pharyngula

I just got a long, whiny, self-serving email from a Mr John Buford, in which he claims that I was in error for banning him, because he once took a 4-credit course in anthropology, and his comments about race are therefore credible. You may recall Mr Buford by his pseudonym, "hahajohnnyb". He's a…

The other day, I pointed out that tasteless web design is a hallmark of crazy web sites, and used this Overcompensating comic to illustrate it…and you all scurried over to Timecube to see one of the best examples on the web. I got this email today. Dear Mr. Meyers, Putting aside any offensive…

Fans of classic SF will be grieved to learn that both Patrick McGoohan, AKA The Prisoner, and Ricardo Montalban, AKA Khan Noonien Singh, will now only be accessible on DVD in the movie room of your local SF convention and on late night television. We want information. Did Montalban quote Moby Dick…

People are telling me that my blog entries are getting sprinkled with creationist ads in the RSS feeds, like this: Heh. I think it's great. This is an old and familiar game that has been played for years, where creationists buy up lots and lots of ad placement on searches for topics in…

The intelligent design creationists are jubilant — a paper has been published that shows that organisms were front-loaded with genes for future function! It describes "'latent' or 'preexistent' evolutionary potential" in our history, they say. One small problem. The paper says nothing of the kind…

Perhaps you'll appreciate this little ditty for Roy Zimmerman and family.

Some of you have noticed some little instabilities around here since the software upgrade. Well, fasten your seatbelts, it's going to get a little more rocky tonight. Our crack technical team is going to be ripping into the database and shaking some more bugs out of the system overnight, and while…

Aren't letters to the editor fun? They publish some of the craziest stuff. One of the many problems with Darwin's theory of evolution pertaining to mankind is that neither Charles Darwin nor his worshippers take into account extra-terrestrial life. It's pretty hard for someone to draw conclusions…

It's not good news for Texas children in the public school system. A new survey released by the nonprofit group Texans Care for Children shows that one out of every three Texas students may not make their way across the graduation stage to receive their diploma. The survey reveals that Texas is…

Check it out — it's the Paleobet! It is a little awkward to discover this late in life that the "p" is silent.

You may have noticed a recent influx of whining wackaloons, whose enchanting cries have consisted mostly of "You're all so uncivil" and "This is not a science blog". This is fallout from the Weblog Awards, where a couple of climate change denialist blogs have effectively turned out the disgruntled…

Jeffrey Rowland points out a great truth: there must be a conspiracy of bad web design behind all the wacky sites on the web. If he'd only more carefully read one of the victims of the conspiracy, David Icke, he'd have drawn the web design expert as a reptoid illuminatus. Wait! Everyone knows this…

The talkorigins domain has been inaccessible for some time now…but no more. All the problems have been resolved and you can now find all the content back online at talkorigins.org.

One of our Seed blogs, Chaotic Utopia, is experiencing one of the normal stages in the life cycle of a blog: she is closing it down and moving on to other projects. Stop by and wish her the best. Maybe one of the new projects will get mentioned here sometime in the future, too — keep in touch,…

Genome sequencing is getting cheaper and faster, and more and more people are having it done. A new addition to the ranks is Steve Pinker, who contemplates the details of his personal genome in an interesting essay. It's got to be fascinating, in a terribly self-centered way — I'd love to have a…

That guy Ben Goldacre just blew my mind. What is the most popular cosmetic surgery in Asia? Blepharoplasty. Many people want to have the Western "double eyelid", while I didn't even know I had a double eyelid until I saw a few comparison pictures! In addition to plastic surgery, people buy cheap…

The Buffalo Beast's 50 most loathsome people of 2008 list is out. Don't worry, the viciousness is bipartisan.

I don't know. People keep telling me to turn out the vote for the 2008 Weblog Awards, but given that it's a race between me and two truly awful pseudoscientific denialist blogs, it's hard to work up much enthusiasm. It was much more fun when it was a competition between me and Phil Plait, where at…

Ann Coulter has been pestering me a lot, lately. Half the right-wing email I get seems to consist of that thick-skulled harpy howling insanely about Al Franken — she seems genuinely staggered by the possibility that us left-wing moonbats actually fought to get him elected. I'm a bit dismayed to…

Well, if you believe in online polls, they don't like it very much. But hey, you know what we think of online polls! I suspect that we'll be able to win over all of the beautiful country of Spain with a few clicks on all of our computers. Here's the question, and the current state of affairs: Que…

I've been hiding from the horrible news in the Middle East, but this story induced me to poke my head out of my tortoise shell…so I can puke. A rabbi consulted his holy books to see what God had to say about the vicious violence going on right now, and you can guess what God's word might be:…

We're one step closer to self-sustaining chemical replicators, similar to what would have existed a few billion years ago, before true cells evolved. Lincoln and Joyce have created a couple of relatively simple molecules that assemble themselves from even simpler precursors in a test tube. It's…

The Brunswick school district is still arguing about teaching creationism. As is typical, the usual clueless ideologues from the community are getting up there in front of the board and babbling. Look at this argument: The topic came up after county resident Joel Fanti told the board he thought it…

This morning at 9am (in about an hour!), Atheist Talk radio will have an interview with Todd Allen Gates, to talk about this subject: What if the Christian god really existed?  That's the premise that author Todd Allen Gates takes in his book "Dialogue with a Christian Proselytizer."  What…

It looks like Pharyngula is back online…at least I'm seeing new comments appear. Now let's see if I can post anything. How about another pointless poll? In a web page for some TV show I've never seen, ABC is asking, "Did Arlene have the right to refuse to vaccinate two of her sons?" (I presume this…

I was startled to see that John McCain hasn't been retired to the WaxWorks Museum of Irrelevant Political Figures yet — he's still making speeches. Could somebody tell him that he'll never, ever have a shot at the presidency again? Anyway the subject of his speech was to sneer at fruit fly research…

Everyone start singing now, this is a heartwarming story. Sid is an octopus in the Portobello Aquarium. Sid has the clever octopus habit of escaping — he disappeared for days, and was later discovered hiding in a seawater drain. So what is the aquarium to do with the sneaky fellow? Set him free!…

Pharyngula will be going silent this afternoon. Do not panic, do not call 911, do not convert to Catholicism in a desperate search for succor. The Seed overlords are implementing a much-needed upgrade to the software that drives this place, so some of the functions will be turned off this afternoon…

Heliocranchia pfefferi (via The Telegraph)