pharyngula

As a proud native of the great Pacific Northwest, when an article on one of our noblest creatures was mentioned to me, I had to read it. Here's the center of the story. In July 2005, nine residents of Teslin, Yukon, witnessed through a kitchen window a large bipedal animal moving through the brush…

Hey, you know that adorable teeny tiny fish species, Paedocypris, that I was drooling over the other day, and mentioning how cool it would be to work with? It may be extinct already.

Dave Eaton, Mouth of Yecke, public advocate of poor education, creationist pest, has given up the fight. On Tuesday, January 31, School Board member Dave Eaton resigned from the Minnetonka School Board. Noting personal reasons, he informed the Board that he is no longer able to continue his…

It's almost Darwin Day! I just learned that Cornell is going all out: 5 days of events celebrating Darwin's birthday, on February 9-13. That's darned good. The University of Minnesota Twin Cities is doing something slightly smaller in scale on Friday, 10 February, in an afternoon event sponsored by…

There's always Austin. Check out the nice and lucid op-ed against Intelligent Design creationism published down there: it points out that ID is on a fool's errand that will always allow it to be defeated in a scientific argument. ID will be trapped in a morass of implausible and unscientific…

apostropher has the link to the video: penis fencing flatworms. They are impressively athletic.

Now we'll really get to see how well this new server provided by Seed holds up. Pharyngula just get linked by Slashdot, and I've seen a thousand hits come roaring in in 5 minutes. My lovely old Mac G5 server would have been screaming and shaking at this point, and you wouldn't be reading this…

Behe's ideas have been rejected by his colleagues; it seems those ideas were also the subject of a public forum at his university, with essays on the issue available online. During the fall semester, a Chaplain's Forum held on campus to offer differing perspectives on the contentious issue drew a…

Would you believe Rick Moranis?

Olduvai George does it again: another gorgeous, art-filled post on ancient and modern crocodiles, including a reconstruction of the recently discovered Triassic Effigia.

The Tangled Bank has grown so huge that apparently we now need a whole polytechnic university to handle it. Appropriately enough, I'm not on the academic faculty—I'm down in the health services clinic, checking out genitals.

I didn't listen to the State of the Union Address last night, preferring to maintain my equanimity by attending a talk on quantum physics, but I knew I could trust my readers to email me with choice weird science bits. I'm getting a lot of "WTF?" email about this statement from Bush: Tonight I ask…

…but my university actually supports me. There's a profile of yours truly that's part of a random rotating collection of links on UMM's main page (if you don't see it there, reload the page; it'll appear eventually.) I am aware that I am slightly harsher and more radical than many of my colleagues…

Here's a fascinating glimpse of history for those involved in the creation wars: the Seattle Weekly has published scans of the original Wedge document from the Discovery Institute. Now you too can see it in it's original cheap-ass photocopied glory, and also learn who leaked the documents…two…

There's a great story in the Rake about the Dakotas—that place just a few miles west of where I'm sitting. This is an odd part of the world, where population is actually contracting and drifting away to leave our rural communities standing rather lonely and empty. Quite obviously, North Dakota has…

Our vampire candidate for governor, "the Impaler", has been arrested for "escape" and "stalking". I just have to say…Duh. What do you expect from a vampire? (via MNSpeak)

…so go wish them a happy birthday.

I've got a couple of posts that have been nominated for The 2005 Koufax Awards: Best Post, so I've quickly brought them on board here at the new site. Voting isn't yet open, but here they are: Idiot America. This one is something of a howl of anguish, and it's really more a lot of quotes from…

Some people might think I'm a rather morbid fellow. Years ago, when I was an undergraduate lackey at the University of Washington and working at the med school, there, I made a wonderful discovery one lunch hour: a bone room. Tucked away in an odd corner of the building was a room full of shelves…

I know you will not believe me, but I swear it's true: I'm not of this earth. I fled here years ago because my home planet was driving me crazy. Let me explain. My home world is very much like this one. It's populated by billions of bipedal primates, who are just like people here: sometimes…

I love this article. Ctenotrish sent along a copy of Greetings from Idiot America, by Charles P. Pierce (sorry, but it's behind a firewall, and you have to pay $2.95 to see it) from the latest Esquire. I don't think I've ever read this magazine before—it's one of those things with half-naked young…

Oh. My. Nonexistent. God. Debbie Schlussel. How does anyone take these "conservative commentators" seriously? She read a NYT article that shows a genetic link between Asians and Native Americans, and guess what that means? It was OK for Europeans to displace them from the Americas, because they…

We're getting signs that the Discovery Institute is going to be shifting their strategy a little bit. Thoughts from Kansas has an excellent discussion of the subject. Basically, they're going to embrace more of the actual science, and focus their dispute on finer and finer points. What does this…

Well, Kevin Drum's prediction about the State of the Union address is a bit vague and general: Bush's theme may well be that he's right and his critics are wrong; and his vision may well be of a year of partisan trench warfare with congressional Democrats. But Chris Mooney gets specific: A while…

Remember these names when Alito screws us over. These are the ones who didn't even try to stop him. Akaka, Daniel K. (Coward-HI) Baucus, Max (Doormat-MT) Bingaman, Jeff (Toady-NM) Byrd, Robert C. (Ditherer-WV) Cantwell, Maria (One-termer-WA) Carper, Thomas R. (Lickspittle-DE) Conrad,…

I sat down and watched both episodes of Dawkins' series, The Root of All Evil? this weekend (because I can!), and I have to say…I liked it very much. I've already commented on the first episode, and if you want to know what's in the second, Dawkins himself has an editorial that summarizes the main…

It's got everything a fascist dictator might want in a law. A new provision tucked into the Patriot Act bill now before Congress would allow authorities to haul demonstrators at any "special event of national significance" away to jail on felony charges if they are caught breaching a security…

I will join the chorus in praising Bérubé's essay on academic freedom. It's excellent; now if only the people most desperately in need of reading it weren't barely literate anti-intellectual thugs, it would be an awesomely persuasive rhetorical tool. That Mannion fellow explains why the…

John Lynch catches Dembski getting all breathless about a class in Switzerland that includes a lecture on ID. Big whoop, John says, he teaches it, too. So do I. Why wasn't Dembski announcing this glorious victory last semester, when I mentioned it on Pharyngula? Maybe it's because when ID is…

I gave up on caffeine this past summer—I actually cut it off cold turkey for a good long while. I'm backsliding a bit now, though, just because my early morning teaching schedule has me feeling mostly exhausted all the time (I hope I adjust soon). This new blog, Smelling the Coffee, is not helping…