pharyngula

My last class for this semester was today. I'm done with the teaching part, now all that's left is the dry, husky, tedious, boring administrative part: final exams and grading and the passing of final judgment on the efforts of my students. I get to become a mindless bureaucratic drone unenlivened…

So Jason Rosenhouse finally gets tenure (entirely on the basis of his craven obedience to the bidding of the jack-booted atheist thugs of academia, of course…) and then what happens? He reveals the man behind the mask. We've been played. Most tenure contracts have some kind of 'moral turpitude'…

If you thought Christian rock was horrible and unlistenable, you have not yet heard the Christian demo tapes — the stuff that is so awful it never even made it to the exalted ranks of famous artists like Creed. Nah, you really don't want to listen to those. It's a version of audio torture. Maybe…

Minneapolis's own little broadcaster of inanity, the evangelical radio station KKMS (Remember them? These are the guys who hosted a debate between me and Geoffrey Simmons, and when that didn't go so well, let Simmons debate dead air, where he fared better), is having another wacky program this…

There's a clumsy little two-step move creationists like to make: first, point to dissent in the scientific community over real and often interesting issues at the edge of knowledge, and second, swap in their dissent over basics, like common descent, and pretend that the scientists are actually…

The Catholic church is always ripely ridiculous, and it's a fine fillip on the rococo elaborations of their dogma when some silly news organization tries to turn them into a poll. Here you go, two, count 'em, two polls at once on the absurd entity called the Virgin Mary. You get to vote on "Do you…

Hey! Carl Zimmer is giving away free copies of his brand new book, Microcosm: E. coli and the New Science of Life(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll) — all you have to do is ask a good question in a comment to stand a chance of winning one. I don't need to enter; my copy is sitting on my desk right now, begging…

Sid Schwab considers the meaning of eternal torment. Even a moment's thought should make anyone realize that eternal punishment, besides being literally unimaginable, cannot possibly be just. Yet this principle is dogma in Christianity — Jesus himself said, "And these shall go away into…

And it's actually enforced? Two teachers have been fired for refusing to take an oath…an oath that was put in place during the McCarthy witch hunts. Apparently they just left it on the books, but now it's a hook that can be used to eject troublemakers. You know, like those rabble-rousing, dangerous…

As part of the Expelled Exposed site, there are a series of educational videos to counter creationist claims. They're short, simple, and easy to understand.

Omnipotent, omnipresent supernatural being (left) deigns to be arrested for raping children. It's a rough era for deities. This one seems to be subject to ordinary mortal ills, like wrinkles and graying hair, ordinary mortal temptations, like having sex with young girls, and also, surprisingly, is…

So here's another one. A West Virginia newspaper poll asks, Should local governmental bodies be allowed to open their meetings with a prayer? You know the answer to that one.

Portland, Oregon is a beautiful city and a great place to live, but hoo boy, does it have its share of wackos. The latest: some credulous nut wants to practice acupuncture…on the city. He has semi-randomly associated regions on the map with organs (the Willamette River is a kidney?), and is…

I just got this announcement for a new series to appear on the History Channel in June. This has the potential to be really good — at least it sounds like the focus is on the biology — and we'll have to tune in. SERIES PREMIERE! EVOLVE: EYES Eyes are one of evolution's most useful and prevalent…

Loving was the woman who, with her husband, was tried in the 1960s for the crime of interracial marriage; their victory before the Supreme Court led to the striking down of laws banning racially mixed marriages across the country. Here's part of her account: Not long after our wedding, we were…

Aaargh, grading. I've been ripping through student papers and exams all afternoon and evening, so I'm reduced to flinging out quick impressions of stuff people have sent me lately. I'm sure you can find something in this collection to discuss. This is a novel solution to the energy problem…oh,…

That's the sound you should hear when Joe Felsenstein takes on an idiotic claim by Sal Cordova. Would you believe that Cordova claims that Kimura and Ohta's classic 1971 paper "shatters the modern synthesis"? That's what he claims, on the basis of his poor understanding of the mathematics of…

OK, Florida, this has gone far enough. You've been dallying with creationism, and I've read enough Hiaasen novels (who knew those were non-fiction?) to see that there are many screws loose down there, but this is getting ridiculous. Look at this reason for firing a teacher. Substitute teacher Jim…

It's an event that caused more than 10,000 dead in Myanmar, and who knows how much devastation. All we have to do, though, is wait a few days, and it will disappear from the news.

You'll have to work fast, since the contest closes tomorrow — send in your story about why you are an atheist, and you can win an autographed copy of Why I Rejected Christianity, by John Loftus.

A real billboard in Hagerstown, Maryland:

"The National Government will regard it as its first and foremost duty to revive in the nation the spirit of unity and cooperation. It will preserve and defend those basic principles on which our nation has been built. It regards Christianity as the foundation of our national morality, and the…

We are entering into the final week of classes here at UMM, when all of the administrative work for me reaches a horrible, cataclysmic crescendo with piles of exams and papers pouring in starting today. This would be a very poor time for a creationist spammer to try to cause trouble, because I'm…

Yeesh — I don't think this game is going to take the world by storm. It's calledCrevoScope, and it's a "text-based massively multiplayer game", which somehow is supposed to simulate the evolution-creationism debate, without actually requiring players to learn or know anything. It's got some weird…

By now, many of you have probably seen the latest super-hero summer blockbuster, so the time is right for opening up a discussion. I thought it was excellent and loads of fun, although the irony did not escape me that it was about a conscienceless weapons merchant who has an epiphany about the…

I love bats — they're almost as glamorous as squid. So I am greatly dismayed to learn that there is a virulent bat illness spreading out of the northeast US, a serious die-off that has as one of its symptoms a fungal growth that has led to calling it "white nose syndrome". Bats are behaving oddly,…

Why do they waste their time with these idiots? Barack Obama has been struggling against the guilt-by-association of having been a regular member of a lunatic's church, this odious little ignorant rat-bag named Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Yet at the same time, McCain joyfully accepts endorsements…

Uh-oh, I almost missed it — the latest Tangled Bank is available. Get over there and read it belatedly! I'm also looking for new hosts — if you're interested, volunteer.

And he is dismayed at the absence of science. Charles Darwin's blog reviews a week's worth of programming, and finds a near total lack of any kind of science. The one exception, sort of, are the police procedurals. Not a single factual science programme on any of the channels available to everyone…