pharyngula

I've been hearing about the usual despicable performances of Republicans at CPAC, and in particular the heinous stylings of Ann Coulter, and I have to 'fess up to considerable outrage fatigue. Then I learned that she was picking on me. That said, she [Ann Coulter] did not disappoint her fans,…

On this fine Darwin Day, I thought I'd just include an excerpt from Janet Browne's excellent biography of the man, Voyaging(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll). It does a fine job of telling us a little bit about the human being behind the famous and infamous scientist. Charles and his sister Catherine Darwin,…

So did everyone tune in? It was a middling show. He said good things about UMM and well, honest things about Morris, so I'm not going to complain about that. As usual, the gospel music gives me the heebie-jeebies, but I just content myself with the knowledge that I was listening to a pleasant…

…and that's exactly why he is a slimy ass-pimple, a child-abusing freak. Evangelist Ken Ham smiled at the 2,300 elementary students packed into pews, their faces rapt. With dinosaur puppets and silly cartoons, he was training them to reject much of geology, paleontology and evolutionary biology as…

This looks wonderful: a new biology book that would fit right in with the course I'm teaching. The students might find the exams much easier, but they're going to be freaked out to discover that their bodies are covered with Gay Glands.

Carl Zimmer has never written a bad book, and he's the author I usually recommend to non-scientists looking for a gentle but substantive introduction to ideas in biology. Now DarkSyde interviews Zimmer—this is one you'll want to read.

OK, people, this is too cruel. I was gone all day yesterday, traveling to the Twin Cities for this Darwin Day event, and the site gets 37,000 visits. Are you all trying to tell me it's better when I'm not around to clutter it up? If I take off for a week will traffic climb to Daily Kos-like…

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

This afternoon, I'll be at the Bell Museum at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities campus, celebrating the birth of Charles Darwin. Everyone is welcome, so come on down! Events: 1:00P - Lecture by historian of biology Professor Mark Borrello, Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior, on…

…and makes a total ass of himself. In the interview, Mr. Deutsch said that Dr. Hansen had partisan ties "all the way up to the top of the Democratic Party," and that he was "using those ties and using his media connections to push an agenda, a worst-case-scenario agenda of global warming." He said…

Eaton was the Minnetonka school board member and advocate of Intelligent Design creationism who abruptly resigned, shortly after his attempts to weaken his school district's science standards were quashed. You wouldn't know anything about that bit of backstory from this puff piece on Eaton, which…

Oklahoma is having an outbreak of creationist idiocy in their legislature. If you're one of the sensible, intelligent residents of that state, sign the petition to support excellence in Oklahoma science education.

Take the geocentrism challenge from Catholic Apologetics International! They're offering $1000 to the first person who can prove that the earth revolves around the sun. They claim that good Catholics really do have to believe that the earth is the center of the universe. Scripture is very clear…

I am not a fan of Gregg Easterbrook. He's a pretentious twit who lectures Hawking on physics, calling him "kooky", yet thinks Townes is wonderful and believes in an "invisible plane of existence: the spirit". He makes ill-informed rants against atheists and Richard Dawkins, and has gone off on…

Looking for submissions: I and the Bird—birdwatchers, send links to ahooper at bowtieinc dot com by 14 February. The Tangled Bank—science fans, send links to pzmyers@pharyngula.org, host@tangledbank.net, or ketewere@gmail.com by 14 February. Already in operation: Carnival of Education…

I haven't mentioned the Clergy Letter Project or Evolution Sunday events before. They're nice ideas—it's an effort to get clergy to acknowledge good science, and encourage discussions about the subject on Darwin's birthday, this Sunday—but I have to admit it's rather orthogonal to my point of view…

a, b, Cranial reconstruction in left lateral (a; shaded area indicates the unpreserved portion) and dorsal (b) views. adc, anterodorsal concavity; al, anterior lamina; an, angular; aof, antorbital fenestra; d, dentary; dg, dentary groove; emf, external mandibular fenestra; en, external naris; if,…

Here's some very cool news: scientists have directly observed the evolution of a complex, polygenic, polyphenic trait by genetic assimilation and accommodation in the laboratory. This is important, because it is simultaneously yet another demonstration of the fact of evolution, and an exploration…

In Wisconsin, a bill has been proposed to ban intelligent design from science courses. Two Democratic lawmakers introduced a plan Tuesday that would ban public schools from teaching intelligent design as science, saying "pseudo-science" should have no place in the classroom. The proposal is the…

There are several items of note at Salon today, so if you don't subscribe, watch the little commercial, you'll get some good bang for the buck. Garrison Keillor (who is coming to UMM this Saturday—a few tickets are still available!) rips into "little man" Bush. There's an interview with Daniel…

My response to this odious essay by Dale Reich was, well, terse. He wrote a very silly editorial in which he claimed to have doffed the mantle of his faith to see what the life of an atheist was like, and found it empty and hateful…and his conclusion was to insist that we atheists need to start…

Or maybe not. At least I'm crunchy/slimy. Hmmm…it looks like I make a cameo appearance in another entry, too.

I was asked to show some of my hate mail, but I'm afraid I'm not going to dig through all the ancient, musty piles of old email to find it—I have a hard enough time wading through the new stuff! Here's the most recent, though, which arrived just this evening, although I think it is in response to a…

Carl Zimmer has the lowdown on leeches. The article is right, and they really are beautiful animals—I had a tank full of them last semester (gone now, in a flurry of bloody student labs), and watching them undulate through the water was mesmerizing. They were almost as much fun to watch as my fish.

By Neddie Jingo! This is my ideal messenger: I've banged on about this before, and others have said it as well: in a Breughel landscape of insanity, bad faith, desperately knotted thinking and crazed cupidity, Dawkins shines out of the darkness like a Bodhisattva, a pillar of mental health in a…

This political hack who was dictating the interpretation of science to scientists was a college dropout. His sole qualification for his job was his enthusiasm for George W. Bush—where have we heard that before? The story has been confirmed in the most emphatic way: Deutsch has resigned. It's not…

Whee! Another Koufax nomination for Most Humorous Post. I've moved the copy over here to the new site, in the post below this one. This was an interesting post, though—it prompted something close to the record volume of hate mail for a single article, ever (I don't keep count, though, so I can't…

Alright, people, I'm gonna get tough. You know what I want, and you'd better give it to me. I've got a bible here, and a 44oz. Diet Coke…lots of liquid containing a diuretic, to boot. In about an hour, I figure my bladder is going to be pretty full. You know what could happen. I don't need…

I just received my copy of the latest Seed, and although I feel a bit reluctant to say it because it may be interpreted as sucking up to the corporate masters who provide my bandwidth, it really is a very good science magazine—I'd be subscribing even if they weren't sending it to me for free. Take…