pharyngula

In case you'd been wondering why Scientology is such a silly crock, you should know — it wasn't. Before it was corrupted by the people running the show, Lafayette Ron Hubbard's technology and philosophy actually worked. We just need to return to the primal purity of the original Scientology vision…

…but there it is, hosting a major young-earth creationism advocacy site. How humiliating! David A. Plaisted is a computer science professor who has accumulated piles of raving nonsense to support his creationism, and I would think the university would find it a bit of an embarrassment to see one of…

I have been chastised for hating framing and shown an example of "framing" done right. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like framing at all, at least not the kind Nisbet has been pushing, and what I actually hate is the way framing is being used as a stalking horse for irrelevant atheist-bashing. The…

I'll tell you more later. It's later now. I'm teaching a course in neurobiology, and one of the things I'm doing is having the students blog, to recount their experiences with neurobiology outside the classroom. In past years, I've set up a separate blog space for them to use, but I had a…

So you haven't seen Flock of Dodos yet? It hasn't been shown at a theater near you, and you don't get Showtime? Well, finally, you can just get it on DVD and watch it at home.

Did anyone catch the reference to Donors Choose in Doonesbury? This is an organization that a bunch of us sciencebloggers campaigned for last year: teachers submit projects and requests for funding, and then we promote it and try to get people to make donations to support the projects. We aren't…

I confess that I really don't know much about this fellow, Steven D. Smith. He's a lawyer, and he seems to be firmly in the Intelligent Design creationism camp, and that about exhausts my knowledge of the man. As Steven D. Smith, Warren Distinguished Professor of Law, University of San Diego, says…

This is the truest and most heart-warming song on the interwebs. We know that if you aren't a geek or a nerd you secretly envy us.

The University of Minnesota, Morris is hiring! We need someone to teach an undergraduate course in classical transmission genetics for the spring semester — I know, it's short notice, and this is only a temporary position, but it would be ideal for someone who wants to pick up some teaching…

I'm awestruck: this review of Dawkins' The Fascism Delusion is devastating, even while it is somewhat familiar.

Back when I had an ungodly commute to work and had to get up at 5am to knock back a quart of coffee before staggering out to the bus and train, I'd sometimes flip through the channels on the TV to see what was happening. And at that hour of the morning, what you'd find is quack ads, infomercials,…

Whenever I spot some old thread suddenly getting a surge of new comments, I can guess what has happened: a creationist or two has come to visit. That's happening right now on this very short article that mentions the peppered moths; we're up above 200 comments now, and it seems to have very little…

Shelley had her weird cake article, but it failed to include this bizarre masterpiece. I can't quite imagine why a cephalopod would want to do that, when there are so many attractive molluscs in the sea.

I believe I've shown this video here before, but it's pretty, so look at it again. However, Our Descent into Madness asks whether this is "magical or gross". You all know the correct answer. Neither! It's beautiful and entirely, gloriously, perfectly NATURAL.

Apparently, they also frequent the professoriate.

I got some email today with lots of constructive suggestions (See? Not all my email is evil!) for how we ought to change the education of biology students — such as by giving them a foundation in the history and philosophy of our science, using creationist arguments as bad examples so the students…

Daniel Cooper knows how to properly evaluate what's important. He's George W. Bush's undersecretary for benefits at the Department of Veterans Affairs. We're in the middle of a bloody, wasteful war, and we've got lots of veterans who deserve support and, you know, benefits, so I think Mr Cooper's…

Poor Pastor Ted had been fired from the New Life Church, and was trying to get his life together. He put out a plea claiming poverty and soliciting donations to support his new calling, ministering to the poor at a halfway house. Your humble narrator was righteously suspicious. In the latest turn…

Do you know any cell biology? Any biology at all? Then you might want to stop reading now. Here's something to make any competent biology instructor weep. This is, purportedly, a DIAGRAM OF THE STAGES OF MITOSIS. I dare you to look at it without muttering "What the f…" under your breath, and I…

Friends for a Non-Violent World (FNVW) Presents: Leaving Iraq Now Why it's the best chance for peace & security and why September is our best chance to make it happen. Phil Steger was born in Buffalo, NY and raised in Marshall, MN. He earned a B.A. in Theology from St. John's University.…

It's been a regular gay social whirl here at Chez Myers; we're having a party tonight, and last night, we had visitors from the Great White North, or "Ottawa" as they quaintly called it: Eamon Knight and Theo Bromine, familiar names to old hands at talk.origins. And they brought Canadian beer! I…

Our president has been away in Australia. Who knew? Who cares? I only care because Australia has some of the most venomous wildlife around, and because anything that sends the asshole-in-chief to the other side of the planet is a good thing. Anyway, the Australians waste $A165 million on security…

It's Friday! I have no classes today, so this is the day where I desperately struggle to catch up with the backlog; it also happens to be the day we're hosting a party at our house (you're invited: 5:30, my place, across the street from the university; everyone who is anyone will be there). If you…

LA has the most interesting restaurants — it's too bad I don't get out that way very often.

Glowing sucker octopus Figure from The Deep(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Claire Nouvian.

The vertebrate jaw is a product of evolution — we have a serially repeated array of pharyngeal structures as embryos (and fish retain them in all their bony glory as gill arches), and the anterior most arch is modified during our development to form the jaws. The fact that they're serially…

When we look at the face of another person, we can recognize specific features that have familial resemblances. In my family, for instance, I can recognize a "Myers nose" that my grandmother and my father and some of my siblings and kids have, and it's different than my wife's or my mother's nose…

Hey, look, everyone! Canada has creationists! Ha ha! If you look at a map and notice how that big peninsula Toronto is on is protruding into the US, and note that that penetration has been going on for hundreds of years, I guess it's not surprising that they'd catch a nasty disease.

Scott Lanyon, director of the Bell Museum, has an article on two disease we should worry about, VHSv and EAS. Personally, I think VHSv is the worst. It's a virus that causes hemorrhagic septicemia in fish; just from the name you know it's bad, involving blood and sepsis. My most horrible experience…

And what a sweet review it is. There are points on which I disagree with Hitchens (as there are with Dawkins, too, of course), but I agree that the book is an excellent contribution to the ongoing evolution of secular thought. I wonder if one of the factors that is making everyone consider this…