pharyngula

The North looks ever more attractive — read this excellent article on the collapse of organized religion in Canada. The numbers of church members is simply plummeting up there, a state we can only dream of bringing to pass here in the US (numbers are declining here, too, but we can hope that this…

I just learned that Jacob Bronowski would be a century old today. I wonder how many readers here know anything about the man? Many people will praise the impact Carl Sagan had on people with his program, Cosmos, way back in the 1980s, but I have to say that Bronowski's Ascent of Man was much, much…

Those wacky fellas behind the movie Expelled are at it again. First, we have an interview with Ben Stein. You can tell that the interviewer has drunk deep of the Discovery Institute spring. Cybercast News Service: There is a segment in the film, where it's made clear that intelligent design can…

I want. Look at this nifty Tentacle Arm: And they're cheap! $15! At one for each appendage, that would be $75.

The capybara is the current champion for rodents of unusual size — it weighs about 60kg (about 130 pounds); another large rodent is the pakarana, which weighs about a quarter of that. Either one is far too much rattiness for most people to want hanging around. Now there's another king of the…

One of our regulars here is Hank Fox, and some of you may have noticed his website has been rather static lately. Check again! He's back at it, and in case you're looking for a professional proofreader and editor, he's offering his services online.

Neil Shubin, recent guest on The Colbert Report, author of the cover story of this month's Natural History magazine, author of the newly released book, Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), and most significantly, well known…

I thought it might be useful for the readers of Pharyngula to get my sense of the Colbert show experience. Being a scientist on the show carries with it some challenges. We need to convey facts of science correctly and do so in a way reveals how fun our science is to do and to think about. We…

Of course, he's probably going to be proud of beating the Pope and Chuck Norris for this one.

I love bookstores — I like the ones that have huge stacks of strange used books where you can find surprises, and I also like the big online stores where I can order anything I want. My kids are all the same way; when we make trips into the big city, the whole mess of us usually end up spending…

I have mixed feelings about this article in Inside Higher Ed on the issue of approving an ICR degree program in Texas. On the one hand, it's clear that the Texas bureaucracy is being cautious and thorough and working its way through their official protocols. Raymund Paredes, the commissioner of…

(hat tip to RBH)

Somebody has to explain the logic of certain Republican values to me. Introducing something called the "Middle Class Job Protection Act" (which is actually, of course, nothing but a massive corporate tax cut), our own Little Miss Chipper Crazypants, Michele Bachmann, thinks this is good news: I am…

Here's your brain on religion: Tom Cruise babbles about scientology. It's depressing schlock — the man is so full of himself, yet all he says are empty platitudes and non-sequiturs and scientology slang. It's the perfect portrayal of a fellow who really isn't very intelligent, but thinks he is.

I heard this third hand, so it's not exactly the most well-founded rumor around, but a contact with inside information in the Southern Baptist Ministries has heard that they want to help out with the koo-koo descent into creationist madness that is Florida. They have asked their Florida churches to…

Here's an interesting twist of view: comparing the perspectives of a Law (Paul Davies) and Chaos (yours truly*) and applying the ideas to chess. Even in a relatively simple system where all the rules are fixed and known, is there an orderly, formulaic solution to the problem? *There is a reason my…

I've heard this show was quite good, but I've never seen it. Recommended? Will it aggravate a militant atheist?

Ahhh…in case you hadn't heard, Apple came out with an new machine yesterday, the MacBook Air. I want. It's one of those superslim portables, with the usual Apple elegance — this would be a perfect travel machine. Except for the price: a bit less than $2K for the low end model, over $3K for the high…

Watch Neil Shubin discuss evolution on the Colbert Report — he's good. He convinced me to run out and order his new book, Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll)!

Here's his latest suggestion: that we we amend the Constitution to be more biblical. "I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution," Huckabee told a Michigan audience on Monday. "But I believe it's a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the…

I beat poor Phil Plait in another of those "best science blog" awards. Of course, we both creamed Ars Technica, Gizmodo, and Endgadget — those guys must not have even noticed the competition. Hey, I barely did.

Hagfish are wonderful, beautiful, interesting animals. They are particularly attractive to evolutionary biologists because they have some very suggestive features that look primitive: they have no jaws, and they have no pectoral girdle or paired pectoral fins. They have very poorly developed eyes…

It's a good thing that Minnesota Atheists are making an effort to get on the radio. Have you ever looked at the Christian talk radio programming in your area? It's like a black hole of rampaging stupid, so awfully banal and inane that it's terrifying. I was just sent the program guide for our major…

If you've ever wondered how we got from "E pluribus unum" to "In God we trust," there is an explanation. It's all a subversive plot.

I've known this site for a long time, but a reader just sent me a link to it, so maybe I shouldn't take for granted that you all know about it, too…it's Fundies Say The Darndest Things, a collection of ripe and juicy quotes culled from Christian discussion boards. Some of them I suspect to be the…

It's easy. Look at all the students who think the cure for social problems is praying for 40 days. Ah, maybe we shouldn't pick on 'em too much. It's cruel to taunt the handicapped. (UM students and alumni should feel free to defend the honor of their school in this thread.)

Hey, you all must know Possummomma (aka, Atheist in a mini van) — she's got a great blog, she's an outspoken, positive atheist, and she's one of those excellent representatives of atheist family values. She's not doing well right now, and is struggling with lupus. Berlzebub is organizing donations…

I'd be surprised if any of you knew who Louis Savain is — he's a weird little crackpot that I stomped on hard all of 3½ years ago. He claims that the Bible is actually a complete and accurate technical description of the neurological workings of the human brain. It was one of the more memorably…

A lab at the University of Minnesota has done something cool: they've grown a functioning heart from stem cells. The problem with building complex organs in a lab is that their normal construction required an elaborate context in the developing embryo, something that is impossible to replicate,…

The always perspicacious Chris Clarke is talking about us, in a post where he talks about the pleasures and perils of managing comments on a blog. I'd be lying if I said I never appreciated a good bar brawl of a comment thread. And some blogs make the free-for-alls work: Pharyngula comes to mind as…