pharyngula

I have to visit Loudon, Virginia someday. It's where Corsair the Rational Pirate lives, and I think the streets must be humming with dancing clowns and village idiots twirling and a marching kazoo band. I've seen stupid creationist arguments before, but these, that were actually published in his…

Thanks, Jody Wheeler, for poisoning my morning a little bit. You just had to mention this guy, Stephen Bennett, of Stephen Bennett Ministries, who is "Emerging as One of the Nation's Key Speakers on the Issues of Homosexuality & the Homosexual Agenda…A Man who is Not Afraid To Speak the Truth……

…but I'm not going to bother linking to his long-winded pompous tripe. Just read Wesley, who has the measure of the man and also has the facts in hand.

Some fields of science are so wide open, such virgin swamps of unexplored territory, that it takes some radically divergent approaches to make any headway. There will always be opinionated, strong-minded investigators who charge in deeply and narrowly, committed to their pet theories, and there…

OK, that's enough. This April Fool's Day thing has gone too far when I am made the butt of the jokes. So far, I've been born again, endorsed the Noah's Ark story, and have been hired as a GOP consultant. Norwegianity even found this hugely elaborate web site set up as a parody of Pharyngula. Jeez,…

Man, I'm really getting disgusted with Roxanne. Last year she let Michelle Maklin be a guest poster on her site, and now this year…she's let this pretentious twit named Jeff take over the whole thing. I took a look at this Jeff fellow's home blog, and it's pretty much the same thing—except that he'…

Here's an entirely hypothetical scenario. You're in a room with two exits, marked Door A and Door B. By each is a guardian, Guardian A and Guardian B. You need to go through one of the doors. Door A is light and flimsy, easy to open—just turn the knob and you're through it. Reasonably enough,…

The best analysis of American Heart Journal prayer study that I've seen yet is over at Rhosgobel. It uses solid methodology, and its results are clear: prayer didn't help, and might even have hurt. I've read the paper. It was hard. Every time I saw the word "prayer" on the page (and it's used like…

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

Hmmm. That creationist who emailed me a question the other day has sent me another. It's like feeding raccoons—pretty soon they get the idea they should hang out in swarms around your house, they're digging in the trash, and they're pooping all over your lawn. Oh, well, one more time: Here is…

Here are a few recent carnivals to peruse… 31st Skeptics' Circle 20th I & the Bird 7th Circus of the Spineless …and otherwise, chat away about whatever.

What's gotten into the Huffington post? There's a flood of entries making fun of Christian self-pity. Two possible interpretations: liberals are all god-hating elitists, or fundamentalist fanatics have made easy targets of themselves lately. I'll let you guess which hypothesis I favor. Laugh long…

Jonathan Witt of the Discovery Institute has lost it. The string of defeats for the cause of Intelligent Design creationism has had its toll, first Dover and now the Ohio ID lesson plan, and the poor man is clearly suffering from the strain, as you can tell from his latest hysterical screed. First…

It's a universal phenomenon: squid love.

Our speaker at Tuesday's Café Scientifique, Nic McPhee, has a blog, and gives the speaker's side of the event. He's exactly right that our big problem out here is improving community involvement, and getting some interaction with the townie side is going to be one of my goals in setting up next…

The New England Journal of Medicine sometimes provides great stuff to read over breakfast, like this story of a man who returned from a trip to Hungary with his guts infested with worms, Enterobius vermicularis. OK, so it's not much of a story…but the cool thing is that they provide a movie clip…

Nick Matzke has unearthed a treasure: an article from the Interdisciplinary Bible Research Institute that uses "Intelligent Design theory" to explain such phenomena as parasitic ichneumonid wasps and the panda's thumb. You'll be able to get an idea of the nature of the explanation from the title…

You all may recall the memorable, late Tito the wonder dog. Hank Fox has done something thought-provoking: he has frozen away some of Tito's cells, on the chance of cloning him. At 325 degrees below zero, the essence of Tito sleeps. I got a call today from Genetic Savings & Clone, the company…

What the Wege says.

Here's an optimistic idea: Personally, I have a great deal of hope that this is going to start to change in the near future. Indeed, this is one area where the blogosphere could actually prove quite powerful. Ten years ago, I'm not sure there was anywhere that your average Christian American was…

There's a new Carnival of the Liberals online, in which I am reminded that yours truly is hosting this one on 12 April. So, like, ummm, go read it, get some ideas, and start sending me links.

They all seem to be demonic, or tentacled, or both. I am always flattered to get the email from people saying, "I found this stinking pile of slime covered with maggots, and I thought immediately of you!" (really, I am flattered—it's nice to be associated with the weird and unusual.) However, I…

I throw away a lot of creationist email; most of it is ranty and weird, or pious and dull, so it isn't worth dealing with. Every once in a while (but sadly, not that often) one is polite and asks a simple question, and then I feel compelled to reply. If it's short and sweet, I'll just fire off a…

There's something else that's been going on for almost two years now: the Tangled Bank. And unlike creationist promises, it has delivered plenty of good, accessible science on a regular biweekly basis, and this week's edition at Island of Doubt is no exception.

Once upon a time, about two years ago, I dissected a claim by Paul Nelson that he had an objective measure of developmental complexity that he called "ontogenetic depth". I thought it was very poor stuff: no repeatable methods, no clear description of exactly what he was measuring, and actually, it…

A while back, I criticized this poorly implemented idea from Paul Nelson of the Discovery Institute, a thing that he claimed was a measure of organismal complexity called Ontogenetic Depth. I was not impressed. The short summary of my complaints: Unworkable idea: There was no explanation about…

The Café Scientifique was very well done and informative tonight—so where were all you guys? Of course, what the event really meant was that it's nearly 9:00, I've been running around all day, the alarm goes off tomorrow morning at 5:45AM, I teach at 8:00, and somehow I've got to explain MHC and T-…

We're having another Café Scientifique here in Morris this evening—come on down! Nic McPhee of the Computer Science discipline (who also has a weblog, Unhindered by Talent) will be discussing "Privacy, security, and cryptography: What happens to your credit card number on-line, and is that e-mail…

Besides being my boyhood home and the place where most of my relatives live, they're finding dead Humboldt squid washing ashore in Puget Sound. Paradise! Dan Penttila has been walking Washington's beaches for more than 50 years, made a career of studying small fish born there, and knows pretty much…