pharyngula

At least, I'm in the Wikipedia. Nobody will ever be able to find it, though, because for some reason the author actually spelled my name correctly. I look forward to further additions, however, as the creationist strive to make the entry more complete by documenting my evil and my atrocities. (No,…

John Wilkins is fighting the philosophical and historical fight against the Darwin's Deadly Legacy nonsense with an excellent summary of the course of the eugenics movement. I especially liked this quote from Dobzhansky: The eugenical Jeremiahs keep constantly before our eyes the nightmare of human…

If you've ever wondered what the heck Behe was smoking when he claims there are literal trucks trundling about on literal highways with literal traffic signals inside of cells, well, I don't have an answer for you…but there is a wonderful Flash movie that will show you the Inner Life of a Cell so…

Darren Naish writes about a mysterious carcass and a serpentine sea beast, and most interestingly, about how not to do cryptozoology.

MinnObserver sent me this photo from the state fair: even here in the midwest, people are gluing seeds into the form of very angry octopuses. Portents? Omens? Subconscious resonance with the Great Old Ones? Who knows. Also, Mark Chu-Carroll finds a similarly ominous sculpture. It looks to be in…

At least book memes are easy for me. A book that changed my life: John Tyler Bonner, On Development: The Biology of Form(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll). This just happened to be the first book on developmental biology I read. A book I've read more than once: Herbert Mason's translation of the Gilgamesh(…

All will be relieved to know that the missing Midnight came crawling back late last night, all wet and stinking from his misadventure, and was found mewling pathetically in our garage. He hasn't apologized or anything, but is just demanding that we feed him. Typical.

William Dembski sadly reports that Answers in Genesis is handing out a "$50,000" prize* for a creationist essay…for which no Intelligent Design advocates need reply. He moans that ID doesn't have anywhere near the resources of the traditional creationists (which is true—AiG is bigger, but the DI…

Via AlterNet, here's another book I'm going to have to add to my wishlist: The Sinner's Guide to the Evangelical Right (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll). It'll complement all the information on the subject I get from Jesus' General.

Man, I've been picking on the Vatican a lot lately. Don't worry, I'll abuse all other religions later (I'm thoroughly impartial), but it's just that the Catholic church has been doing such stupid things. Like this: A Vatican official has said the Catholic church will excommunicate a medical team…

One of the other consequences of our broken water main is that our cat, Midnight, fled the house during the ruckus, and he has not returned. This is a very lazy, timid cat who has been declawed (not by us—we do not approve of such barbarity), so he's not exactly going to thrive out there. And it's…

Physicists get all the fun. Jennifer Ouellette has announced a book I'll definitely be buying: The Physics of the Buffyverse(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll). How could I not? It will go on the shelf next to my copy of The Physics of Superheroes(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll). So, where's The Biology of Superheroes…

I never thought I'd say this, but…coffee must be evil. Look at Starbucks, for example. I could stop there, I suppose, and everyone would understand my point, but to give a little more detail, PunkAssBlog highlights one of the quotes they are printing on their cups. The morality of the 21st century…

David Berlinski, that Prince of Pomposity and Lackey of the Discovery Institute, is trying to get a letter published in Science, complaining about the study that showed America's poor showing in understanding evolution. It's more of an opaque, cranky whine, something Berlinski specializes in, so I…

We have another bumper crop of carnivals this week: Skeptics' Circle #42 Festival of the Trees #3 I and the Bird #31 Bio::Blogs #3 Circus of the Spineless #12 Carnival of the Liberals #20 Friday Ark #102

Chris says that Lauren's back. Spread the word.

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

The Vatican has a chief exorcist. There is an International Association of Exorcists. They believe Hitler was possessed by a demon and tried a long-distance exorcism. Oh, and Harry Potter is evil. Adolf Hitler and Russian leader Stalin were possessed by the Devil, the Vatican's chief exorcist has…

Wal-Mart has a policy in place to protect its customers from the obscenity and wickedness that writers put into books, yet they still have a few books on the shelves that are terribly indecent—one must assume that their censors are simply too busy to have read them to determine the unpleasantness…

The latest edition of the biweekly compendium of science blogging, the Tangled Bank, is now available for your reading enjoyment at Epigenetics News.

Everyone is going to be linking to this: Keith Olbermann eviscerates the Bush administration as a gang of arrogant, incompetent wanna-be fascists. Exactly! Ending it on an Edward R. Murrow quote wasn't presumptuous at all, and was entirely appropriate. It's good to see a few journalists still see…

It's 1:30AM, and our daughter wakes us up, pounding on the door. We hear a babbling brook, the cheerful sound of a waterfall—wait a moment, we don't live in a rain forest! We run to the basement to see water rushing over the baseboards, and a lake, already ankle deep. I turn off the main water…

John A. Davison has started a new blog. You may recall his previous blog, or the one before that. His technique is to post one article, invite comments, and when he gets tired of them, move on...not to a new article, a new blog. His first got 881 comments (many of them consisting of Davis wondering…

When you see the sun over the ocean in California, I think it means the sun is setting. Maybe it was just subconscious honesty that the Lieberman campaign used a stock sunset photo to illustrate his status. He's Holy Joe, he can't help but tell the truth.

Maybe it would have been more sensible to start with the water-and-wine trick, and later work up to the walking-on-water finale. A priest has died after trying to demonstrate how Jesus walked on water. Evangelist preacher Franck Kabele, 35, told his congregation he could repeat the biblical miracle…

Look whose birthday it is today: Skatje! You can all go wish her a happy day, although we're not having too much of a celebration, since it is that hectic first week of school for both of us. Anyway, it is a tradition here that I embarrass the kids on their birthdays with ancient snapshots from…

Am I some kind of preeevert or something? Because when I see this turtle's plastron, which some say has an image of the Virgin Mary, I see something completely different. When did a featureless tube with a nipple-like bump at the top acquire this peculiar association with virginity, I wonder?

We're only sorta bilaterally symmetric: superficially, our left and right halves are very similar, but dig down a little deeper, and all kinds of interesting differences appear. Our hearts are larger on the left than the right, our appendix is on the right side, even our brains have significant…

Hunters should be allies of conservationists—in the best situations, hunting and wildlife groups have been great advocates of preserving habitat, which is the core issue, I think, in protecting biodiversity. If they're doing it so they can go in and blow away a few big meaty game animals, well, OK……

Not that I'm going to complain: I got classified with Fafblog. It sounds like it was a very interesting panel, and I wish I could have been there…even if I hadn't been mentioned.