pharyngula

I must have a lot of Australian readers, or the few of you are really upset about this, because I'm getting a rising volume of email about World Youth Day. This is a bizarre Catholic get-together for young people — bizarre because, well, the idea of a pack of Catholic priests herding a flock of…

At least, it beats "Mr Gay", which sounds so frivolous. It seems the American Family Association, which you can tell from the name is yet another institution that has mistaken "patriarchy" for "family"*, was a little overzealous in their use of search and replace, and renamed an athlete named…

RPM of Evolgen disagrees with my definition of synteny! This is terribly distressing. Especially since, strictly speaking, he is precisely correct. The word has evolved in its usage from the pure form that RPM is describing to a more colloquial, pragmatic, somewhat sloppier sense as used by people…

What? How could Orac pass this story by? A monument to the enema, a procedure many people would rather not think about, has been unveiled at a spa in the southern Russian city of Zheleznovodsk. The bronze syringe bulb, which weighs 800 pounds and is held by three angels, was unveiled at the Mashuk…

I have been very, very bad. I have been neglecting my obligations as a member of the blogosphere to share links to interesting stuff, all because I've been busy with travel and work. I missed the Carnival of the Liberals, the Accretionary Wedge, I and the Bird, the Carnival of Space, and even the…

The propaganda movie opened in Canada, and the weekend box office numbers are in. $24,374. Nationwide. So Canada is a smaller country in population than ours, and their money is worth a little more than ours, but still…I don't think we can call that anything but a flop. Where's Creationist Keith…

We've heard the arguments about the relative importance of mutations in cis regulatory regions vs. coding sequences in evolution before — it's the idea that major transitions in evolution were accomplished more by changes in the timing and pattern of gene expression than by significant changes in…

It's the nature of these things to trivialize. Yet again, media hysteria fuels the absurd fear that flipping a switch in Switzerland will Destroy The World…and they're running a poll to let non-physicists guess at the risks. This one has two polls: "Is the gaint[sic] particle smasher worth the risk…

So, what does the promotion of jazz have to do with HP Lovecraft? (This isn't a raven and a writing desk non-connection — there really is a link.)

If you've got an hour, this conversation between Carl Zimmer and Paul Ehrlich is well worth listening to. Ehrlich has a somewhat controversial reputation as an ecological Cassandra…but remember, Cassandra was right.

It's a very, very short moment, practically an aside, in a recent Dr Who episode, but there he is. I guess Richard Dawkins has finally made it.

Well now, isn't this special: if you're a religious leader on official business, you can get free parking permits in North London. Mike Freer, leader of the council, said: "The importance of religion to many Barnet residents cannot be underestimated and the council has acknowledged this with a…

Blake Stacey, who is a good guy to have by your side in a firefight, has a wonderfully complicated post on this thing called science blogging. He's mostly stating the obvious: it's anarchic, it's very hard to pull out, say, introductory material on a specific topic in science, there are problems of…

Like the title says, this is your thread to tell me who deserves the Molly award for June. I'll aim to announce the winner on 1 July.

Did anyone else catch Saturday Night Live last night? NBC rebroadcast the very first episode with host George Carlin, and I had to watch. Saturday Night Live came out in 1975, when I first went off to college at Depauw University, and it was a major event — every Saturday night, we'd mob the TV…

Today is the day of the GLBT Pride Parade in the Twin Cities, so naturally today's Atheists Talk radio is all about the fight against discrimination and for equal rights for all. Tune in at 9am! If you're godless, there's nothing to prevent you from supporting civil rights for everyone without…

Lest Phelps and the Texas Supreme Court leave the unfortunate impression that the US is the sole repository of lunacy in the world, Ben Goldacre's latest column is about linking mobile phone signals to suicides — there's a bit of hysteria in one of the British newspapers about it. I like his…

Admit it: you've been wondering what Fred Phelps thinks of George Carlin. If you'd rather not click, rest assured: it's exactly what you might expect.

Well now…if you've had a hankerin' to torture, abuse, and do who knows what else to people at your whim, here's what you do: move on down to Texas and set up a religion. The Texas Supreme Court just ruled on a case in which a young woman was subjected to extreme distress and restraint during a…

D.J. Grothe and I tussled again in this week's Point of Inquiry podcast, in a continuation of last week's episode.

One of our least favorite institutions, Focus on the Family, has been trying to corrupt the educational system of New Zealand by sending creationist garbage to the high schools. It doesn't seem to be a serious threat — so far, they're pretty sensible down there — but there is one internet poll…

Here is an important suggestion, if ever you should find yourself living in rural Minnesota. Always roll up your car windows at night. Wait, you say — that seems unnecessary. This is a trusting part of the world, where petty crime is rare, and people leave houses and cars unlocked all the time. Why…

A certain Brown University biology graduate has taken an unfortunate step, one that we asked him to avoid. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana has signed a pro-creationism bill into law, all to pander to evangelical protestant hicks. We know this is a guy with national aspirations, so he's taking a big…

I need to get a cool hat like Neil deGrasse Tyson and Margaret Downey if I want to be one of the Cool Kids.

You have an opportunity to participate in an Atheist Coming Out Party. You should! It'll be fun! Atheists always throw the best parties and have the best and smartest conversations!

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

The paleontologists are going too far. This is getting ridiculous. They keep digging up these collections of bones that illuminate tetrapod origins, and they keep making finer and finer distinctions. On one earlier side we have a bunch of tetrapod-like fish — Tiktaalik and Panderichthys, for…

You may have heard that Expelled opened in Canada this week…but it's not off to a soaring start. The first reviews are coming in, and I am encouraged by the opening line of this one: "I found this film so distasteful I hestitate to dignify it with even a thumbnail review." Also noteworthy: the…