pharyngula

There's a science fiction convention going on in San Francisco this weekend, and I wish I could attend for this one reading: Fritz Leiber will be reading from his recently completed work, as well as answering audience questions. Leiber is one of my all-time favorite authors, which is one reason to…

Check out this hypothetic version of a science test for Christians. I thought it was really easy, but apparently, I got the answers all wrong.

For a party that campaigns on small government and reducing interference in private lives, the Rethuglicans sure are ready to heap more restrictions on women. Look at the consequences of Nebraska's anti-choice law. In Nebraska, one law already in existence heaped needless trauma on a mother's…

This isn't a news service: go to the BBC or CNN now and read up on the 8.9 earthquake that just hit Japan. There is a tsunami rippling across the Pacific right now, too.

A while back, I had a guest post here by Amy Peters; in it, she described taking her son to the zoo and being awed and choking up at the similarities between us and chimpanzees — it's a nice moment of transcendance, when a person sees a deeper connection. One of the creationist dim-bulbs at Answers…

I also like the theme of this song from George Hrab.

How nice. The Journal of Cosmology has published a set of commentaries on that awful 'bacteria in meteorites' paper — they're almost entirely positive, almost fawning. There seems to be a dearth of critical thinking in this field…or it's a filtered list. They have also added a Statement to the…

I don't believe one word of this study that claims staring at breasts improves longevity. It doesn't make sense, the evidence can't support it, and the methodology is dubious. A rather bizarre study carried out by German researchers suggests that staring at women's breasts is good for men's health…

Scott Aikin and Robert Talisse are coming out with a book called Reasonable Atheism, and they argued for some form of accommodationism in a recent blog entry. I left a brief comment in which I pointed out that they had misrepresented the Gnu Atheists in one section. This has prompted a rebuttal to…

Whoa — Richard Dawkins will be on Revelation TV — it looks the the British version of the Trinity Broadcast Network or similar jebus-walloping station — shortly, at 3:30 GMT. It will be streamed live on the net. I'm listening to a bit of their programming now, and it's ghastly, nauseating stuff. I'…

Admit it. You all have wanted to see Daniel Craig in a dress. That's a fantastically effective spot, and also…Craig looks damned good in that dress. Another interesting thing is that the MRAs are enraged by it. I did think this comment was amusing: Craig's Bond is faggy anyway. Sean Connery not…

I lived in Philadelphia for seven years — it's a great city, and it's also an amazing ethnic patchwork. The residents are proud of the fact that the city's neighborhoods have so much character, although it also means that there is a bit more racial tension lurking in the city, and there are also…

It's a real shame. Forty million years ago, this pair of mites, Glaesacarus rhombeus, had just buckled down to a happy grind, when plop, a drop of tree sap fell on them and entombed them in flagrante delicto. Also, coitus interruptus. And as long as we're slinging around the Latin, Perfututum!.…

Benjamin mentioned this evil little ditty in the last iteration of the chatty thread, so now I shall inflict it on you. (Current totals: 12,009 entries with 1,304,491 comments.)

Don't you know it's my birthday? There's supposed to be some happy news to lighten my evening. But no, instead I learned that Wisconsin Rethuglicans made an end run to approve their governor's union-busting bill. Phil Neuenfeldt, president of the state AFL-CIO, said Wednesday night's maneuver "…

This is unbelievable. James O'Keefe, he of the Acorn fraud, of the aborted seduction, the unimaginative weasel whose sole game is staging bogus scenarios with his ideological opponents and trying to catch them saying embarrassing things, has done it again, teasing an NPR executive into saying…

You may not want to know. Only read this heartrending article about the Collinwood School Fire in 1908 if you can handle a tragic tale — but if you do, you won't complain about those annoying fire drills ever again.

We've finally received some information from the overlords about the recent problems. We're being attacked. We have been forwarding reports from bloggers and users to our hosting service, Rackspace, over the past few days. After monitoring our traffic and these reports, Rackspace has determined…

There is a virtue to Christian prudes. They make me aware of ideas I might otherwise have missed. Conservative evangelical groups in the UK are whining about sex ed books that are too 'explicit' for their taste. Children as young as five are being shown "explicit" images to teach them about sex, an…

Today, you may notice people wandering about with strange smudgy marks on their foreheads. You may also know that today is my birthday. And you might be wondering if those two observations are related. Yes, they are. I traditionally celebrate my birthday by punching god-botherers in the forehead.…

I have just learned that hagfish can absorb nutrients directly through their skin and gills simply by wallowing in the rotting flesh of a carcass. Somehow, that just makes the whole world look beautiful again.

Harold Camping has been predicting the end of the world for quite some time. He's always been wrong, but now he is insisting absotively posilutely that the earth really will end on 21 May of this year, and he's got teams of brainwashed, deluded followers roaming the country claiming the end is nigh…

Ken Ham really hates those weasely Christians who accept the phrase "millions of years" more than he does us atheists, I think. He really gets worked up over Biologos, but I only got as far as this paragraph: If there was not one man Adam and one woman Eve, and a literal event of the one man Adam…

Strangely, I just got two requests for participation in discussions: one from an Intelligent Design creationist apologist, Jason Rennie, and another to join in a debate this weekend from Dinesh D'Souza. I just thought I'd test whether these guys actually pay attention to what I write by putting the…

I cannot resist. Every once in a while, I'll show a bad graphic from the world of molecular biology to one of my classes, and I'll try to extract the significant point from it…but I'll also tell the class that this is one of those places where the stupid scientist ought to have walked over to the…

Why do you torture me so? For the past week, the number one request in my mailbox hasn't been this nonsense about bacteria in meteorites, it's been people asking me to address Rabbi Adam Jacobs' stupid article on the Huffington Post. I have a problem with that. I despise the Huffington Post and the…

I received email from one of those astrobiologists, the people behind the Journal of Cosmology, in this case Carl H. Gibson. I was…amused. Dear Professor Meyers: I understand you have some problem with our interpretation of Richard Hoover's article proposed for the Journal of Cosmology. I…

Greg gets it completely wrong: my birthday is so trivial, even I forgot that it's coming up. The most notable thing about it is that it's the last day I have to give a lecture before spring break, and if I want to, I can just shut my mouth after 9am on Wednesday and not say anything for a whole…

As many people are reporting, the site is having a few problems, and you may occasionally experience errors when commenting or even trying to look at Pharyngula. I know the site banner also mysteriously disappeared a few weeks ago, and yeah, I also know about the el cheapo ads for psychics that…