pharyngula

At last! Here is the much delayed Carnival of Evolution 48! I must begin by apologizing for my tardiness, especially since John Wilkins managed to post the last one on time. I was traveling in the 2½ weeks preceding the deadline for CoE, and the combination of spotty internet access, extreme…

In this video, I discover that baby puffins are called "pufflings"…which I find totally adorable. (via Iceland Islande)

My Scienceblogs site is a-changin'. National Geographic has been working behind the scenes to convert and move all the old data to a newer and prettier website, and the final surge of fixes is going into place tonight and tomorrow — so don't bother commenting over there for a while until it's all…

(via Ark in Space.) (Also on FtB)

(via Giordano Cipriani) (Also on Sb)

(via Cepolina.com) (Also on FtB)

(via Australian Geographic) (Also on FtB)

Meet Jeff Flake from Arizona. His number one goal is the destruction of the federal government, one piece at a time. His first target: the National Science Foundation. The NSF funds a big chunk of the country's basic research to the tune of about $7 billion/year, and Flake proposed cutting it by a…

(via Duke Institute for Brain Sciences) (Also on FtB)

(via Listverse)

No, dinosaurs did not fart themselves to death. This is what happens when you get your information from Fox News. Dinosaurs may have farted themselves to extinction, according to a new study from British scientists. The researchers calculated that the prehistoric beasts pumped out more than 520…

Vertebrates are modified segmented worms; that is, their body plan is made up of sequentially repeated units, most apparent in skeletal structures like the vertebrae. Arthropods are also modified segmented worms. Look at a larval fly, for instance, and you can see they are made up of rings stacked…

(via Deep Sea News)

As regulars here may know, I've been getting crank email from John A. Davison for many years now. Until recently, he was sending me his tirades almost every day — and they were just piling up in my spam folder. He was remarkably persistent. Here is his very last email to me, fished up out of that…

I think I saw this tree in a Dr Seuss book once upon a time. Unfortunately, all the source says about is that it is "typical habitat of the Western Clawless Upside-down Fly, Nothoastia clausa." That belongs in Dr Seuss, too. (Also on FtB)

The latest Carnival of Evolution is at Evolving Thoughts, hosted by that guy Wilkins who usually covers the philosophical beat…but we'll let him out of that cage this one time. The Carnival of Evolution 48 will be held right here, on Pharyngula. You can submit entries via the carnival widget; get…

(via NatGeo) (Also on FtB)

Some species of cephalopods are incapable of concealing their sexual history. The males produce packets of sperm called spermatangia that they grasp with a specialized arm that they then reach out and splat, poke into their mate. In Octopoteuthis deletron, a deep-sea squid, these spermatangia are…

The story so far: Mario Beauregard published a very silly article in Salon, claiming that Near-Death Experiences (NDEs) were proof of life after death, a claim that he attempted to support with a couple of feeble anecdotes. I replied, pointing out that NDEs are delusions, and his anecdotal evidence…

(via Oceanwide Images) (Also on FtB)

It's always amusing to see creationists try to explain why Charles Darwin was wrong, especially when they make up lists of reasons "Darwin's theory of evolution does not hold up to scientific scrutiny." These are always people who wouldn't know what scientific scrutiny was if it knocked them…

A while back, I told you all about this small piece of the biochemistry of the fly eye — the pathways that make the brown and red pigments that color the eye. I left it with a question: if even my abbreviated summary revealed considerable complexity, how could this pathway evolve? Changing…

(via NatGeo) (Also on FtB)

(via Ocean Light) (Also on FtB)

(via NatGeo) (Also on FtB)

(via Rishi Parikh) (Also on FtB

Sometimes, following the path scientific results take as they enter more mass media awareness really is like a game of telephone — you can scarcely recognize the original work in the final summary that ends up in the news media. And sometimes, you find that the scientists contributed to the ghastly…

(via NatGeo) (Also on FtB)

(via NatGeo) (Also on FtB

(via NatGeo) (Also on FtB)