pharyngula

How could I have ever said a charitable word about Alan Dershowitz? In penance, I urge you all to read Juan Cole's dissection of Dershowitz's grading of civilianity, or if you'd prefer something lighter, try Kung Fu Monkey's demolition by amusing anecdote. If anyone were in the mood to revisit my…

Digby's argument, that the Bush administration language about the war in the Middle East is loaded with code words to pander to the looney fundamentalist base, isn't entirely convincing. Just the fact that Rice used a word, "birth-pang," that Rapture nuts have loaded with all kinds of millennialist…

I have no idea what the cephalopods flying over the city have to do with the ecological message in the small print, but heck, it's a cool picture anyway. Maybe it has something to do with octopuses swimming over flooded cities, but they look airborn to me.

Honestly, I don't feel a day over 12. I remember leaning on an old fence near the rhubarb on a fine fall day in 1969, looking out over the mucky little stream that ran near our house and listening to the frogs creak, and thinking that this was a very fine life I've got, and I think I'll hang on to…

Two more carnivals on this fine Sunday afternoon: Carnival of the Godless #45 The Synapse #3 You know the drill.

Georgetown College in Kentucky has ended its affiliation with the Southern Baptists after the Baptists tried to dictate that a new hire be a biblical literalist. The Baptists wanted nonsense like this: "You ought to have some professor on your faculty who believes Adam and Eve were the first humans…

I like it—Dance Like a Monkey! (via Secular Front)

Seattle is experiencing a surge of homicides (which are probably not statistically significant in number.) Seattle is also experiencing a surge of squid. Some irresponsible journalists are suggesting these two observations might or might not be linked. These scurrilous allegations should be…

My physicist friends will be embarrassed at this tale of a creationist physics professor campaigning against science education. Maybe it's not the physics—it's the dairy products overdose.

Since I was asked to do something about that empty "About" tab at the top of this page that used to take you to a really boring page that said "Lorem ipsum," I've put a little useful information up there. It now tells you what Pharyngula means and how to pronounce it, has a few biographical details…

The Strib has an article on Camp Quest of Minnesota, the secular summer camp that is starting up this week. It's a fairly good story, although it's unfortunate to see it overwhelmed by the gigantic rah-rah story on crazy Pentacostalism spread over the next two pages of the paper, by the same…

Richard Gallagher is one of those guys I'm not ever going to like much. He's the editor of The Scientist, yet he wrote an editorial encouraging us to embrace Intelligent Design in the classroom, in the perverse hope that by giving ID that much attention, students will naturally disregard it. That…

Some light reading, and otherwise…speak your mind in the comments. Friday Ark #96 I and the Bird #28 Skeptics' Circle #39

John Lynch doesn't have a Friday tradition of his own, so he's trying to start one with a free association game…I'll join in. Video :: Fantasy :: Homework :: Crush :: Late :: Husband :: Soccer :: Wine :: Before :: Romantic :: My answers are below the fold. They're mostly…

Got a myspace page? Then you want to be friends with Prof. Steve Steve. OK, as several have noticed, there is actually a Pharyngula myspace. It's there as a placeholder, little more, and I'm not planning to do anything with it…but if anyone wants to be my friend, I'm easy. Will it worsen or…

The story of the Australian lungfish has made this week's issue of Nature. Remember, it's not too late to keep the pressure on. Dam project threatens living fossil Lungfish face extinction, say environmentalists. We are about to lose a key piece of our evolutionary history, warn biologists. They…

Octopus vulgaris, brooding eggs I SEE the sleeping babe, nestling the breast siphon of its mother; The sleeping mother and babe—hush'd, I study them long and long. Walt Whitman Figure from Cephalopods: A World Guide (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Mark Norman.

Just as a lark and as a little exercise in making HTML tables (and to make clear what one error was in that last post), I threw together this table of the geological time scale, taken from Mayr's What Evolution Is. I come from that generation of biologists where we were required to memorize the…

Here's what causes global warming: we've been breathing since the Pleistocene ice age ended 165 million years ago. Isn't it cool how mentioning a specific date and geological epoch make you sound so smart, except when you get them all completely wrong?

Thank you, Jon Stewart.

This fish has an absolutely perfect name: the Rosy Lipped Batfish. It isn't much better in Latin, either. Ogcocephalus porrectus. No wonder it's scowling.

I occasionally put up some of the wackier/more obnoxious e-mail I get from creationists and other deluded True Believers, but I don't want to give the wrong impression—I also get lots of friendly and supportive email. I just don't think any of it is quite as entertaining as the crazy stuff. Anyway…

I imagine this might be a problem in mixed marriages, if one partner is one of those wicked militant fundie atheists I hear so much about. By the way, that link probably isn't safe for work or the easily offended, although the part I found most offensive was the totally fictitious building in the…

Even reading Peggy Noonan through an Attaturk filter is dangerous. I read this little scrap and felt neurons popping throughout my cortex. During the past week's heat wave--it hit 100 degrees in New York City Monday--I got thinking, again, of how sad and frustrating it is that the world's greatest…

I want something like this. I think I'll have to wait for the model that costs significantly less than $80,000 and is a bit more practically designed for Minnesota winters.

Books from Nobel laureates in molecular biology have a tradition of being surprising. James Watson(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll) was catty, gossipy, and amusingly egotistical; Francis Crick(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll) went haring off in all kinds of interesting directions, like a true polymath; and Kary Mullis…

(And now Jokermage's life is complete. Don't give up, though: seek out new challenges, and continue in your personal growth.)

John McCain recently spoke out on evolution and ID. He just managed to demonstrate that he's a dissembling fool. Responding to a question about a report that he thinks "intelligent design" should be taught in schools, the senator mocked the idea that American young people were so delicate and…

So, has everyone read the latest investigation into Pat Tillman's death already? I'm appalled at this astonishingly insensitive Christian bigot, Lt. Col. Ralph Kauzlarich, who basically slanders Tillman because he was an atheist. "But there [have] been numerous unfortunate cases of fratricide, and…

How do you make a limb? Vertebrate limbs are classic models in organogenesis, and we know a fair bit about the molecular events involved. Limbs are induced at particular boundaries of axial Hox gene expression, and the first recognizable sign of their formation is the appearance of a thickened…