pharyngula

My readers are a cruel people. They send me links to the strangest things, including this wacky fundagelical rant, exposing me to the bubbling looniness simmering beneath the thin shell of rationality in this country, and making my brain hurt. So much for the logic of religious atheism. Their…

If you've been following our little high school drama here in homophobic Morris, Skatje has posted a summary.

The bad news: the shameless astronomer is gaining on us, and has closed within a hundred votes. The good news: Deep Sea News has joined the scienceblogs stable! This is either a portent of the squid-fans victory, or a consolation prize that will make up for any loss. Vote for Pharyngula (and…

How can they have a respectable show trial if the defendant keeps defending himself so well? This is a classic and irrefutable response.

This sad jumble of bones is all that remains of Volaticotherium antiquus, a small rat-sized mammal that was recently dug up in China. There are two particularly outstanding things about this creature. One is that browner layer in the rock: that isn't an artifact, it's a bit of soft tissue that was…

Here's another article on that freaky Left Behind video game. The rationalizations for the ability to kill people violently in the game are fascinating. Left Behind Games' president, Jeffrey Frichner, says the game actually is pacifist because players lose "spirit points" every time they gun down…

Since I was just mean to the British press, here's a compensatory accolade: here's a nice, sharp editorial from James Randerson. ID was itself designed as a Trojan horse for creationism, with its origins in the Discovery Institute, a thinktank in Seattle whose stated aim is "to replace…

Although, actually, I was hoping to get Caligula, like The Countess. Which Historical Lunatic Are You?From the fecund loins of Rum and Monkey. (Honestly, I warned you. Keep voting.)

O how desperate he has become. Phil is stripping to get votes now. I'm not going to go down that road (I'd be doomed for sure if I did), so here's the deal. Vote for me and I'm going to expose my brain rather than my bod: I've got this great post on evolution of the vascular system I'll put up…

Is anyone else getting a "look how stupid Americans are" vibe from all the British coverage of Ken Ham's creation 'science' museum? It's another story from the European press that politely echoes Ham's overblown claims for his grandiose edifice to ignorance, and mostly recycles the same old stuff…

Comrade Myers signs his confession before the eyes of the Committee I have been ordered by the Ministry of Justice of the We Are All Giant Nuclear Fireball Now Party to publicly confess my shame and apologize for my grave offenses against the WAAGNFNP. I do so apologize. I have been ordered to…

Deepak Chopra is still blathering on. I'm afraid that while he can't shut up, I can ignore him, and this will be my last response to his drivel; it's also the last time I'll be linking to the Huffington Post. Arianna Huffington's exercise in indiscriminate narcissism is not the direction I want to…

Is it too late to join the "We are all giant nuclear fireball" Party? 'Cuz I'm getting a little worried what with all the show trials of the radicals. Pretty soon they're going to start banishing people to gulags in icy wastelands like Western Minnesota…oh, say. That's all right then. I guess they…

Weird. How many of you parents ever thought you'd be glad to hear your kid was getting called into the principal's office? Oh, man, this homophobic student, Andrew Jallo, has discovered Skatje's blog and is truly making a fool of himself—he has discovered sock puppetry, but doesn't have the…

I am amused that now the Disco Institute is reduced to complaining that Judge Jones adopted the ACLU's findings of fact in the Dover trial. It's true that Jones didn't write a big chunk of his decision, because he literally accepted the opinion of the DI's opponents. Apparently, this is a common…

What a terrific title: A devil food is turning our kids into homosexuals! It's from Wingnut Daily, of course, and it's simply one of their kooks taking a germ of fact and amplifying it into a flaming reactionary whimper of fear. He's complaining about soy. Soybeans do contain compounds called…

We can learn from nature: Inspired by the sleek and efficient propulsion of squid, jellyfish and other cephalopods, a University of Colorado at Boulder researcher has designed a new generation of compact vortex generators that could make it easier for scientists to maneuver and dock underwater…

People, you aren't doing your part. Yesterday, I had an almost 600 vote lead over the star-gazing bone-bag; this morning, it has narrowed rapidly to little more than 200. At this rate, he's going to catch up and pass me today, and then the suppression of the majority invertebrates will continue to…

Revel in the crankiness: Charlie Brown Must Die. (If that link doesn't work for you, here's a direct link to the Quicktime movie) P.S. I do not endorse incinerating blockheaded kids. After all, I'm one of those Christmas atheists.

Ah, the pleasures of living in a small town in Red America: the high schools are fertile fields for fostering hate, and now it's facilitated by technology, like Facebook, that allows them to sow it far and wide. My daughter is on a rampage right now, upset because her erstwhile peers at the high…

It's a strange thing to care about a dog I've never met…

Isn't she pretty? This is Promachoteuthis sloani, a new species of deep water squid trawled up out of the North Atlantic. Many more photos of this creature are available online, and you can also download the paper describing it.

Yeah, I'm thinking of the kittens. I'm thinking real hard. I was going to say, "Because if you don't vote for me, I'm feeding the kittens to the Kraken," but then I realized that the kind of people who'd vote for me would probably want me to feed the kittens to the Kraken. And then I realized it…

There's a little bit of everything out there. How about this: a blog dedicated to lesbian vampire movies (and no, it's not some freaky porn site). Genre rules! (via ZayZayEM)

He manages to accomplish something I cannot: Larry Moran reviews Francis Collins' book, The Language of God. It's negative, of course, but far fairer and more generous than I could have been. I was afraid the snarl I wore when I was struggling through that awful book was going to be permanently…

Today, I gave my final lecture in developmental biology this term. We have one more class session which will be a final discussion, but I'm done yapping at them. Since I can't possibly teach them everything, I offered some suggestions on what to read next, if they're really interested in…

Say hello to the new Seedlings, Neurontic and Integrity of Science.

We're in good shape. Pharyngula is slowly pulling ahead of Bad Astronomy, and I think Phil has just conceded by urging his readers to vote for me. He is admitting that a vote for him is a vote against the eventual squid domination of the Earth, so naturally no one in their right mind is going to…

A while back, I mentioned this essay contest by Answers in Genesis in which the prize was a $50,000 scholarship to Liberty University. If you're curious about the winner and one of the runners-up, Zeno has the story: the winner's essay is all about how anti-matter supports the Bible, and the third…