Paul Z. Meyers
pharyngula
Posts by this author
April 14, 2006
Science asks awkward questions, doesn't it? I got a link to a recent paper in the BMJ (thanks, SEF!) that asks one of those questions—can fetuses feel pain?—and then takes it apart clinically, coming up with an answer that will make some adults feel pain: that answer is no.
The first step is to…
April 14, 2006
Science fairs usually have a few pleasant surprises, a lot of ho-hum projects done by rote with little thought (sometimes clearly done the night before), and a few stinkers that reveal nothing but the student's ignorance. The science teachers are supposed to screen the project proposals to prevent…
April 14, 2006
Hapalochlaena maculosa
Figure from Cephalopods: A World Guide (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Mark Norman.
April 13, 2006
What a waste of good cephalopod images, using them to make a mosaic of yours truly. It's made using some softward called MacOSaiX, if you're interested in trying some yourself.
April 13, 2006
Palazzo has put me in a pissy mood, now. He's mentioned those pompous god-botherers at the Templeton Foundation, who awarded 1.4 million dollars to that credulous gasbag, John Barrow.
When Selfish Gene author Richard Dawkins challenged physicist John Barrow on his formulation of the constants of…
April 13, 2006
The Online Journalism Review has an article based on interviews with several of us loudmouths here at scienceblogs.com, if you want yet another look at our perspective on this venture.
April 13, 2006
Not only do we learn where Tiktaalik came from, but we get an explanation for why the prayer study flopped!
Important efficacy tip: stash your porn in a lead-lined safe before praying.
April 13, 2006
No pictures yet, but isn't this exciting? Half-billion year-old worm feces have been found in Sweden. Alert the tourism industry!
April 13, 2006
My own daughter, a participant in the blogospheric War on Easter…where did I go wrong right?
April 13, 2006
Connie Morris is the lead creationist kook on the Kansas state board of education. She recently took a tour of a middle school and was horrified at the depravity on display:
State Board of Education member Connie Morris took exception Wednesday to a picture of a made-up creature that satirizes the…
April 12, 2006
John Lynch beat me to this story about catfish feeding on land, so I'll be brief. It shows how the eel catfish, Channallabes apus, can manage to take an aquatic feeding structure and use it to capture terrestrial meals. Many fish rely on suction feeding: gape the mouth widely and drop the…
April 12, 2006
A very cool idea: portray the Evolutionary Timeline on a web page, drawing it so that one pixel equals 30,000 years.
Go to the page and just keep scrolling and scrolling and scrolling…
April 12, 2006
Pfeh. Who wants to be a superhero?
Let me know when there is a casting call for Who wants to be a supervillain?
April 12, 2006
Martin Brazeau is looking for volunteers to spend July in Atlantic Canada helping him split rocks, looking for Late Devonian to Early Carboniferous fossils. Let's see…I wonder if the family would mind if I abandoned them for a month? I don't have any important responsibilities, do I?
April 12, 2006
I received 45 submissions for this edition of The Carnival of the Liberals, and the carnival rules required me to select only a final ten. That was harsh; there were many excellent links sent in, and I struggled with the need to reject so many. Ultimately, I just had to let my own biases rule my…
April 12, 2006
A Carnival of Education is up! I don't know that the plague theme is entirely encouraging, but as we creep towards the end of the term, it feels like it is entirely appropriate.
Also, tomorrow is the Invasive Species Weblog's fourth birthday (I know, she's really, really old), and Jennifer Forman…
April 12, 2006
It warms the cockles of my heart to see this sort of thing, it does. Scientists in Britain are on the attack!
Leading scientists have launched an unprecedented attack on the teaching of creationist theories in Tony Blair's flagship academies.
Britain's most prestigious scientific body, the Royal…
April 11, 2006
After all, the churches are charitable institutions, with a higher calling to help the sick and weak in the name of a loving God. They have a role model in Jesus, who reached out to those rejected by society. Turn away the needy? That would be unchristian.
Unless, of course, the needy were some…
April 11, 2006
We have a new Tangled Bank up, and it's enough to make this old Seattle boy homesick—the premise is to bring up all these nice science links during a walking tour of the city. If only they did sell Tiktaalik at the Pike Place Market…
April 11, 2006
The "neurotheologist" Michael Persinger is a fellow with an interesting idea: that the sensation of god is a product of activity in the brain. He induces activity in the brain with electromagnetic fields, and some people feel a sense of oneness with the universe or that aliens are peering over…
April 11, 2006
Yikes…while all these new people are reading here, I should be sending them off to other good science sites. Quick, here are a few links:
The gang at Scienceblogs.com—lots of sciencey stuff there.
The Panda's Thumb.
A few more: De Rerum Natura, Evolving Thoughts, Evolution 101, Thoughts from Kansas…
April 11, 2006
My wife is one of those statistical people who analyzes data for a local college, and she spends much more time poking around figuring out website traffic than I do. I just kind of wing it and follow my urges, she casts a calculating eye on the whole thing. So the other day, she tells me I ought to…
April 11, 2006
The Folk Era was a special time in America, a time of innocence, when people sang Kumbaya and really meant it. When banjo music got airplay and Burl Ives had groupies. No one knows what caused the folk era, and scientists are studying what can be done to prevent it from ever happening again.
The…
April 11, 2006
Alas, I fear that if I let myself be bitten by a squid, all I'd get for my trouble is a very nasty infection, and possibly a few toxins.
April 11, 2006
…But they always get so much press. This morning's must-read smackdown is La Queen Sucia for her beautiful refutation of anti-immigrant bigotry.
(via Kung Fu Monkey)
April 10, 2006
This morning I got a question in e-mail, asking if I'd heard of a particular paper. Of course I had, it's a very fun bit of research...and then I realized I'd never mentioned it on the weblog before. I guess it's because it's focused entirely on the phylum Chordata, specifically one rather…
April 10, 2006
It's the most irresistibly linkable blog post in the world.
Oh, wait. Not that one.
I guess we're still looking for it.
Maybe this is it. I found it compelling, at least.
April 10, 2006
Who would have thought these words would ever be typed by me? I'm looking forward to Ann Coulter's new book.
It's called Godless(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll). Apparently, Ann Coulter has written a book about me, although I suspect that she'll instead be pretending that people like me are representative…
April 10, 2006
Logic and knowledge are a couple of things creationists are lacking. I'm surprised at the fate of the corpse of that poor cyclopic kitten:
A one-eyed, noseless kitten that stirred debate last year over whether it was a hoax will be the centerpiece of a new museum intended to promote the theory of…
April 10, 2006
It feels like cartoon day on Pharyngula, but this one is so good I had to mention it. Tom Tomorrow takes on Saint Thomas DeLay.