pharyngula

Ladies! Here's the class for you! The class, "Biblical Model for Home and Family," is one of nine courses, with others focusing on the value of a child, clothing construction, nutrition, and meal preparation, that make up a homemaking concentration Southwestern began offering female humanities…

People keep sending me horrible, frustrating news stories — I'll post some later, but first, I have to restore my center with pleasant contemplation. Deep breaths. Grade some more exams. Watch some fish for a little while. OK, here's a pleasant memento: Mrs Janes' 3rd grade class at O'Brien…

I swear, they're trying to see how stupid they can get before my head explodes. Read Isaiah 35:8: And an highway shall be there, and a way, and it shall be called The way of holiness; the unclean shall not pass over it; but it shall be for those: the wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err…

I have to second Steve — this is an amazing blog, The Daily Coyote. A woman and a cat living in remote Wyoming have a friend, a young coyote. This has got to be a frightening relationship. That's a place where coyotes are shot on sight, with no remorse … maybe if a few more people read about…

The videos are now available!

Here's a horrible story: a man who bears a grossly disfiguring tumor on his face, one that threatens his life and has afflicted him since adolescence, is only now considering surgery to correct the problem. Why not before? Because it might require (and now definitely would require) blood…

If you've ever seen John Edward or James van Praagh, or any of a thousand other idiot spirit mediums, you'll know how conversations sound in the afterlife. Death is apparently a leading cause of brain damage.

Sex education and humor … how can anyone object to this? I'm sure someone will.

Now the NY Times has an editorial deploring the politicization of the Texas Education Agency. This one is going to burn the creationists, I think; it's an opportunity to turn their slogans about fairness right around and skewer them.

Why do I have this urge to send this to Stuart Pivar?

After being imprisoned and facing a lynch mob, the teacher in Sudan whose class named a teddy bear "Mohammed" has finally been freed. She has a very positive attitude and says nothing but generous things about the people of Sudan, and thanks the Sudanese government for letting her have a bed while…

It's time for the blogosphere's favorite intramural charity, Gary Farber Pledge Drive Week. If you appreciate the long-running efforts of one of the fixtures of the net, help him out.

Forgive me. This is disgusting. Glenn Beck + Ben Stein. Stein repeats his ignorant caricature of the origin of life as "lightning striking a mud puddle," and then…oh, man, this was unbelievable: If they're so sure that they're right, what are they afraid of? If they're so sure that their position…

Regular old physical mail, that is, paper with a stamp. Anyone remember Michael Korn? The nut from Colorado who threatened biologists there, and then sent email to everyone at my university offering to meet them for a fistfight out by the flagpole? He sent me a bunch of tracts … and a poem. Here's…

Here's a useful excercise: can you summarize a key concept in your field in less than a minute? Chris Mims takes a stab at explaining evo-devo — he's not trying to explain the whole field, actually, but the central concept of a master gene. He uses the analogy of a power strip for a transcription…

Two big specialty science carnivals are up today: Circus of the Spineless #27 and Encephalon #37. Take your pick, invertebrates or nervous systems…or read them both.

The DI had their press conference. They unveiled their killer evidence, emails from his university colleagues obtained via a Freedom Of Information Act request. They revealed — oh, horrors! oh, tea and crumpets! oh, I feel a swoon coming on! — that his colleagues had discussed Gonzalez's…

We live in a world of lunatics. You want a baby? Then go sit in a chair owned by Saint Mary Frances of the Five Wounds. She was an 18th century weirdo who threw her life away in pointless self-flagellation, so it's only natural that 21st century deluded irrationalists would think her furniture…

They're calling it "External Delivery", but come on, they're aren't fooling anyone. This is just storkism under another name.

The NY Times covers the Chris Comer resignationtoday. This story is a wonderful window into the events transpiring within the Texas Education Agency — they are gearing up to shut down biology education in the whole damn state. And why now? The standards, adopted in 1998, are due for a 10-year…

I'm very much looking forward to the opening of The Golden Compass at the end of this week — and we're even getting the premiere here in little ol' Morris. I'm having mixed feelings about the way it's getting enlisted in the culture wars, though. It's a fantasy movie, and it's ultimately going to…

We all know that you don't need ten commandments.

We're winning everything but the spelling bees, apparently. (via My Confined Space)

Now the Louisville, Kentucky Courier-Journal is running an op-ed critical of Ken Ham. There is a great educational injustice being inflicted upon thousands of children in this country, a large percentage of whom come from the Kentucky, Ohio and, Indiana areas. The source of this injustice is a…

As I've mentioned before, my class has been reading Time, Love, Memory: A Great Biologist and His Quest for the Origins of Behavior(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), which is in large part an account of the amazing work Seymour Benzer accomplished over the course of his long career. Now I've got sad news to…

It's good to see that the Austin American-Statesman can see the obvious: Is this state's education agency being driven by a political orthodoxy so fierce that it dumped its science director for passing along a harmless e-mail? It's possible. Chris Comer was director of the science curriculum for…

The Discovery Institute is spinning wildly to make excuses for West's performance on Friday, and to declare him the "winner". I got two calls last night about Dr. John West's presentation at the University of Minnesota on Darwinism's fathership of eugenics. It appears that the scholarly and well-…

Here's a very useful document that I got from August Berkshire (you can also get this in pdf form from Minnesota Atheists): 34 Unconvincing Arguments for God. I guess he forgot to include all the convincing arguments for gods, but I'm sure some wandering delusional troll will try to provide some.…

Good reading on a snowy day! Philosophia Naturalis #15 I and the Bird #63 Grand Rounds 4.10 Humanist Symposium #11 Friday Ark #167 The next edition of the Tangled Bank will be on Wednesday, 5 December, at Life Before Death. Send you links to me or host@tangledbank.net by Tuesday!

How nice that we should start the first of December with a howling snow storm. This is prairie winter: not your big fat flakes falling gently, but hard icy snow slicing horizontally with a stiff wind; no quiet hiss of steady accumulation, but the rushing roar of wind and weather blowing billows of…