I'm less bothered by the wacky physics of the Firefly universe than I am by the abominable biology of Trek). We science…

Sad news: Carl Buell and Hank Fox have lost a good friend, Tito. Dogs are easy animals to get to know, sometimes too easy. I haven't been able to bear the thought of having a dog again since the day, when I was 12, that I stepped off the school bus one afternoon to find my dog, Snoop, crushed and…

A reader sent me a link to this video of Spore by Will Wright—it's the new simulation/god game/tinker toy by the maker of SimCity and the Sims. It looks very, very cool, and I think I'm going to want a copy when it's available for my computer—but one thing has to be cleared up. This is not a game…

OK, I should balance my non-random ten with a random ten, so here they are: Somewhere In Texas The Raveonettes Strange Fruit Billy Holiday Three Bikes in the Sky Tangerine Dream Woman Of Heart And Mind Joni Mitchell Us Regina Spektor Black Milk Eighth From The Egg Tanaka Sound Saian…

These things have a way of snowballing…Luis kindly sends me a couple of Roy Zimmerman CDs, I make a comment about it, and next thing you know, the friendly people at Meta4Records send me the other albums he has made. I've got the complete collection now! So I created a Zimmerman playlist in iTunes…

Curse you, Orac. He had to pass along a link to a podcast interview with William Dembski. It was extremely aggravating—Dembski is dishonest bloviator of the first water. He blames the loss in Dover on everyone else: it was the Dover school board's fault because they had religious motives (and…