pharyngula

We've been experiencing a great howling windstorm since yesterday — it seems to be a common event every spring around here that we get a storm or two just to teach the trees that this is supposed to be prairie. Our excitement for the day is that this huge old willow in our yard lost another limb,…

It's strange (but typical) how creationists will simply make up an answer to that question that trivializes the number of discovered fossils — the latest is DaveScot, who claims they "wouldn't fill a single coffin." Afarensis tallies them up. Would you be surprised to learn that DaveScot was making…

It was as inane as you might have expected. It turns out that their "proof" of the existence of god was the coke can argument. If you don't know what that argument is, here it is: it begins about 2½ minutes into this, and is over about 3½ minutes in. He could have done it all in one minute! I'm…

Frank Tipler claims to have proven the existence of god with phyics. Will this be the sort of answer we'll see in Ray Comfort's promised 13 minute proof? Notice that we don't actually get to see the infamous equation. We see Tipler scribble a few words like "quantum" (does the word "quantum"…

That recent D'Souza article is a rich vein of lunacy that I have to tap once more. D'Souza has additional tools to woo conservatives in his toolbox: how about the naturalistic fallacy? But if Christian anxiety is misplaced, conservatives are even further off the mark. That's because Darwin's…

So the Republicans find themselves confused about science (especially evolution), and are arguing among themselves about how to cope with reality. Perhaps you think this is a promising development—they're at least considering the issues, and their hidebound attachment to fantasy is weakening. Can…

Christopher Hitchens' appearance on the Daily Show was a disappointment—largely because Hitchens seemed to be half in the bag, and Stewart kept stepping all over his words trying to make them funny, and the short format was not to the favor of a fellow who tends to speak in complete sentences and…

No, not the Republican presidential candidates: you've got your choice of a blooming corpse flower named Perry or a six-legged hermaphroditic cow. I do think the next Republican debate would be enlivened by the presence of these two. I'd vote for Perry.

4 May 1970: the Kent State murders.

I almost missed it—today is Thomas Henry Huxley's birthday. There are some good photos at that link. The man certainly had a fine beard in his younger days, but I admit the cleanshaven look is how I always picture him.

If you've been looking forward to that debate between Ray Comfort/Kirk Cameron and the Rational Response Squad, it has been rescheduled. It will occur tomorrow, 5 May, in New York, but you won't be able to see it until 9 May. It will be streamed from ABC.com on Wednesday, 9 May, at 1:00pm EST.…

Hey, not many carnival announcements this week. You know, if you've got a carnival that is in some way related to science, biology, godlessness, academia — my usual obsessions — feel free to send me notices and I'll mention them in my weekly carnival roundup. Friday Ark #137 I and the Bird #48…

Knocked another one down — I finished the grades for the last exam in my genetics course (there is still an optional final next Friday). This was an important one, because I promised myself that if I could get them all done this afternoon, I would let myself go to the local theater to watch…

Grimpoteuthis is a cephalopod so cute, now it's being compared to Pikachu. That's harsh. Being plump and adorable is a good way to get kicked out of the savage monster club. I know. I've been there.

Way back in the early 19th century, Geoffroy St. Hilaire argued for a radical idea, that vertebrates and most invertebrates were inverted copies of each other. Vertebrates have a dorsal nerve cord and ventral heart, while an insect has a ventral nerve cord and dorsal heart. Could it be that there…

Tomorrow is 5 May, and I mentioned in my review of A Brief History of Disbelief that this excellent documentary on atheism/agnosticism was supposed to be aired on PBS stations all across the country around this time. It's been hard to track down, though; I've looked in my local TV listings, and…

planktonic octopus paralarva Figure from Cephalopods: A World Guide (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Mark Norman.

Larry Moran has already mentioned this recent article in Cell on this strange new fad of science blogging. He was interviewed along with many others of us, including me. I don't know about this bit: The rock star of scientist bloggers is Paul Myers, an associate professor of biology at the…

If they're going to be that uninformed about the perilous sea beasts they encounter, they deserve to spend eternity in Davy Jones' Locker, mastering monstrous taxonomy.

I don't want to talk about it — I despise the whole field — but everyone is emailing me about it, and I was even talking to my mother on the phone tonight and she asked me about it (I said I wouldn't watch those weasels unless they were in a crotch-kicking contest). I'll let this thread open up for…

The gang at the NCSE have put together Padian's testimony at the Dover trial with the slides he used. You may have already read the transcript, but with the figures added it acquires a whole new dimension — it's basically a wonderfully done primer in the basics of macroevolutionary biology. Next…

And who can blame them? Technorati, if you're unfamiliar with it, is one of those services that watches activity on the web, and then puts up metrics and ranks and scores, and tries to distill the flux into something simpler and more comprehensible, which often reduces to telling you how many…

I tried to help out the "Darwin is Dead" carnival by promoting it, but to no avail—one of the most patently absurd anti-evolution efforts has apparently met its demise. I'm not sure how anyone could tell, though—it was pretty much brain-dead on arrival.

…goes to Sal Cordova.

The Dallas Observer has published a profile of Roy Abraham Varghese, a wealthy computer and business consultant who funnels money into 'spirituality' nonsense, that is not only so stupid that it pained me to read it, but but was also poorly and confusingly written — the reporter is utterly…

The incompetence is stunning. Richard Dawkins makes the Time 100 list, and who do they commission to write up his profile? Michael Fucking Behe. That's not just stupid, it's a slap in the face. It would have been no problem to find a smart biologist, even one who might be critical of Dawkins'…

First order of business, we have a new inductee into the Order of the Molly: April 2007 Torbjörn Larsson I, too, would like to cast a vote for Mr. Diacritical, Torbjorn Larsson, not for any one post but for the overall excellence of his contributions. And his wit. And his cool name. And…

My next Seed column was just sent off to the overlords. I love this time of year! Everything is coming to tidy conclusions, so I can focus on one thing at once instead of 10, get it done, and unlike the usual Lernaean Hydra-like state of affairs, it doesn't bloom into two new tasks. Then, tomorrow…

I was going through all those new blogs from my open enrollment day, and found this little clip on Salt on Everything. The ending made me giggle.

I pored over this map of online communities, and couldn't find scienceblogs! I was so disappointed. There's an obvious place for us, though: somewhere down in the bottom left corner, around Sulawesi.