pharyngula

Roger Ebert has a thoughtful post on the problem of not-safe-for-work images. It's a real problem, and it's a curious example of self-imposed censorship built on an artificial fear. I don't care who you are, you've all seen pornography, you've all heard profanity, yet somehow, if even a tasteful…

The second meeting of the Morris Freethought Society will be tonight, at 7pm, in the Mocassin Flower room (downstairs in the student union). They're going to share coming out stories tonight, and, I think, discuss plans for future events.

On this dark and dismal night, let us turn the denizens of the perpetual conversion towards serious thoughts of feminism, poverty, the environment, and something else. (Not safe for work. But funny anyway). "We're just monkeys in shoes." Love that line. (Current totals: 11,272 entries with 1,169,…

Don't you know Halloween is supposed to be creepy scary? Yet people keep assaulting my senses with adorableness! OK, maybe the Hello Kitty shirt is a little bit chilling.

This is an alien-eye view of what we puny humans have been doing to ourselves for the last 60 years. It's all just fireworks until the giant mutant radioactive insects emerge to eat us!

Two salient facts: We no longer have any cats. The kids all moved out, and to our shock and surprise, they took their pets with them. I guess we raised them responsibly after all. Temperatures here in the soon-to-be great white north have dropped into the freezing range lately, and are likely…

Atheists aren't just using languages I don't know, they're writing in alphabets I can't read! It's Svobodni.org, which means something, I'm sure.

Kevin Myers is some wackalooney Irish commentator who, as far as I know and as fervently as I hope, is no recent relation to this Myers — the only thing I can commend him on is that he manages to spell his last name correctly. Oh, we do have one other thing in common: we're both atheists. He's an…

If you happen to be up around Thunder Bay, Ontario, you might see these jack o'lanterns glowing in the yard of Corinne and Kevin. Here's another one, sent to me by Sarah:

Ray Comfort is great at demeaning the whole of Christianity by doing all the stuff you imagine that not even a Christian would stoop to doing. His latest: targeting the elderly with cards to remind them of their mortality and imminent need of salvation. The card, published by livingwatersnewzealand…

I had the Stewart/Colbert rally on in the background most of today. There were funny bits, there were entertaining bits, I'm sure everyone there had a good time. It was a pleasant afternoon of entertainment on the mall. But in the end, I was disappointed. It was also an afternoon of false…

How sad. There are atheists everywhere else, but here in the United States, Robert Putnam says there are almost no atheists. It used to be, in the 1950s, that most Americans were kind of in a moderate, not very intense religious middle. And we have moved toward the extremes of being either very…

They're hanging out in Skepties Suid-Afrika and ScepticSA. They've also got sangomas and witch-hunters, so they're probably busy.

They've got Associação Brasileira de Ateus e Agnósticos. They've got Bule Voador. They've got individual blogs. Yeah, they've got atheists.

Hey, I've seen this phenomenon a few times. Read the whole thing. It's got a happy (?) ending! With a kitten!

What's with the somewhat gleefully morbid turn of conversation in a thread that will not die? It's time to bring on the Death of Rats. (Current totals: 11,259 entries with 1,166,933 comments.)

Yeah, I know, totally unsurprising for such a heathenish country, but we still have to give props to the good work of the New Zealand Association of Rationalists & Humanists.

Our university library is having a book sale today, one of those unfortunate but necessary events where they purge old or duplicate items from the collections to make room for new books, and I had to make a quick browse. What did I discover but an old children's book that startled me with fearful…

With their recent history, I'm surprised that there aren't more Somalis who have given up on gods.

The Pope visited Scotland recently, to the great disappointment of all. They hired him at extravagant cost to do a magic act in a park, and all he did was wave his hands and mumble some Latin…and now they're getting the bill. Scottish Catholics will be told this weekend that they have to make up…

Africa is a bit under-represented in my email in-box, so it's good to see Botswana Skeptic there.

Brain melting. Remember that call for applicants for a tenure track job? We're screening all those applicants now, and meeting tomorrow to consider who to invite to the first round of preliminary phone interviews. If you haven't got your application in, you're late! You're going to hope everyone…

Holy crap! Really? I'm not surprised that the person behind Land of Sands is anonymous.

Really, it isn't enough to simply "believe" in evolution: it's more important to understand it and more deeply, to have an intellectual commitment to reason. There's a beautiful example of this principle in Iowa right now. Iowa allowed gay marriage in the state a while back, and good for them…only…

They must be popular, too — a lot of people have sent me a link to Ateos Charruas.

Of all the disciplines to use for science-based pick-up lines, why would you pick chemistry? This is one of the many virtues of biology: an authoritative knowledge of anatomy and physiology is much more persuasive.

Some people in Australia are unhappy about the government paying to keep a useless mob of chaplains in the public schools — it's basically a sinecure to prop up the finances of way too many religious parasites. Anyway, there's a poll associated with the article. Is there a place for chaplains in…

Joshua Joscelyn is a fellow who, once upon a time, worked within Kent Hovind's creation science ministry. No more, though; he has just posted his resignation letter on facebook. Has he finally seen the light of science? Has he at last seen through the fact that Kent Hovind was a deluded and not-…

Check out El Movimiento Ateísta de Puerto Rico. It's a small island with mighty minds.