pharyngula

(It's from the California Seafood Council, but let's not hold that against them)

The Institute for Creation Research is going on and on again about Haeckel and gill slits. It gets tiresome; I've explained so many times that Haeckel's theory was wrong and he skewed his drawings to fit his model, but that it really is true that human embryos have pharyngeal arches that are…

I always hear this argument that, well, maybe those herbs and enemas don't help that much, but they don't hurt, and they make people feel better, so get off alternative medicine's back. Right. Because distractions from real medicine don't affect the legitimate work being done. You might want to…

I had never heard of the Women in Space Program before, but apparently, after the Soviets sent Valentina Tereshkova into space, there was actually an effort to train American women as astronauts. The participants of the Women in Space Program experienced tremendous success. "Nineteen women enrolled…

There is an extremely common sort of experiment to understand plasticity of the developing brain. These are important experiments to understand an important phenomenon: the brain does not simply unfold ineluctably to produce a fully functional organ, but actually interacts constantly with its…

The NY Times is touting a computer simulation of Mycoplasma genitalium, the proud possesor of the simplest known genome. It's a rather weird article because of the combination of hype, peculiar emphases, and cluelessness about what a simulation entails, and it bugged me. It is not a complete…

If you're looking for a meaty weekend read, look no further than Paul McBride's thorough dismantling of Science and Human Origins, the new bad book from the Discovery Institute, by Gauger, Axe, and Luskin. It's in 6 parts, taking on each chapter one by one: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, a prediction…

I always have unwarrantedly high expectations of creationists. I know that there are some flamingly ignorant nutjobs out there, all your Hams and Hovindses and Luskins, but lurking in my mind is always this suspicion that somewhere there has to be one or two biologically competent ideologues on…

The dumpling squid is as unprepossessing as its name implies, but beneath that plump exterior lurks a savage lust. They mate for 1-3 hours, to the point where they're completely physically exhausted, and an easy target for a predator…but it's all so worth it.

Somedays, it's just awful to have the mind of a 12 year old boy. So I'm reading this serious and interesting paper on Neandertals, and learn something new. Two particular characteristics have received considerable attention; pronounced humeral diaphysis strength asymmetry and anteroposteriorly…

And credulous newspapers are helping that quack. The latest case is a little girl in Ireland with a disfiguring and deadly rhabdomyosarcoma who is trying to raise money to get the useless and totally fraudulent Burzynski antineoplaston treatment … and this article makes the good point that…

Plants are just covered with these. (via Visuals Unlimited)

Marino is a demented fanatical animal rights activist who runs a website called "Negotiation is Over". NIO is notorious as the site of some of the most frothingly furious denouncers of all animal research. Marino is from Florida; she was arrested and extradited to Michigan in March to be tried for…

And then I felt intimidated. (via Echinoblog)

Oy, singularitarians. Chris Hallquist has a post up about the brain uploading problem — every time I see this kind of discussion, I cringe at the simple-minded naivete that's always on display. Here's all we have to do to upload a brain, for instance: The version of the uploading idea: take a…

A very familiar story: a creationist is told that her views are unsupported by any legitimate science, and in reply she rattles off a list of creationist "scientists". Here we are told by a creationist housewife — as she describes herself — defending her belief that the Giant’s Causeway is only as…

Give me grizzled, battered, and well-worn. Plasticky, smooth, and fresh is so freaking uninteresting.

I'm always telling people you need to understand development to understand the evolution of form, because development is what evolution modifies to create change. For example, there are two processes most people have heard of. One is paedomorphosis, the retention of juvenile traits into adulthood…

I think she's just got one thing on her mind. The insects crawling all over it add a creepy touch, though.

I'm glad someone at the New Humanist is catching on: that little bit of performance art at the Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland, in which the creationists got their falsified myth inserted into the National Trust's exhibits, is exactly how they operate. Every little advantage is pursued in…

If you ever get a chance, spend some time looking at fish muscles in a microscope. Larval zebrafish are perfect; they're transparent and you can trace all the fibers, so you can see everything. The body musculature of fish is most elegantly organized into repeating blocks of muscle along the length…

(via NatGeo.)

No. One other event I participated in was a "debate" with an ancient alien theorist. It was very peculiar, as you might guess. The way this came about was that Scotty Roberts, the alien astronaut fan, proposed a session on his wacky speculations, and the conference organizers didn't want such…

Sean Carroll live-blogged a seminar discussing the latest results, which meant he wrote down a heck of a lot of cryptic jargon I couldn't understand at all. But here's the bottom line: Personal editorializing by me: we’ve found the Higgs, or at least a Higgs. Still can’t be sure that it’s just the…

OK, so you can't make it to Convergence in Bloomington, Minnesota this weekend, because you live in some strange foreign backwater like the United Kingdom. I guess you could go to the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition instead, if you live somewhere out that way. It's going on right now, 3-8…

Mano Singham has discovered a good analysis of the claim that circumcision has health benefits. I agree with it entirely, because I looked at those same papers and came to the same conclusion a year ago! So they must be right. The analysis points out a few new things I hadn't noticed, in addition…

The latest Carnival of Evolution is online at Mousetrap.

Oh, it's another crappy television show put on by a purported science-positive network that I completely missed. National Geographic ran a show called "Chasing UFOs" on Friday, and since about the only television I ever watch any more is commercial-free movies on Netflix, I wasn't tuned in.…

We do not have a rational drug policy. There are potent and dangerous drugs that are socially accepted because hey, we've always drunk alcohol and smoked cigarettes, while there are milder, far less dangerous drugs that are damned because they're new and unfamiliar. And so we throw people in prison…

It's really a shame: the United States does have some very good things, like an excellent higher education system (which is declining with drooping support, but that's a different subject), a fine Constitution, and good pizza, but what is making headway in the rest of the world? McDonalds and…