Paul Z. Meyers
pharyngula
Posts by this author
Or I would, if I actually had a land squid.
Does anyone know where I could pick up one of those babies? Petco, Petsmart?
The Hox genes are a set of transcription factors that exhibit an unusual property: they provide a glimpse of one way that gene expression is translated into metazoan morphology. For the most part, the genome seems to be a welter of various genes scattered about almost randomly, with no order…
This would be something like Reason #5,422.
Another reason is that there's no such thing as "Talk Like a Ninja Day". (Psssst…19 September. Arrrr.)
We've all heard how the Creation Science Evangelism, Kent Hovind's organization, has been strongarming YouTube to suppress criticisms of his bad science. Well, check this out: now CSE has been caught red-handed revising their licensing. Where before they declared everything free and good to…
It's that time of the month again, when we try to acknowledge the work of some commenter (or inanimate carbon rod) who has most delighted us by bestowing admission in the grand Order of the Molly. Just leave a comment here naming your favorite commenter or random object intended to mock the…
Remember, we're supposed to be pushing for the restoration of the Office of Technology Assessment. Have you written or phoned your senators and representatives yet?
Larry Moran gives his take on the Nisbet AAAS panel. I suspect Matt is getting a little more controversy than he anticipated.
That's good, right? It'll stir up more interest in the discussion!
I'm a little late to this tea party, since Jason Rosenhouse and Larry Moran have already trampled on the biscuits and kicked over the teakettle, but I have to register my disagreement with this
polite and sincere article by Jake Young. It's got several elements that bug me badly.
First of all, don'…
Andrew Brown suggests that we shouldn't suppose that religious belief is irrational, and I'm going to have to agree in part with him. I think theology is actually an exercise in reason — it is an activity that has engaged some of the greatest minds of the ages, and it is a sophisticated and…
Perhaps it was just poor framing when Cardinal Joachim Meisner said:
"Wherever culture is separated from the worship of God, the cult atrophies in ritualism and culture becomes degenerate," he said.
The word "degenerate" is hardly ever used in Germany today because of its known association with the…
Laelaps explains the basic concepts of horse evolution. Now if only we could get the creationists to actually read that summary — they keep saying that the evolution of the horse has been disproven by the fossil record.
Everyone in academia knows it: textbook publishers abuse the system. Jim Fiore decries the high cost of college textbooks, and I have to agree completely. Basic textbooks at the lower undergraduate levels do not need a new edition every year or two, not even in rapidly changing fields like biology…
Everyone: get on your email or your phone, contact your representative, and tell them to support HR2826, the house bill to restore habeas corpus. You can find the text of the bill here (search by bill number for "HR 2826"). This is an opportunity to tell your congresspeople to support a positive…
Greg Laden has an excellent article on the genetics and evolution of race — basically, it's an irrelevant pairing of concepts.
"Eat your heart out, Philip Rushton," indeed.
Saint Gasoline speculates about a common idea: using a time machine to travel far in the future to reap the benefits of compound interest. It won't work!
Lots of bank accounts get abandoned — forgotten, the owner dies, etc., but you don't have a lot of bankers sitting around fretting, "Uh-oh,…
While Revere is showing a rerun of that glorious anti-religion riff (it's worth listening to again!), here's another clip of Marcus Brigstocke being right in every particular once more.
Hey, University of Missouri-Columbia readers: Elliot Sober is coming your way. At 4:00 on the 20th (this week!), Elliot Sober will be speaking on Evolution versus Intelligent Design. It should be fun; somebody report back to me, OK?
Closer to my home, Steve Pinker will be speaking at the…
It's late, I'm going to be unconscious in my bed, those of you with insomnia or living in distant time zones need something to chat about — so here, just for you, it's a Pharyngula Late Night open thread, primed with a few fun carnivals.
Oekologie #9
Friday Ark #156
Carnival of the Godless…
By the addition of a new candidate who actually believes in God. Yes, everyone, Alan Keyes has entered the race.
Dear jebus, why is the race for the election of the president of the most militarily powerful country on earth such a ludicrous joke? Shouldn't this be an office for serious people with…
Take note of that name, just in case. This ambitious young zealot might just be a future president of the Christian States of America (in which case, look for me at my new home in Australia).
More likely, though, he'll be one of those desperate men in shabby suits handing out bizarre political…
People, don't do this to me. I've got all this work I've got to get done so that I'm free to go on a date this evening, and you keep sending me these distractions. Like, for instance, this link to a collection of Marine Invertebrate Video and Film Stock Footage. Cephalopods and nudibranchs and…
Man, everyone is sending me this comic and saying it reminds them of me. I don't know why.
Just for the record, I would never shoot a dog. I know how to use an IV and some barbituates to painlessly euthanize them. But I wouldn't. That's only your theory.
…don't bother.
A reader sent me a link to his photo set from the BVCSM, and I'm afraid all you'll find there is the Wall O' Text approach to instruction. You know what that is: print out a page from Answers in Genesis, blow it up real big, and slap it on a wall … instant museum!
There is one…
There is a painful assumption of progress in many interpretations of evolution — and sometimes it's by people who ought to know better. T. Ryan Gregory finds a ghastly example of a figure that, by cherry-picking the data and doing a little suggestive ordering of the presentation, makes it look like…
Atheists don't get credit if we give to religious charities. We don't get credit if we give to simply secular causes. Now, though, we've got a new explicitly godless charity that works to improve education and knowledge of science: the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science. It's my kind…
Two quick takes on a couple of oddities that were brought to my attention: cases of magic space salts and magic metal foils.
Here's a bit of a scam: this company called Space2O lofts salts into space, and then adds them in trace amounts to water and sells it with the label "Contents have been…
Our country seems to have killed at least a million Iraqis at the whim of George W. Bush and his cabal of neocons.
I know that his former friends have started disowning him — he's no True Conservative now — but since he is officially a mass-murdering monster, can we also expect them to…
I see that Matt Nisbet has organized a panel for the AAAS meetings, in which he has picked a squad of people sympathetic to religion to 'argue' that "scientists must adopt a language that emphasizes shared values and has broad appeal, avoiding the pitfall of seeming to condescend to fellow citizens…
Oh, that little scamp, Billy Dembski. He's all upset about his shabby treatment at Baylor, and he's displacing his anger into a defense of Robert Marks.
President John Lilley of Baylor appears to have made up his mind that Prof. Robert Marks's Evolutionary Informatics Lab is to have no place at…