pharyngula

Those silly, harmless bus signs were the subject of the Sunday Sacrilege this week. But now New Zealanders have rejected the bus ads — and we've got a poll to see if that is fair. And we all know that polls are the perfect way to resolve ethical issues. Was NZ Bus right to reject ads from an…

Marshall, the awful little Republican who claimed that disabled children were God's punishment on women who got abortions, is now trying to claim he never suggested any such thing, and that his remarks were misinterpreted. Fortunately, he was caught on video: He has also said many other odious…

There's this contest, see, where a fabulous free wedding is given away. And one of the contestants wrote to me with their plans for a godless affair at the Boston Museum of Science, and from their description both are geeky nerds, and they're trying to get this wedding arranged fast since the bride…

So I just put up this lengthy gripe about Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini, and there were a bunch of other things I wanted to say that I couldn't squeeze in, so here are a few left-over comments. The best take-down so far is Block and Kitcher's review — go read that. Basically, they approach the…

People who don't understand modern evolutionary theory shouldn't be writing books criticizing evolutionary theory. That sounds like rather pedestrian and obvious advice, but it's astonishing how often it's ignored — the entire creationist book publishing industry demands a steady supply of…

It's a little disturbing to see an entire vast field of science reduced to a one-page cartoon, but it did win an award for science visualization, and we've got to get people hooked on the cool stuff somehow.

Oh, this is a cunning ploy to foil pharyngulation: a whole page of creationist polls, thrown up like chaff to distract us so we won't slam any one of them too hard. You can still play, though, and skew them some. Here are three: Do you believe dinosaurs and humans ever lived at the same time? No…

Time for me to go to bed! But after watching this video, I'm going in intimidated and submissive. You know, if that silly story in the Bible had any basis in truth, I'd have to conclude that Eve was a hyena. No one else suffered the curse of the Fall quite as much.

Wordpress gave Michael Hawkins his blog back!

I like water, but I don't think it has magic powers. Do you believe homeopathy is an effective form of treatment? 65% Yes 35% No

Bjorn Lomborg, the "skeptical environmentalist," has always bugged me as a rather shady character. Now Howard Friel started fact-checking Lomborg's footnotes, and found them to be wanting. But when Friel began checking Lomborg's sources, "I found problems," he says. "As an experiment, I looked up…

About 20 clergy, representing the very best of Christian theology, of course, and various Republicans gathered in Virginia to protest the existence of Planned Parenthood—they want all state funding, about $35,000 a year, stopped. They claim that Planned Parenthood is an evil organization because it…

We're going from John Waters to William Shatner — we've got style. William Shatner SNL skit Get A Life 1986-12-20Uploaded by efly2020. – Click for more funny videos.

This hasn't been a good week for me. I was flattened by a cold this weekend, and now I've been diagnosed with incipient periodontal gum disease, and just got back from a long, long session with the dental hygienist. I was trapped in a chair for two hours for a painfully thorough cleaning: scraping…

I'm getting a flood of email from Israel. As one correspondent explains, Israel maintains three kinds of state-supported schools: one kind for the ultra-orthodox, because the state has always fostered freakishly fanatical ignorance among the lunatic subset, and these schools teach no science at all…

Parastichopus californicus

Renew America, the bizarrely, deeply, weirdly conservative web site founded by Alan Keyes, really had to struggle to find someone crazier than Pastor Grant Swank and Fred Hutchison and Bryan Fischer and Wes Vernon (let alone Alan Keyes himself), but they have succeeded. They have Linda Kimball…

I just had to add this one. In Meghalaya, India, students taking instruction in cursive writing found an interesting illustration in their textbooks. Christians in the area (this is a region of India with a Christian majority) are very upset and have banned the books and are considering legal…

There is something heretics do that I never anticipated would generate such fury in the godly — an act of heresy so profane, so vile, so revolting that it triggers legal action all across the country and expressions of outrage everywhere. Don't read through this post: the images below the fold will…

It's also loud and rude. Don't crank up the volume if you're at work.

I'm going to dope myself up and flop into bed so I can get over this slimy cold — and speaking of slimy cold, here are some deep sea creatures to tide you over for a bit.

The freethought community is grieving at the loss of Helen Kagin, and Ken Ham, petty whiner that he is, has decided to complain about her obituary. We found it unfortunate that someone took this sad time as an opportunity to take a shot at the Creation Museum in an obituary. And sad, too, that some…

Rom Houben, the unfortunate fellow with severe brain damage who doctors claimed to be conscious via facilitated communication, is silent again. Investigators did the trivial experiment of sending his facilitating communicator outside the room while they showed Houben a series of simple objects,…

Somehow, listening to John Waters reading the liner notes to an album he's putting out sounds an awful lot like the never-ending thread. I think he'd feel right at home here, someone invite him over for a date.

I was briefly interviewed for Sunday Night Safran, with John Safran and Father Bob Maguire. It'll be broadcast on Triple J radio at 9pm Sunday, and will be available as a download sometime the day after. Don't expect too much — it was a short interview. I think they're just beginning to warm…

As are we all, of course, but Ebert is setting an example for us all. Ebert is dying in increments, and he is aware of it. I know it is coming, and I do not fear it, because I believe there is nothing on the other side of death to fear, he writes in a journal entry titled "Go Gently into That Good…

Now Andreas Moritz is featured by Orac. If he was concerned because a little criticism from a student got a fair amount of attention from Google, now he has Pharyngula and Respectful Insolence highlighting his quackery. I hate to give hints to kooks, but really, you should study the Streisand…

Unfortunately, these stats don't look much different from what we'd get in Minnesota.

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

The Prime Quack has been identified: Andreas Moritz. He has admitted to getting Wordpress to pull Michael Hawkins' blog, and is also threatening me, now. Michael Hawkins, You may blame me for having your blog pulled. WorldPress had to remove your blog because otherwise it would have faced a hefty…