pharyngula

It's December, and Squidmas is coming. Maybe you're like me, and the kids have all moved out, so you're thinking having a little intelligent life at home would be nice. Or maybe you're kids are still home, and you think they'd love a pretty pet. Or maybe you just love cephalopods, as do we all, so…

I've always wondered where this strange meme of one-eyed cephalopods came from — here's a poster from the heyday of B movies that suggests it has been around for at least 50 years. That's from a site with a collection of old movie posters, that brings up old memories. I used to pedal my bike over…

The war on Christmas is heating up. Look: here's Colbert mocking atheists. He sneers at our atheist Christmas cards, and even laughs at our letters to our families. .cc_box a:hover .cc_home{background:url('http://www.comedycentral.com/comedycentral/video/assets/syndicated-logo-over.png') !…

In a story that discusses the astrological signs of Obama's cabinet picks (humorously, don't worry), there is a poll: Are you a believer in astrology? It's going in a sensible direction, let's just tip it further. Yes...absolutely! 5%Only when my horoscope comes true 12%Eh...kinda sorta 14%No! 67%…

The guy at the end of the line just adds to the dignity.

I hadn't realized that Roger Ebert had so far neglected to review Expelled, but he has now belatedly rectified that omission with a wonderfully scathing sneer at the movie. Here's a taste: The more you know about evolution, or simple logic, the more you are likely to be appalled by the film. No one…

Sometimes the Christian death cult really creeps me out. There is a museum exhibit called Celebrating the Lives and Deaths of the Popes that seems to be particularly heavy on the "death" part. It's got exhibits to give you the "true sense of attending a Pope's funeral", replicas of the geegaws dead…

My old home state, Washington (uh, I've got the right one, right? This isn't DC, I hope), is waging the war on Christmas, as is appropriate for one of the most godless states in the country. The FFRF has put up a sign nestled among the religious symbols at the Capitol: At this season of the Winter…

I know there are a lot of smart people at UW Madison who will be a bit dismayed to hear this: an IDEA chapter is forming in Madison. The IDEA clubs are the sad little organizations that the Intelligent Design wackaloons form on college campuses to spread their nonsense. They don't seem very…

Don't be too disappointed — it's some weird blogger. At least he picked the best and most obvious scientist to represent Christmas.

The Unreasonable Faith blog has started a series on "An Evil God?", documenting the horrible little stories and nasty tribal morality of the Bible. He has already started with page 1. It's a l o n g book, so he's committing himself to a very long series, I think.

We have made Ken Ham very sad. Yay, bonus! "We are disappointed with the zoo's decision and its impact on the families and visitors to the region who would have enjoyed taking advantage of this opportunity to make this a truly memorable Christmas," said Answers in Genesis and Creation Museum…

This is a depressing collection of short clips on the economy from Fox News. I know — why would anyone want to watch that? Schadenfreude, baby. These are from a year to two years ago. They've all got this fellow, Peter Schiff, who is explaining that our debt, our artificially inflated real estate…

Seed Media has created a special offer: you can donate a subscription to Seed magazine to the school of your choice for only $14.95. It's a good strategy in general: help out your local schools by giving their libraries good science resources.

It's remarkable. Comfort gets something right. The contention between Darwin's theory of evolution and the Bible's account of creation is extremely significant. This is because if evolution is true, the Bible is a fallacy. I know, it's unbelievable. Comfort's remarks usually set the bar for…

How else could a naked clergyman get a potato in there? Just a suggestion: if he'd been wearing two wetsuits while hanging his curtains, it would never have happened.

You all may recall the Holy Joe mayor of Birmingham, Alabama, who had a great plan to deal with urban crime: he bought 2,000 burlap bags so community leaders could dress in sackcloth and ashes and pray. Unfortunately, the federal authorities stuck to the old fashioned scheme of dressing sensibly…

I just received a sampling of Order of St. Nick's Alternative Holiday Greeting Cards, so I have to give them a plug. If you've been looking for atheist Christmas cards, they've got 'em. I was thinking of sending them to my family back in the Pacific Northwest, but I may have to get some more so I…

Last week's Friday Cephalopod actually has an interesting story behind it. It was taken from a paper that describes the evolutionary radiation of deep-sea cephalopods. First, a little background in geological history. Antarctica is a special case, in which a major shift in its climate occurred in…

We have a couple of comments from people who phoned the Cincinnati Zoo that suggest that the shameful pairing of the zoo with the Creation Museum is going to be revoked. I suspect that this was a case of an overzealous person in the marketing department grabbing an opportunity that sounded like…

The New Humanist blog is running an advent calendar podcast, in which various people are asked what scientist they'd like to have a Christmas-style celebration around, and what invention from scientific history they'd most like to receive for Christmas. First up is Stephen Fry, who made the…

The Atlantic has republished Asa Gray's review of Darwin's Origin from 1860. It's a fascinating read: Asa Gray was a general supporter of Darwin, and the two of them corresponded regularly, and the review is generally positive, pointing out the power of the evidence and the idea. However, Gray is…

The Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden and the Creation Museum have made a joint marketing agreement and are selling "combo tickets" to get into both attractions for one price. The Cincinnati Zoo is promoting an anti-science, anti-education con job run by ignorant creationists. Unbelievable.…

Look, I don't need this. It's been a rough weekend, with way too much travel for my mental and physical health, and I started off today with the Atheist Talk radio broadcast, which was good, but it was bracketed by those horrible woo-woo infomercials that always piss me off, and then I had to…

The conventional wisdom is that it was Vladimir Lenin, but officers in our military have access to secret knowledge, thanks to Rick Warren: it was actually Charles Darwin. We learn this from one of those ghastly power point presentations the military churns up, this one from Air Force Chaplain…

At 9am Central time, Atheists Talk radio will host Robert M. Price, who is going to explain to us where all this nonsense about biblical inerrancy came from.

George Docherty, a pastor who claimed to have been responsible for convincing congress to stick "under god" into the pledge of allegiance, has died. In his honor, and a fitting honor it is, AOL is putting up a stupid poll: Should the phrase 'under God' be in the Pledge of Allegiance? Right now, the…

And that means you're going to have to get your holiday greeting cards mailed off soon, if you want them to arrive before the Reason for the Season…Isaac Newton's birthday. Now I don't want to hear anyone waging war on the true meaning of the holiday in the comments, either, unless it's to point…

A Catholic abbot is accusing Disney of corrupting children. It's not because they are transmitting bad ideas, but that they are all tied to Disney's corporate motives. While he acknowledges that Disney stories carry messages showing good triumphing over evil, he argues this is part of a ploy to…

This isn't fair. Dawkins gets censored in Turkey, now Mike Haubrich gets a warning letter, and I get nothing other than invitations to debate Harun Yahya. I'm losing my mojo — I guess I'm not sufficiently scary to the Turks. Go ahead and say lots of rude things about these Turkish creationists in…