pharyngula

In the past, I've tried to make my Polyphyletic Jambalaya for dinner on Darwin Day — if you make something with seafood, it's especially easy to toss in representatives of a great many phyla all at once. Alas, this year I'm busy busy busy all afternoon and evening, with no time for anything…I may…

Gary Marcus, author of Kluge(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll) (a book I recommend), has an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal that makes an important point: evolution does not produce rational, perfect, finely-tuned beings. It makes organisms that are good enough. Keep this in mind when looking at…

A special court has reached a decision: vaccines don't cause autism. On one side were families with sad and tragic anecdotes of children with serious developmental disabilities, and on the other… The government argued during the 2007 bench trials that the plaintiffs' claims linking the vaccines…

I'm giving a talk on "Darwin and Design" at a banquet in Columbus, Ohio on Saturday. It will be fun, and it better be, because you know what I'm giving up? Valentine's Day with the Trophy Wife! I may have to take her out to a movie or something on Friday. There's something else I'll have to miss,…

Seed has compiled a short list celebratory articles and media for your Darwin Day — take a look. I rather liked The Evolution of Life in 60 Seconds: it's very short, but it puts everything in perspective by listing key events in the 4.6 billion year history of the planet with appropriate timing to…

I confess to some mixed feelings about this one. Several schools in Wisconsin hold their graduation ceremonies in local churches, and Americans United is threatening litigation to block them. One the one hand, I am all for secularizing 'sacred' spaces — let's take them all over and do something…

Get out and celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of one of the most important scientists of all time, Charles Darwin, and the 150th anniversary of the publication of one of the most important books in biology, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of…

Creationists do not like the idea of vestigial organs, no sir. That their divine creator might have slipped up and stuck in some tissue that is less than perfect is anathema to them, and so we often encounter bitter denunciations of the whole concept of vestigial organs — organs which have a…

Coyne and I seem to have achieved consensus in our opinion of the Safina column, without talking to each other about it. It's true, once you reach a certain level of Darwin Consciousness, you gain the ability to read minds. And also levitate.

We're all going to get a surfeit of Darwin this week, but here's a little more. You have room for just one more bite, right? The Nature podcast has a full slate of Darwiniana, with several of his descendants speaking up, poetry, house tours, and a bit of popular media, with Paul Bettany talking…

I don't even see how one could vote on this incredibly biased and stupid poll. It's another of these homophobic fundamentalist christianist sites trying to argue that homosexuality is evil, and is a conspiracy to promote an anti-Christian agenda. It contains a collection of questions that are a…

There's an interesting Gallup poll that compares religious fervor between nations. Here's a quick summary: Religiosity is correlated with poverty — the poorer you are, the more godly you are. I guess God really does like that poverty thing. The US is not the most religious nation, not by a long…

First Ken Ham, and now…the Paranormal Clergy Institute! Have a browse and a chuckle. These people seem to be part of some breakaway Catholic sect, and their specialty is demonology — possessions, hauntings, that sort of thing. You can even take classes if you want to know more about demons.

I put out a call for some donations to a family with a young cancer victim a few days ago: you good godless people came through and donated several thousand dollars. We have received a thank you note, too — go read it and feel good about yourselves, you charitable atheists.

Fans of the great Cambrian predator, Anomalocaris, will be pleased to hear that a cousin lived at least until the Devonian, over 100 million years later. That makes this a fairly successful clade of great-appendage arthropods — a group characterized by a pair of very large and often spiky…

Jon Stewart is so good at drawing blood from his targets. .cc_box a:hover .cc_home{background:url('http://www.comedycentral.com/comedycentral/video/assets/syndicated-logo-over.png') !important;}.cc_links a{color:#b9b9b9;text-decoration:none;}.cc_show a{color:#707070;text-decoration:none;}.cc_title…

I am astonished to discover that the fundamentalist pastor Grant Swank has a new article in which he promotes the long discredited tale of Lady Hope and Darwin's death-bed conversion. Unreal. It is completely false, and doesn't even ring true — those of us who are familiar with Darwin's writings…

I strongly disagree with the arguments of this essay by Carl Safina, "Darwinism Must Die So That Evolution May Live", even while I think there is a germ of truth to its premise. It reads more like a contrarian backlash to all the attention being given to Darwin in this bicentennial of his birth.…

Normally, I detest the stereotypical convention of the portrayal of evolution as a progressive process — it's so linear and simple-minded — but somehow it fits perfectly with this example.

Would you believe that a Swedish politician has suggested that their prime minister should end all of his speeches with "God bless Sweden" (translation)? It's got to be a joke. She explicitly points to the US as a model — why any country would want to emulate the United States' greatest flaw, its…

I'm a bit jealous — I didn't get this amazing email: As for myself, I believe that science has proved that there has to be a creator (The best mathematicians, physicists, biologists, astronomers,etc all admit they cannot explain how the DNA data gets into each cell/gene and can only be put there by…

A big chunk of Australia is on fire — over 700 homes have been burned, and it's estimated that over 300 people have been killed. We know the cause: a drought that dried tons of brush to tinder, lightning strikes, and deplorably, apparently a number of arsonists. Well, that's what I would say were…

Read all about it: he's featured in the Toronto Star, and there's even a nice picture of him. In case you are unsure, I think he's the one on the left.

Would you believe that indulgences are back? Do a little dance, say a little mumbo-jumbo, and the Catholic church will declare that you will get time off from your sentence in purgatory after death. How do they know? And what if they're wrong? I'd be very annoyed if I juggled beads for hours and…

Since I had the effrontery to critize futurism and especially Ray Kurzweil, here's a repost of something I wrote on the subject a while back…and I'll expand on it at the end. Kevin Drum picks at Kurzweil—a very good thing, I think—and expresses bafflement at this graph (another version is here,…

Enjoy a little happy music.

People are requesting an open thread to just talk about whatever they want, and I'm willing to oblige. Here you go. Let it all hang out. However, since I'm a tyrant who must meddle to some degree, I impose one restriction: no libertarianism. It's a cancer that is taking over way too many threads,…

The other problem with media coverage is that certifiable idiots get to open their mouths and their noise goes unquestioned in print. Here's a regrettable example of an ignorant opinion piece, one so egregiously stupid that even Ian Musgrave is reduced to indignant spluttering. The problem I face…

I must recommend an excellent editorial in the Guardian. Somebody there gets it; all the "he said she said" journalism that we get is a failure of the media to get to the basic truth of a story. There can be no such equivocation in the week of a survey which showed that only around half of all…

And I don't want to hear you complaining that everything makes me cranky! I get especially grumpy about armchair futurists making pronouncements about biology when they don't know a thing about it. Chairman and CEO of Biotechonomy, Enriquez says that humanity is on the verge of becoming a new and…