pharyngula

At least there seems to be one in Montana: candidate Roy Bown was accused of being…a vegetarian. "I am not and have never been a vegetarian," Brown said. "I am disgusted by the baseless allegation that I am a vegetarian and that my personal eating habits should somehow be construed as opposed to…

Some people are getting a bit cranky about the fact that I pissed in their cornflakes this morning, so here's a little more exposition. A charismatic new face appeared on the political scene, somebody who was honest and sympathetic and intelligent. So he was a little more religious than I liked; he…

The New Humanist Bad Faith Award poll is now open for voting. I nominated Sarah Palin, but I think she's well on her way to negligible irrelevancy now, so you might as well pick one of the others.

We didn't have to wait long for right wing brains to explode into loopy, tangled strands of conspiracy theory nonsense. Creationist brains, already in a state of disarray, are already predisposed to this kind of inanity, so don't be too shocked at what Cynthia Dunbar, creationist, Christian, and…

On 13 November, at 7pm, Sunsara Taylor will be speaking at Blegen Hall 10 at the UMTC campus. This is part of a national college speaking tour that draws from and promotes Bob Avakian's new book, "AWAY WITH ALL GODS! Unchaining the Mind and Radically Changing the World", and here's what she'll be…

The world is a somewhat more hopeful place today than it was yesterday, but let's get real. Obama is a conservative/centrist Democrat who will at best implement a small shift in American policies — he hasn't promised any strong change in Iraq, and his health care plans are an incremental…

Whew. I just got off my long shift as an election judge — I was filling in for Horton Township, a small, very rural precinct south of Morris, with a registered voting population of 114 people. The good news: 110 votes! The bad news: these guys broke 103:7 for McCain. Ewww. Now that I'm home, though…

Once you've voted in the poll that matters, you can go play on this Online Presidential Poll. I'm pretty sure the results won't be binding, so you can vote for me or Immanuel Kant (wait, what? He left off Nietzsche?) John McCain 4% 8 Barack Obama 17% 35 Rev. Jeremiah Wright 2% 4 William…

Are you guys up and voting yet? Remember to vote down the horrible little pro-bigotry ballot measure, proposition 8. If you don't believe me, read Charlie Stross's explanation. And if that's still not good enough for you, look who is bankrolling 8: the Knights of Columbus, Howard Ahmanson, Jr. (he'…

You know what to do. Get out there and vote. I'm going to be squeezing in a long day working as an election judge at my local polling place (and I'm hoping that I will be very, very busy with a large turnout), in addition to taking care of teaching. If it's a little quiet around here, don't worry…

How can we lose? We're Democrats, I'm sure we'll think of a way! One easy way would be if you don't get out and vote. So do it, already. By the way, my wee little brother Jim also got together with Roy Zimmerman on his 50 47 state tour, and got a picture to prove it. I was also told that Jim…

Poor little Ken Ham gets no respect. He sets up this fancy museum, he keeps pushing his silly ideas, and what happens? Smart people like Daniel Phelps, president of the Kentucky Paleontological Society, calls him a moron. Deservedly. I don't need to say much, though. The scathing excoriation of Ham…

It's a landslide victory! Obama gets 62% of the vote in World of Warcraft! I guess it isn't that surprising that a poll of game players might get results that reflect the real world vote, but the strange thing is that there were some game-associated differences. People playing the Horde side (…

One of my students picked up this flyer in Minneapolis this weekend. It looks like the creationists are visiting the University of Minnesota this Wednesday and Friday! They do love to book that auditorium in the Physics building — don't be fooled, though. None of the science departments on campus…

I have a little metric for rationality that I exercise now and then: when I visit a bookstore, I compare the sizes of the religion/new age sections to the size of the science section…if I can find it. Typically, there's at least a 10:1 disparity in the amount of shelf space dedicated, and it's…

It's true. While I was in Guelph, a sneaky-looking fellow handed me a disc, and told me it was just for me — and that it included the lie-correcting subtitles. I appreciate it. I still haven't bothered to watch it, but someday, maybe while I'm dying of some gruesome disease, I'll want some horrible…

The hateful Reverend Phelps of Westboro Baptist Church was a heck of a father. Some of his kids have escaped the hellish prison of WBC, and one, Nathan Phelps, has written about his upbringing. Religion was a tool of oppression, something to instill fear and allow an angry father to control his…

William Ayers was a young radical in the 1960s — this is admitted, accepted, and not in question at all. Now William Ayers is a respected academic, somebody who is no longer advocating violence, who is a crusader for social justice and urban educational reform within the system, and that sounds…

Is there something the Catholics are keeping secret? Because I don't want to even imagine this ritual.

You may all recall that a certain bad movie was released in mid-April…a movie which I have not yet seen, but which is now available on DVD. I was just at the local gas station/grocery store/video store, and there it was, available right there on the shelf. I considered it for a few minutes, and…

This is how petty election politics have become this year: a Republican denies children Halloween candy if they won't agree with her choice of McCain for president.

I've gotten a few queries about what happened to the StopSylviaBrowne website; as Blake explains, some sleaze swept in while Robert Lancaster was hospitalized and grabbed the domain name. It's now moved to StopSylvia.com. Update those bookmarks!

My latest Seed column slipped quietly onto the interwebs last week — it's an overview of how the glues that hold multicellular organisms together first evolved in single celled creatures, represented today by the choanoflagellates. Just as a teaser, the next print edition that should be coming out…

As anyone who has followed computer games at all lately knows, Spore is the recently released computer game from Maxis that was initially touted as a kind of partial simulation of evolution. Unfortunately, It wasn't a very good simulation of much of anything, and as a game it has only been a…

Don't forget to tune in to Atheists Talk radio for a discussion of state science standards sometime this morning. It's nominally at 9am, but there's a time change tonight, I'm in a different time zone right now, and I've got to be up at 4am to catch a plane home, so I have no idea what time it will…

And she pronounces it good. Perhaps Larry will appreciate this: I have video evidence of Skatje getting her breakfast at…Tim Hortons! Larry also has photos from my talk in Toronto.

In case you've been feeling dumped upon because atheists seem to be the current target of contempt by so many, there is still one group that might be lower: Dungeons & Dragons players. At GenCon, D&D players raised $17,000 to donate to the late Gary Gygax's favorite charity, The Christian…

The New Humanist has a yearly anti-award event, the Bad Faith Awards, given to the "most scurrilous enemy of reason" for the year. Last year, Dinesh D'Souza won; so far this year, two have been nominated, with more nominations to come. The two are Ann Coulter and, of course, Sarah Palin. They asked…

This is my kind of beast. Otto the octopus of the Sea Star aquarium in Coburg likes to cause trouble. "We knew that he was bored as the aquarium is closed for winter, and at two feet, seven inches Otto had discovered he was big enough to swing onto the edge of his tank and shoot out a the 2000 Watt…

I knew there was a creationist connection to Halloween. Glenn Branch figured it out: When the distinguished philosopher Philip Kitcher recently addressed the creationist movement in his Living With Darwin, he judiciously assessed creationism in its latest incarnation as historically respectable…