pharyngula

Nooooooo!! The proliferation of special purpose wiki encyclopedias has gone too far!

Every once in a while, a reader sends me a link to something I've already dealt with (and that's OK, I don't expect everyone to have committed the entirety of the Pharyngula database to memory), but it's a link to something so dang weird it's worth reposting. In this case, I was sent a link to a…

Here's a clever (I think) observation in the efforts to eradicate malaria: the mosquitos that transmit malaria are also infected with the disease-causing parasite, so maybe if we cure malaria in mosquitos, it will end one intermediate step in the transmission chain. It sounds like a crazy idea, but…

In a good pirate movie, you need flamboyant excess, so I guess it's not surprising that the final installment in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise is going to have every pirate in the world in a final climactic battle. It's going to give every pirate fan an arrrrgasm, I think.

Today is the vernal equinox, Bérubé has returned to the blogosphere, and the WAAGNFNP has manifested itself. I don't know what it all means, unless perhaps that all the snow and ice is going to be melted by a giant nuclear fireball, ending the hockey season.

Perhaps you thought Lisa Nowak, the pampers-wearing jealous lover, was enough of a stain on the reputation of astronauts. Here's another one, though, to give you more excuses to kick them off their pedestal: There's going to be a "Back to Genesis" conference sponsored by the Institute for Creation…

I've finally had it with my mail software. I need advice on what I can do. Here's the situation: Mac OS X (that's not going to change), the standard Mac Mail program, everything up-to-date with the latest versions. I've got about 20 folders set up in Mail, with filters to automatically redirect…

Coturnix is organizing an informative google bomb — if you look up Michael Egnor on the web, what should you find? How about lots and lots of critics? It seems only fair. Teach the controversy! Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor • Michael Egnor…

So, Mike Haubrich stopped by my office yesterday, and during the conversation he mentioned that there was a video of me on the Seed site … with some trepidation, I took a look, and there it is: it's my short presentation at the Inspiration Festival last fall. Ouch. I just cringe to see and hear…

H. Allen Orr and Daniel Dennett are tearing into each other something fierce over at Edge, and it's all over Orr's dismissive review of Dawkins' The God Delusion. It's a bit splintery and sharp, but the core of Orr's complaint, I think, is that he's unimpressed with Dawkins' 'Ultimate 747' argument…

In order to help pay for the tremendous amounts of bandwidth Pharyngula and its Sciblings are sucking off the internet, there are new video ads inserted below the first article on each page. They are a kind of visual noise, but they aren't supposed to slow down access—they should only load…

Clearly, the Hemelshots have a much more sophisticated relationship than we have. We're flying the pirate flag outside of our house, but every time we try to move on to the full pirate phase, we run aground on the fact that she thinks she should be the Cap'n, and then there are the swordfights on…

We're so accustomed to hearing about good Christian parents complaining about the material their kids are taught in science class, and lobbying school boards to ban the eeevilution word from the school, that it's rather nice to see an example of the shoe on the other foot. A school in Sisters,…

The Biology in Science Fiction blog has a short article on color-changing chromatophores in cephalopod skin, and asks for examples of biological adaptive camouflage used in SF stories — I want more. I want to know what SF novels have used cephalopods or cephalopod-like aliens as major characters or…

I'm joining Larry Moran in applying the thumbscrews to John Logsdon, who has just started a new blog. He's got to do more than just one short tease of a post!

Ann Coulter is coming out with a new book: If Democrats Had Any Brains, They'd Be Republicans. I read Coulter's last book, Godless, and I can tell you that having Ann Coulter call anyone else stupid is like seeing cockroaches complaining about vermin, or a pig farmer turning up their nose at…

What are we going to do with Michael Egnor? He seems to be coming up with a new bit of foolishness every day, and babbling on and on. Should we ignore him (there really isn't any substance there), or should we criticize him every time (although he's probably capable of generating idiocy at a…

Since I previously mentioned GodTube, which is all Jesus all the time and has lots of creationism videos, it's only fair that I reveal that there is also an IslamTube, where you can listen to speeches about the religion of peace or watch humvees get blown up. Somebody introduce these two to each…

The Lynn Margulis blog tour has moved on to Memoirs of a Skepchick—if you weren't satisfied with her answers here, you can try again.

The blog Startling Moniker has a nice acknowledgment for being added to my blogroll, but the main interest in that post is that he admits to a guilty pleasure I share: fishing through seedy bookstores. You can sometimes find the weirdest stuff in old bins in fringe bookstores. DaveX explores a…

Geoffrey Simmons, a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute, is going to be on the prestigious Coast to Coast AM show to talk about evolution and the impossibility thereof on Tuesday night. Simmons is an MD (lately, we're seeing a trend in DI's taste in proponents, aren't we?) in Eugene, Oregon ……

Gary Farber has been collecting reviews of 300, the new movie about the Spartans at Thermopylae, and they certainly are amusing — I haven't seen the movie, but I suspect my opinion of it will be close to Howard Waldrop's and Lawrence Person's. I saw the trailer, and while the cartoonish style is to…

Raymond Finney, MD of Tennessee wants to ask a bunch of pompous questions of his state board of education ("Is the Universe and all that is within it, including human beings, created through purposeful, intelligent design by a Supreme Being, that is a Creator?" etc., etc., etc.). Although I'm…

Once again, in the nomination thread for the Molly award, two names came up over and over again, and since this isn't the kind of thing where we should nit-pick, I'll put up two winners once more: Date Winners Sample comments March 2007 Blake Stacey He's a smart feller. whenever I'm reading a…

Little girls can be cruel.

Avoid Las Vegas between May 17th and 20th. There's a conference going on there that will be like a black hole of stupid, with both Sylvia Browne and Deepak Chopra and a host of low-wattage luminaries of woo in attendance, and there may be a kind of intelligence implosion going on. Your brain may…

The Discovery Institute seems well pleased with their new anachronistic acolyte, a modern neurosurgeon who harks back fondly to the ancient wheeze of Natural Theology from a few centuries back. He's been promoted to being a regular contributor on the DI Media Complaints Division web page, and he…

Have you ever noticed that just about any atheist article will get labeled as a "rant", no matter how thoughtful it might be? I guess that means you'll find the Carnival of the Godless #62 loaded to the gills with howling, savage, unbridled ranting. I like it.

It's a slide show! It's a song! Watch and listen to Crowson's Evolution Blues! You won't know whether to tap your toes, laugh, or cry.

You really should take a closer look at this map of publication links between scientific disciplines. Here's the description: This map was constructed by sorting roughly 800,000 published papers into 776 different scientific paradigms (shown as pale circular nodes) based on how often the papers…