pharyngula

Next week at this time I'll be in lovely downtown Atlanta, staying at the Renaissance Atlanta Hotel. If we're going to have a Pharyngufest, probably the best time would be Saturday, 12 July, and somewhere not too far away from the hotel. Anyone interested? Any locals want to make suggestions for…

Remember Suzan Mazur, the credulous reporter hyping a revolution in evolution? She's at it again, publishing an e-book chapter by chapter on the "Altenberg 16", this meeting that she thinks is all about radically revising evolutionary biology. I can tell that Massimo Pigliucci — one of the 16 — is…

One of the splendid people I met in Denver told me about her attendance at a bizarre lecture a few months ago — and she sent me a link to her summary. If you want to experience a second hand glimmering of Native American woo, with UFOs, magic origins, transparent white people, anti-evolution, and…

Nick Matzke has a fine summary of progress in research into abiogenesis. He chastises those people who try to argue that abiogenesis is independent of evolution, or that you can get out of trying to answer the question of where life came from by simply saying that that isn't evolution. It is! I've…

The Family Research Council asks, "Do you believe that America, as a nation, was founded upon Christian principles? 97% of the clueless ideologues at the Patriarchy Research Council think so.

Yesterday, I blitzed through a tiny slice of the Mensa meeting in Denver. My time was really tight, so after arriving on Thursday for a fabulous Pharyngufest, I only got to sit through two talks in the morning session before mine, and then whoosh, I was off to the airport and hurtling through the…

My drive home last night was a bit weird — there were fireworks going off everywhere, and being a bit disconnected from the calendar with all my recent travel I was puzzled by it all. Was Minnesota celebrating my return? I shouldn't be so self-centered. Of course they weren't. When I got home I saw…

I'm about to head off to get coffee and attend this conference and give my own talk, and then zoom, right after the talk I have to head off to the airport and fly back home. I'll be back this evening, but until then, you'll all have to entertain yourselves in the comments…which you all seem very…

Andy Schlafly is one persistent fool. After harrassing Richard Lenski not once, but twice, prompting one of the best smackdowns on the intertubes, Schlafly now wants to take some vague sort of legal action against Lenski to get his own copy of every bit of data Lenski has generated in 20 years ……

Sepioteuthis sepioidea (via Wikimedia Commons)

We had a great time at Wynkoop's tonight, although I noticed that the other attendees at our Pharyngufest were fading out at 10:00 — I had to mention to quite a few people that they had no stamina at all. Although the fact that they started drinking at 5pm and Wynkoop's has a marvelous assortment…

If you're looking for more members of my tribe, here's a a list of The Top 100 Liberal Arts Professor Blogs. There's no indication of how they determined that these were "top" blogs, or what a "top" blog is (there is some sexual innuendo we could indulge in there), and strangely, Aetiology is…

Chris Comer, who was fired for whispering "Barbara Forrest", is fighting back. This could get interesting. Christina Comer, who lost her job at the TEA last fall, said in a suit filed in federal court in Austin that she was terminated for contravening an "unconstitutional" policy at the agency. The…

Remember, all the cool people in Denver will be at the Wynkoop Brewing Company around 5 on Thursday evening—I have been warned, however, that there will simultaneously be some peculiar game called base-ball played on a nearby empty field. It appears to be a sporting event in which hooligans compete…

Christopher Hitchens' views on war in the Middle East often infuriate me, even while I greatly enjoyed his views on religion. My respect for him goes up, though, because he has done something I wouldn't: to determine whether it really was torture, he had himself waterboarded by the US military (…

Yikes. As everyone seems to have noticed, their cover story this week is Lincoln vs. Darwin, an absurd premise driven by the coincidence of their common birthday, which stoops to quoting their horoscope at us. As soon as you do start comparing this odd couple, you discover there is more to this…

I rather like the growing bans on smoking in bars and restaurants — it makes them much more pleasant places for those of us who'd rather not inhale poisons from acrid, burning weeds involuntarily. But maybe an exception should be made from places where the burning and inhaling of plant matter is…

Those words look vaguely familiar. It's a little odd, especially since I was just working on a major expansion and revision of that essay. (I'm also curious to see if that title survives translation here.)

I'm very fond of Chris Turney's book, Bones, Rocks, and Stars. It's a slender, simple description of the many tools scientists use to figure out how old something is, and when arguing with young earth creationists, it's become the first thing I recommend to them. It's short and easy to read, and…

Oh, man…you know you've got colossal wackaloonery when you find a website titled "Remember Thy Creator" — but then you discover that they are sponsoring a YEC conference at the end of July, that they list luminaries like John Morris and Ken Ham, and that they've got a front page article demanding…

This has to be seen to believed. John Conyers asks John Yoo a simple question: "Is there anything the president could not order be done to a suspect?" He can't give a straight answer. So Conyers reduces it to a simple hypothetical: "Could the president order a suspect to be buried alive?" He still…

First, there was this awful news about Obama's support of "faith-based programs": Reaching out to evangelical voters, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is announcing plans to expand President Bush's program steering federal social service dollars to religious groups and -- in a move…

Karl Giberson is interviewed about the subject of his new book, Saving Darwin: How to Be a Christian and Believe in Evolution(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll). It looks interesting, in an aggravating sort of way, and it's on my long list of books to read and use to put dents in my wall. The interview reminds…

This month, we have two new people who can append an OM to their names: windy and Bride of Shrek. Remember to salute when they walk by!

That would look good as a bumpersticker on my car, if only I still had any room on the back of my car for bumperstickers.

It was on 1 July 1858, 150 years ago today, that the idea of natural selection was first presented to the public in a joint reading of Darwin's and Wallace's papers at the Linnean Society of London (an event which they did not recognize as important at the time), which makes today analogous to the…

If you've been wondering about the mysterious presentiments and portents at The Loom and Bad Astronomy, wonder no more: just head on over to blogs at Discover Magazine page, and lo, there they are. It looks like every print magazine in the universe is realizing that they need a stable of bloggers…

Are you an elitist bastard? I know I am! If you're like me, then, you'll appreciate a whole collection of unabashedly elitist, thoroughly bastardly sneers and tirades in the Carnival of the Elitist Bastards #2. Revel in it, you smug scoundrels. And hey, I'm helming this carnival at the end of July…

Except, unfortunately, what the heck it was. The Tunguska event was the mysterious explosion of unidentified origin that occured in a remote area of Siberia on 30 June 1908, flattening trees over 2000 square kilometers, but leaving no trace of a crater. Archy has put together a thorough account of…