pharyngula

Sit down. Make sure you're in a place where guffaws won't disrupt the scene…although, actually, the amount of money this guy was raking in with his scam might mute the laughter a bit. Here's more information on Hovind's arrest. A Pensacola evangelist who owns the defunct Dinosaur Adventure Land in…

Fewer open threads and more of this would make it clear why Atrios is popular. I started this blog and adopted this style in part because I thought it was important to introduce a more combative and caustic discourse on our side. I'd be quite happy and comfortable in a world where politics more…

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

Phil has a live one: a woman who mangles digital images with Photoshop filters to determine if they are lizardoid aliens. Foolish earthling. Everyone knows Phil is from Zeta Reticuli. Along similar lines, I once had someone cast a detailed horoscope for me and send it along…apparently, I am one of…

There's no way I can argue with a Countess.

Both were arrested for tax evasion.

I just finished a brief interview with Tom Crann of Minnesota Public Radio's All Things Considered show, so if you hear me calling the creationists idiots while you're driving home sometime in the next few days, don't be too shocked. (Sorry, I didn't ask exactly when it will be aired.) Here's a…

Yesterday, I reposted an article on homology within the neck and shoulder, which describes an interesting technique of using patterns of gene expression to identify homologous cellular pools; the idea is that we can discern homology more clearly by looking more closely at the molecular mechanisms,…

Andy says the Washington Post is asking for personal "spiritual stories". They want it under 400 words, and they're looking for "a time of crisis that tested your faith, the person who most influenced your beliefs, a life-changing event that shaped your spiritual identity, or a religious teaching…

A reader sent in a quote from this month's Playboy. They understand. As politics go, we're surprised so many readers expect us or any publication to provide "balance," which reflects a belief in the fallacy that there are two equally valid sides to every story. You see this in the debate over…

Ho hum, I'm quoted in Nature again this week (do I sound convincingly blasé?) It's a short news article on Francis Collins' new book, The Language of God, which I find dreadfully dreary and unconvincing, and I find his argument that "The moral law is a signpost to a God who cares about us as…

In light of this startling comparison at the Ken Lay funeral, we're going to have to keep on eye on the urn containing his cremated ashes. The Reverend Dr. Bill Lawson compared Lay with civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and Jesus Christ, and said his name would eventually be cleared. I…

(click for larger image) A new report in this week's Nature clears up a mystery about an enigmatic fossil from the Cambrian. This small creature has been pegged as everything from a chordate to a polychaete, but a detailed analysis has determined that it has a key feature, a radula, that places it…

This is funny, in a sad, pathetic kind of way: Helmut visited the Skyline Caverns in Virginia, and once the tour group was 200 feet down, the guide played a canned religious message at them. I'm not sure how I would react to such an occurrence, but I'm sure you'd all wish you could be there, with a…

Neck anatomy has long terrified me. Way back when I was a grad student, my lab studied the organization and development of the hindbrain, which was relatively tidy and segmental; my research was studying the organization and development of the spinal cord, which was also tidy and segmental. The…

Jodi Rudoren née Wilgoren, whose views on journalistic responsibility to accuracy and truth were encapsulated in this comment, I don't consider myself a creationist. I don't have any interest in sharing my personal views on how the canyon was carved, mostly because I've spent almost no time…

Creationists are liars, and the current Intelligent Design campaign in Kansas shows that there seem to be few exceptions. Their latest effort down there is to claim all supporters of evolution are atheists, which is obviously false, and is simply a ploy to generate knee-jerk opposition to good…

I just received a letter from Per Ahlberg, who is working as the international coordinator in a campaign to save the Australian lungfish, Neoceratodus forsteri, this magnificent creature: Unfortunately, this species is threatened, and its situation is getting worse, as its habitat is at risk of…

No wonder George W Bush is such a screw-up. He's actually handled by Johannes Schlüter, a very tiny German with poor English skills.

Whoa…it's an unaired pilot for Buffy The Vampire Slayer! (via Brutal Women)

Unbelievable. Whenever I read about these End Times kooks, I wonder what is wrong with people. For some Christians this means laying the groundwork for Armageddon. With that goal in mind, mega-church pastors recently met in Inglewood to polish strategies for using global communications and aircraft…

Syd Barrett is dead. Trip to heave and ho, up down, to and fro'you have no wordtrip, trip to a dream dragonhide your wings in a ghost towersails cackling at every plate we breakcracked by scattered needlesthe little minute gongcoughs and clears his throatmadam you see before you standhey ho, never…

It's July in Minnesota, and you know what that means: bugs. Clouds of bugs. Some people complain, but I generally rationalize a large population of fecund invertebrates as simply a sign of a healthy ecosystem, so yeah, we've got bugs, but it's good for us. Except for those mosquitoes. It's hard to…

Jeffrey Shallit scorches poor Pamela Winnick, an anti-science, pro-creationism writer who came out with a book titled A Jealous God: Science's Crusade Against Religion. Would you be surprised to learn she's guilty of sloppy scholarship, misleading quote-mining, and outright lies? Just like the rest…

Eh. It's a mannered debate about the plural of "octopus". Honestly, I think fretting about whether the root is Latin or Greek and the ending of the plural form matches is a waste of time—we're speaking English. What matters is that it is understood, and what the convention is. So let's ask the…

George W Bush hasn't vetoed a single bill in all these long, long years of his presidency. Guess what issue might finally convince him to move? He's willing to veto any expansion of stem cell research. That's our George. Science isn't part of his base, so he'll willingly throw that away to make the…

Hard to believe, but check out the source this anti-choicer uses to back up his essay on the callous horror of abortion. The Onion. Satire and irony are now officially dead. The author has a new post up—he still doesn't get it. He's still babbling about the fictional author of the Onion piece…

Mark Isaak has opened a discussion on The Panda's Thumb about The Larger Issue of Bad Religion. It's good to discuss the problem of religion, but my main complaint is the attempt to separate 'good religion' from 'bad religion', and suggesting that we should be lauding those 'good religionists' to…

Revere and Tara make fun of a silly guest commentary from a very silly man who thinks them evilutionists are cheating by using the term "mutation"—that changes in the virulence of a disease are examples of a "population shift," which has nothing to do with evolution. Just a note to any journalists…

It's his birthday, and Coturnix has gathered about eleventy billion links to Tesliana (Teslaniana? Is there a word for this, or am I just making things up?)