pharyngula

Before you read further, browse the Carnival of the Godless. It'll salve the pain when you read about the new conservative perfidy. Our Republican overlords have taken one more step on the road to theocracy with the approval of H.R. 2679, the Public Expression of Religion Act. You can read the full…

Don't you dare diss Kip Hawley! He's head of the Transportation Security Administration, and he's awfully touchy, you see. His minions also take it personally when you say unkind things about him. P.S. Kip Hawley is an idiot. Spread the word. Let's see that phrase spread all across the blogosphere.

Nick Matzke has compiled all the data on hominin cranial capacities into a single chart: I think I can see a pattern there, can you? He also has data on body size and brain size over there, take a gander at it. It looks like a simple and obvious example of evolutionary change in our lineage, I…

Here's another review of Dawkins' The God Delusion(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll). It's unbelievable, as if the critic hadn't actually read the book. Here's the hed/dek: Dawkins needs to show some doubt Scientists work in a field full of uncertainties. So how can some be so sure God doesn't exist? asks…

Charity and art come together in a project to create structures out of canned food, which are then donated to food banks. I fear I don't have a big enough supply of canned food to pull this off at my house, though, and I don't think we have the space, either.

Here's a prediction for you: the image below is going to appear in a lot of textbooks in the near future. (click for larger image)Confocal image of septuple in situ hybridization exhibiting the spatial expression of Hox gene transcripts in a developing Drosophila embryo. Stage 11 germband extended…

Earlier this week, I had a chance to talk with Randy Olson about this business of communication good science to the public. I've had some disagreements with his strategies before; I think we resolved them a bit. What I had interpreted as a call to dumb down science to get it to the people is really…

The work of Craig McClain (of Deep-Sea News) is written up in Science Daily—it's cool stuff. Also notable is that it is illustrated with a photo of a giant isopod…one of those creatures Kent Hovind calls a trilobite, and uses to support his contention that the earth is only 6000 years old (Look!…

Note the headline on our student newspaper. It refers to the fact that our football team played Trinity Bible College's and beat them by a damnable 67 to zip…and that we've probably got a smart-ass heretic on the newspaper staff.

Forgive me, but I'll inflict a few more zebrafish videos on you. YouTube makes this fun and easy, and I'm going to be giving my students instruction in video micrography next week, so it's good practice. This is a more detailed look at what's going on in the embryo. Using a 40x objective, we zoom…

We've harvested a fine collection of links this week: Circus of the Spineless #25 (there's a tattoo parlor I want to visit!) I and the Bird #33 Carnival of Education #86 Skeptics' Circle #44 Friday Ark #106 Carnival of the Liberals #22 Comment on whatever you will!

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

Ah, the evils of strong drink. Or weak drink. You all know that you shouldn't drink alcohol to excess during pregnancy, and the reason is that it can affect fetal development. We take zebrafish eggs and put them on a real bender: we soak them in various concentrations of alcohol (which are hard to…

By popular request, here's a roughly annotated version of that zebrafish development movie. Stuff to watch for: This movie starts at the 8-16 cell stage. The cells of the embryo proper (blastomeres) are at the top, sitting on a large yolk cell. The pulsing is caused by the synchronous early…

Carl Zimmer brings up another essential point about the HAR1F study: it was work that was guided by evolutionary theory. The sequence would not have been recognized in the billions of nucleotides in the genome if it hadn't been for an analysis directed by the principles of evolution. Wells'…

Hey, this is a pretty good interview of Richard Dawkins by Jeremy Paxman. I don't know much about this Paxman fellow, but he asks hard, sharp questions, yet still gives Dawkins plenty of time to answer them. That's good interviewing technique, I think. I'm not too impressed with the spartan set,…

At my talk on Tuesday, the centerpiece was a short movie of zebrafish development—I was trying to show just how amazingly cool the process was. People seemed to like that part of the show, at least, so I thought I'd try to figure out this YouTube doohickey and upload it for general viewing. So here…

We have a new 527 political organization specifically set up to fight for the representation of science and engineering in politics and policy. Michael Stebbins has the details, and you can read the scientists' and engineers' bill of rights here. If you're interested, join now!

The odious Ken Mehlman has announced that that mob of pigs, scoundrels, and theocrats will be slouching into Minneapolis on September 1-4, 2008. Anyone else care to join me in the protest lines that week? When we get tired of yelling obscenities and imprecations at the parasites, we can always duck…

The Indian Cowboy has put up Tangled Bank #63.

There are days when I simply cannot believe how dishonest the scoundrels at the Discovery Institute can be. This is one of them. I just read an essay by Jonathan Wells that is an appalling piece of anti-scientific propaganda, an extremely squirrely twisting of some science news. It's called "Why…

I have to draw the line somewhere. The dish in front of me is grey and shiny. "Russian dog," says my waitress Nancy. "Big dog," I reply. "Yes," she says. "Big dog's penis..." We are in a cosy restaurant in a dark street in Beijing but my appetite seems to have gone for a stroll outside.…

My review of Dawkins' The God Delusion(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll) (currently at #4 on Amazon's bestseller list!) is in the latest issue of Seed, which showed up at my door while I was flying out East. They changed my suggested title, which I've at least used on this article, in favor of the simpler "…

You may be wondering where I've been. It's been a busy couple of days, and the next few weeks look even busier. The full itinerary is below the fold. I flew into New York on Monday, and attended a book party for Chris Mooney (he was handing out copies of his book like popcorn), hosted by Adam Bly,…

It’s April (not anymore—it's September as I repost this), it’s Minnesota, and it’s snowing here (not yet, but soon enough). On days like this (who am I fooling? Every day!), my thoughts turn to spicy, garlicky delicacies and warm, sunny days on a lovely tropical reef—it’s a squiddy day, in other…

($1.93? Can you get them cheaper if you buy them in bulk at Costco or Walmart?)

Archy goes looking for mastodons, finds fanged hippos with massive organs instead.

A reader sent along a few notes on Paul Nelson's grand tour of Norway—I've got to say that his strategy and his talk sounds awfully familiar, right down to the vacuous thought-experiments and god-praising screen-saver that conveniently kicked in during the Q&A. Most significantly, the Norwegian…

One has to wonder how fundies react to the images enshrined on the floor of the state capitol building (you can also see a more panoramic view here).

Jesus and Mo have a revealing conversation.