pharyngula

Jonathan MacLatchie, the creationist who challenged me to answer his questions about development in Glasgow, has posted his account of our encounter and his problems with evolution. It is completely unsurprising — he still doesn't understand any of the points. Of his 10 questions, 7 were quickly…

OK, this is getting ridiculous. I'm beginning to feel like I wasted my life. Here's another new blog, Life Before the Dinosaurs, about ancient animals other than dinosaurs, by someone who really likes arthropods. He's seven years old. He's dictating the text to his mother. At least I have an excuse…

Swim away! Don't antagonize the shark! You should also be afraid because the ocean is apparently full of literate predators.

Yeah, you're all supposed to go antiquing, or to musical theater. How dare you intrude on manly events! Mainly because they're monitored by sanctimonious bigots. So, two women go to a baseball game in Minneapolis, and a guard noticed that they kissed each other. Taylor Campione and Kelsi Culpepper…

Registration is now open for Skepticon IV, to be held in Springfield, Missouri on 19-20 November. I don't know how you'll be able to afford it — it still has that extravagant price tag of $0. It's a fun event! And if you get bored, you can always hop on a bus and go to Branson, instead!

It's a new blog from the region I've always felt was home, so I have to mention it. Also, the top entry there is about water, something always on the minds of Pacific Northwesterners, so I have to tie it into a weird story from Portland: a man was seen peeing in one of their reservoirs, so they're…

The things that go on during Christian revivals…here's a crazy preacher claiming that conversion changes your DNA. Right. How does this even work? (via Joe. My. God.) Could this be some kind of strange poe? If you look for "onkneesforjesus", there is a blog that features this video, and the…

Don't be surprised, though. It's only natural. Now consider human males. No doubt you have noticed an alarming trend in the news. Powerful men have been behaving badly, e.g. tweeting, raping, cheating, and being offensive to just about everyone in the entire world. The current view of such things…

Joe Felsenstein has a guest post on the Panda's Thumb in which he dissects a totally bogus statistical game some intelligent design creationist was playing. In a few short paragraphs he shows clearly and plainly how wrong the creationist is, which is why he is Joe Felsenstein, I guess. Meanwhile,…

The Geological Society of America is the major national professional organization for geologists, and they recently had a meeting in Denver where, in addition to the usual scientific meeting stuff, they did what geologists do for fun: they took organized field trips to look at local rocks. Among…

I was told by several people that AVN was quite happy with me, which caused me some consternation. The Australian Vaccination Network? That horrible anti-science group that campaigns against giving children protection from disease? Oh, no, what have I done wrong? But then, as it turns out, to most…

Be afraid. She could make it to the election for the presidency. The Daily Beast has an excellent article on Michele Bachmann's background, with little hints about how she manages to get elected — she's specifically tapping into evangelical Christian lunacy. On Monday, Bachmann didn't talk a lot…

If you've ever read a comic book, you know the conventions: men must be immensely muscular, women must be full-breasted and wasp-waisted (and we're not even talking Rob Liefeld here). Furthermore, the superhero costume for women must expose as much skin as possible: bare midriff almost always, low…

Gary Bradley, a professor at the Seventh Day Adventist college La Sierra University, has been under fire because he teaches evolutionary biology competently — he doesn't accept the young earth creationism that SDA dogma demands. The battle is over, though, and he and several others have been asked…

Back in the day, when I was a teenager, I used to hop on the bus to Seattle and spend a day wandering the seedier parts of town. I'd get off around Pike Street, near the Farmers' Market, and wander around 1st and 2nd Avenues, which were not nice places for a quiet young man. But I had an obsession…

As one of those geezers in his grey, tired, wizened 50s, I'm torn between the cranky get-offa-my-lawn attitude and a patronizing bless-their-little-hearts when I see all these young'uns romping about at meetings nowadays. And the internet is even worse: look, it's a literate 13 year old atheist and…

Once again, politicians are going on little, petty crusades to help the government economize, and as usual, they go for cheap shots that do nothing, other than to reveal their screwed up priorities. Here's Joe Biden, letting us know where the real problems lie. Did you know that the government…

And is that such a bad thing? Neil Patrick Harris shows why he is awesome. (Last edition of TET; Current totals: 12,545 entries with 1,401,056 comments.)

OK, I saw this strange video, and my first thought was that this had to have some sex and porn applications. And then I felt ashamed of myself.

Oh, no. This is the first I hear of the Black Atheists of Atlanta, and what do I discover: they're pushing the same bigoted, homophobic nonsense that I'd expect to hear from a white Republican teabagger. It's a choice, it's unnatural, science has something called the "law of reproduction" that…

Not again. Oh, no, not again. It's more garbage from the Journal of Cosmology, with an article titled Sexual Consciousness: The Evolution of Breasts, Buttocks and the Big Brain. Hang on a moment before you click to rush over there, though. Here's the abstract: As first proposed and detailed by…

I'm home! I even got a good night's sleep! And just to fire me up, Jeff Sparrow replies to my criticism of his article claiming that the New Atheists are a gang of neo-fascists. Bracing! It's especially fun since he begins the piece by disavowing one of my criticisms: "I do not think that the New…

I've landed in Chicago. Only about 5 more hours before I'm home. It does make me sad that US Customs and the TSA work so hard to make me feel like a criminal for traveling abroad.

PZ told his awful skunk story in his talk in Dublin — don't use this picture as an excuse to ask him to repeat it. It's disgusting.

Some of you may recall that I signed up to learn about DNA Activation and 12-strand DNA about two months ago. They have since been sending me email messages almost every day, steadily ramping up the weirdness with each new one. "More weird," you say? Weirder than manipulating invisible DNA waves to…

The new threat to humanity and specifically New York: A glacier. A really, really fast glacier. I hope everyone involved in creating it is really, really ashamed.

I'm at Heathrow, about to begin the long trip home. It's going to be epic: somehow, with all the layovers and the long drive from the airport, I anticipate pulling into my driveway just about exactly 24 hours from posting this. No! I won't post anything to Pharyngula as soon as I get home! I plan…

I've met Jon Ronson a few times, including this past weekend, but I can't say I really know him — we've exchanged a few words, I've heard him give a talk, I now him as the short intense guy with the very bad hair, slightly neurotic, expressive, and funny. But I read his book, The Psychopath Test: A…

Amina, the supposed Syrian girl who was mentioned a few times on this blog, was a fake perpetrated by guy named Tom MacMaster in Istanbul. I never expected this level of attention. While the narrative voıce may have been fictional, the facts on thıs blog are true and not mısleading as to the…

But you can point and laugh at it.