pharyngula

Did I say it was St Patrick's Day? I was mistaken…it is actually AIR KRAKEN DAY! While you're celebrating with excessive imbibage today, keep scanning the skies—about the time you fall over backwards and your eyes are glazing and defocusing, you might just spot the fabulous air kraken gliding…

Many carnivals to keep you distracted on St Patrick's Day! Friday Ark #130 Carnival of the Liberals #34 Oekologie #3 Skeptics' Circle #56 Four Stone Hearth #11 Carnival of Education #110

If a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, the insignificant, minute information Adams has on evolution must be exceedingly risky—it's like the atom bomb of ignorance. In this case, it's not entirely his fault, though. He read the recent Newsweek cover story on evolution, which fed his biases and…

Little things can expose serious injustice. For example, this story about two women being thrown out of a restaurant for a kiss…we need reminders like this that discrimination is real, and it hurts people. There is no federal law prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation. Neither…

My latest column for Seed, Variant Genes-in-Waiting, is now online. If you subscribed, you would have already read it earlier this week. By the way, my mom subscribes, too, and she gives it a thumbs up. I'll have to find out what she thinks about my next column, which is all about beetle testes (…

It's been a busy day—if you've noticed it's been quiet here, it's because I've been driving back and forth to St Cloud to help my son get situated in his new apartment, and also, by the way, today is our wedding anniversary — note that my wife cleverly scheduled it to be exactly one week after my…

Trust me, this is really good — it gets it all exactly right.

The latest Nature reveals a new primitive mammal fossil collected in the Mesozoic strata of the Yan mountains of China. It's small and unprepossessing, but it has at least two noteworthy novelties, and first among them is that it represents another step in the transition from the reptilian to the…

Don't rush to get tickets to New Zealand just yet—the colossal squid is frozen in a block of ice, and they don't plan to even start thawing it for another year (there aren't any other reasons to visit NZ than to see the squid, right?). To minimise handling of the precious specimen, the colossal…

Idiosepius notoides Figure from Cephalopods: A World Guide (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Mark Norman.

Garrison Keillor has done it again: he's written another insipid article loaded with casual bigotry, this time against gays. I'm pleased to see that Dan Savage has savaged him, so I don't need to go on at length. However, this really isn't the first time Keillor has done this—he has a history of…

Last month, I tried a new motivational tactic to reward good commenting, allowing you to nominate and select one of the commenters here for the Order of the Molly award, acknowledging excellence in commenting. Kristine Harley and Scott Hatfield won that recognition that time around. I said it was…

Isn't abstinence-only sex education wonderful?

Sphyrocephala beccarii Here is a spectacularly pretty and weird animal: stalk-eyed flies of the family Diopsidae. There are about 160 species in this group that exhibit this extreme morphology, with the eyes and the antennae displaced laterally on stalks. They often (but not always) are sexually…

Wow. Pete Stark has been raked over the coals by the Christian Seniors organization—what a wicked man he must be. "It is sad but not surprising that the current Congress has produced this historic first—one of its members has denied God," said CSA Executive Director James Lafferty. "The liberals…

Today is Craig McClain's birthday, and all anyone got him for a present was some magic sea water quackery. Somebody should go say happy birthday without trying to restore his cellular homeostasis by selling him overpriced salt water.

Write faster, everyone, you don't have much time. Bruce Sterling gives blogs only ten more years. "There are 55 million blogs and some of them have got to be good," Sterling said, during a speech here at the SXSW conference in reference to the slogan on blog search site technorati.com. "Well, no,…

If you go to the main ScienceBlogs page, you'll discover that the Buzz for the day is this little gem, triggered by one of our newbie bloggers: Spirituality and Science Over the last few hundred years, science has provided a mind-boggling richness of answers about the workings of the universe. For…

That article I wrote on the Albert Mohler's bizarre endorsement of gene therapy for gay fetuses got quoted in an AP article on the subject. Unfortunately, they don't provide enough info for readers to find their way back here, but it does give a good range of perspectives anyway.

Australian comedy may be a risky business — didn't they give us both Yahoo Serious and Barry Humphries?1 — but in case you want to chance it, I've been informed by Ben McKenzie, The Man in the Lab Coat, that he'll be doing a comedy lecture show about science this April. Here's a cool thing: he has…

GrrlScientist has put up the latest edition of the Tangled Bank at Living the Scientific Life.

Here's a good interview with Brian Flemming, the documentarian behind The God Who Wasn't There, who also irritated a lot of prissy reactionaries who have too-tight pants with his blasphemy challenge on youtube. Simon Owens: Do you think the "blasphemy project" is an effective way for atheists to…

Dave Thomas has written an op-ed opposing a bill in New Mexico that would promote Intelligent Design creationism in the classroom under the guise of academic freedom. This is a standard ID game; carefully word the bills so that they refer vaguely to some evidence that doesn't exist, so that they…

Umm, well, I very much like this stuffed giant squid (15' long!), but I really can't justify an $1800 toy. Maybe someday when I grow up and am rich and have some grandkids I need to spoil… He sure looks neat-o, though.

David Menton, one of the 'authorities' at Answers in Genesis, has scribbled up another mendacious collection of nonsense about tetrapod evolution. Alas, poor Menton — he caught the attention of Martin Brazeau, a real scholar and researcher in sarcopterygian and tetrapod evolution, who did what…

So, in the last election, we Minnesotans briefly enjoyed the company of a vampire running for governor. Unfortunately, Jonathon "The Impaler" Sharkey was arrested before the election and we missed out on the potentially amusing spectacle. Somehow, though, he is now free (damn those cunning vampires…

…and some people think I have a posse. I guess it's my fault the Creation "Science" Fair had reduced participation, and Greg Laden and I can share responsibility for them hiding away their photos. Someone asked about the reason for the pictures coming down, so I looked again and found your question…

Here, you can have nightmares too. I could hardly believe this topic that came up in the comments: gospel mimes. I thought it had to be some cynical joke, that no one would combine those two things…but it's real. There are plenty of examples on YouTube, and jpf dug up a list: K&K Mime…

I had a premonition that this would happen: that when I wrote about The Strange Case of the Woman with a Breast on her Foot someone would suggest that I should have put a "Not Safe For Work" warning on it, even ironically, perhaps. It's such a common thing, that we voluntarily self-censor; I've…

I got a request to spread the word around Minnesota—the anti-vaxers are gearing up again to push a silly bill in the Minnesota congress. I've put the letter below. If any of these people are your representatives, contact them and tell them they are being very, very silly. There's supposed to be a…