Paul Z. Meyers
pharyngula
Posts by this author
I had known that Jérôme Lejeune was the fellow who had discovered that Down Syndrome was caused by trisomy of chromosome 21, but it seems there were many other things about him I had not known -- he was just a name. But there were a few things that set me aback.
Lejeune became not just a renowned…
I don't say this lightly, but Saletan is one of the more dishonest pundits out there -- I've read multiple columns by this guy where he lies with numbers and fudges the evidence to fit his preconceptions, and this is no exception. He's once again arguing that creationism is compatible with science…
After informing us of her environmentalist cred — she drives a hybrid car and has solar panels on her home! — Marcia McNutt, editor-in-chief of Science magazine, makes a remarkable statement.
I believe it is time to move forward on the Keystone XL pipeline to transport crude oil from the tar sands…
The Monterey Bay Aquarium has a new exhibit, Tentacles. It is about…I think you can guess what it's about. Can I find an excuse to visit California in mid-April?
I was rather surprised yesterday to see so much negative reaction to my statement that there's more to evolution than selection, and that random, not selective, changes dominate our history. It was in the context of what should be taught in our public schools, and I almost bought the line that we…
I've been collecting responses to the notorious debate between Ken Ham and Bill Nye, and intend to write a couple of summaries of various aspects of the debate: Bill Nye won it hands down, but that does not remove him from criticism, and there have been some weird arguments presented both to defend…
Brianne writes fairly frequently about her experiences as a clinic escort, dealing with shrieking fanatics who stand on sidewalks harassing people going into family planning clinics. They're hideous and awful and have lost all sense of perspective and humanity, and they're also remarkably…
About.com Landscaping
I thought I'd include a picture of the young Charles Darwin, since we are celebrating his birthday today. That's him in 1816, when he was 6 or 7 years old, with his younger sister, Emily Catherine Darwin. And then I started wondering about that other person in the picture. Darwin's sisters were an…
Look! Even the stinkbugs are ready to hatch!
HHMI
Man, Todd Friel is painful to listen to — so many grating rhetorical tics. Can someone tell me where this weird habit of carefully voicing every vowel and adding extra vowels to the ends of words come from? When he calls Bill Nye unreasonable and lying, it comes out UN-REEE-ZUN-A-BULL-AH and LIE-…
Some people actually do keep octopuses as pets; it's not easy, and it's heartbreaking when they die. They always die.
Larry Moran has been given a quiz to test our comprehension of Intelligent Design creationism. Unfortunately, it was composed by someone who doesn't understand ID creationism but merely wants everyone to regurgitate their propaganda, so it's a major mess, and you can also tell that the person…
When last we heard from Rhawn Joseph, he was playing with photoshop and trying to sell off his online journal, the Journal of Cosmology. The Journal of Cosmology has been plugging away, claiming to have found bacteria in meteorites and then diatoms in meteorites — give them a blurry, vague photo of…
This is a map of all the American schools that are officially teaching creationism with the full permission of the state educational system, either through voucher programs or state laws that allow nonsense to be taught (Louisiana and Tennessee stand out as gangrenous spots, don't they?).
Tax…
One of the advantages of working at a small university that puts a variety of disciplines cheek-by-jowel in a single building is that I get exposed to all sorts of different stuff. It sometimes has its downsides — I'm on an interdisciplinary search committee, so next week is consumed with seminars…
It's cold and windy out there, and I can't feel my toes right now, and so I'm thinking…
Yeah.
Apparently, Martin Cothran believes that there is no life elsewhere in the universe, and that this unimaginably vast emptiness is evidence that a god created us. I don't understand the logic, but then I don't understand most of his weird leaps in this post on how life on other planets is like…
The Horse's Mouth
Say…has she painted her fingernails to match the mottling pattern of the octopus's skin? I find that strangely attractive.
Microscopic Images
We've got a blizzard on the way. Plants do not exist in an uncrystallized state right now.
Beyond the Human Eye