pharyngula

But I thought they were already parodies! The new parody tract, Darwinism: the Devil's Religion, reveals the Unholy Trinity of Science, the Devil, Darwin, and Dawkins. For the record, I want it known that there isn't a single letter "D" anywhere in my name.

I just gave the last exam of my last class of this semester. No more lecture prep, no more lectures, just a stack of grading that I have to finish by Friday (I do have one final exam to give, but it's optional—the score they get on it replaces the lowest exam score of the term—and I expect only…

Uh-oh—Neddie is channeling Al Swearengen again. If anything is going to resurrect the restless spirit of a hard, profane thug, it's got to be the recent mess of an affair with Wolfowitz.

Oh, I hate these difficult questions. If you're a professor and you want to change the world, what do you do? In 1993--quit and become an activist. In 2007—start a blog. Or so it seems. PZ Myers blogging at Pharyngula is probably doing more for evolution than PZ Myers publishing papers in…

Rest in peace, Herbert F. Kornfeld.

I'm sure you've already heard about it, so I'm a little redundant to bring it up — Carl Zimmer has a spiffy article in the NY Times about duck phalluses. No, that's not quite right; the most interesting part of the story was the bit about duck oviducts. Female ducks have been evolving increasingly…

When I checked my mailbox this morning, I discovered a common sort of delivery, a pamphlet from a publisher listing their releases in a specific subject. What was unusual is the subject of the list from Random House: Evolutionary Theory & Intelligent Design. Bleh — that dignifies ID far too…

Romney was asked to name his favorite novel, and what does he say? Battlefield Earth, by L. Ron Hubbard — that monstrous lump of pulp with the absurd Mary Sue plot. Admittedly, it wasn't as bad as the Eye of Argon, but still … maybe it's just that someone who can swallow the goofy mythology of the…

Dream of the future, and you're sure to get something that tells you more about the past. Here is a set of postcards from 1900, illustrating what they thought life would be like in 2000. It looks like a kind of steampunk opium dream, with everyone dressed in Victorian fashion, either puttering…

Minnesota had a coagulation of reactionary Republicans at our capitol last week. Their goals were clearly stated, and were thoroughly repugnant, but at least they also had a small turnout. The Minnesota Family Council, EdWatch, Citizens' Council on Health Care, and Minnesota Majority (formerly…

Remember Utah Republican Don Larsen? He made a speech recently. It sounds like his proposal to blame Satan for illegal immigrants was just the caboose on a whole trainful of crazy — liberals and Mexicans are Satan's minions out to destroy America. Don Larsen, chairman of legislative District 65…

Steve Milloy, junk science peddler and loser, has a new crusade: he is opposed to compact fluorescent light bulbs. How much money does it take to screw in a compact fluorescent light bulb? About US$4.28 for the bulb and labour -- unless you break the bulb. Then you, like Brandy Bridges of Ellsworth…

Want to publish something? Worried that you don't actually have a lab or an opportunity to do real research? Never fear, the Institute for Creation Research has put out a call for papers, and anyone can get published there! (Well, just about anyone. I doubt that anything I submitted under my name…

Eh. It wasn't bad. Hitchens declared some laudable objectives for his book: he wants to end the idea that calling someone a person of faith is a compliment, and he laid out his position on the origins of religion. It's built on fear of the dark, fear of death, and hatred of sex, and those aren't…

So…is Benny Hinn like a Kiai Master? This video is disturbingly nuts, with ol' Hinn waving his hands at the True Believers and knocking them over. We need to smuggle some godless people in to one of his shows to just stand there and give him a quizzical look. Or even, perhaps, sue the silly…

There were all these carnival notices clattering around in my mailbox from last week, and they all got lost in the chaos for a while, but here they are, a bit late. The Humanist Symposium #1 Skeptics' Circle #59 Carnival of the Liberals #37 Carnival of Education #116 Grand Rounds 3(31)

A colleague just let me know that I'm mentioned in the "Best of the Web" section of Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News. Yay! It's a positive review! It's in the April 15 issue for all you subscribers.

Christopher Hitchens will be on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart tonight! I'll tune in, but if he tries to defend the Iraq war, it's going off.

This worked fairly well last time around, so let's try it again. If you'd like to have your blog on the Pharyngula blogroll, here's what you should do: Examine your blog with a critical eye. If you are espousing creationism, Intelligent Design creationism, the beauty of unthinking acceptance of…

There's more to invention than just slapping a new wrapper on an old device, and sometimes the superficial approach can lead to some funny results, like the Tampon Taser. The copy describing this device is weird: in addition to touting its absorbency, fresh floral scent and gentle glide applicator…

But if you're gullible enough to believe Hoofnagles actually exist, I suppose you could go say hello to them at their new Denialism blog. I will point out, though, that if one Hoofnagle is improbable, the chances of two Hoofnagles spontaneously assembling themselves at a single place and time is so…

90% of teenage girls believe they are overweight, according to a recent survey. That's something to worry about — there's the reality, that a lot of us are overweight, but there's also the perception problem, that many girls are convinced that they must lose weight when they really don't. There's…

Since I didn't get in my usual god-bashing today, you'll have to take in The Carnival of the Godless #65 and Revere's Freethinker Sunday Sermonette. They'll clear the piety out of your sinuses and flush the veneration right out of your colon.

Too much traveling lately. Today Skatje and I hit the big city for a couple of events. We attended the Minnesota Atheists fundraiser in the morning. Somehow, I ended up volunteering to give a talk to the Minnesota Atheists sometime this summer, and I also volunteered to speak at Lee Salisbury's…

Anyone want to help Joolya with her unpleasant personal fungus problem? I should warn you that there are photographs at that link, and she is naked under her lab coat.

I'm off to the Twin Cities again (third time this week!) for a couple of events. Since I'm a cruel, heartless predator who likes to return to the scene of a kill to gloat, though, I thought I'd repost the vicious savagings I gave George Gilder, in The sanctimonious bombast of George Gilder and…

Oh, come on, Boston Globe. They tip-toed around, avoiding naming me or the weblog, but I think everyone here can figure out what they're talking about. Yet even Gilder, seemingly a lightning rod for the socioeconomic controversy of the moment, was blistered by the comments posted on a University…

Yesterday, I was reading a good article in the October 2004 issue of Wired: "The crusade against evolution", by Evan Ratliff. It gives far more column space to the voices of the Discovery Institute than they deserve, but the article consistently comes to the right conclusions, that the Discovery…

What else can you say to this story of a Dutch creationist building a model of Noah's ark? The story is titled "New Noah's Ark ready to sail", but I rather doubt that this goofball project in deranged carpentry is capable of going to sea at all, even though it is only one fifth the size of the…

Can I just say that a remake of this movie with Samuel L. Jackson as the voice in the burning bush would be awesome?