pharyngula

The indefatigable Kurzweil threads do occasionally spawn some interesting discussion, and the latest has gone down a few odd byways thanks to this comment by Cerberus: Creating a robotic brain to "download your consciousness" into or the "I'll make a clone version of myself with all my memories"…

Limax maximus (Warning! Video below flaunts fantastic gymnastic hermaphrodite sex. You will be forever crippled with deep feelings of sexual inadequacy forever more after watching it.)

This is Ray Bradbury. He's 90 years old. What is he doing? He's watching this video (which is still not safe for work). Word from witnesses is that he loved it!

From John Pavlus: How to make a Singularity Step 1: "I wonder if brains are just like computers?" Step 2: Add peta-thingies/giga-whatzits; say "Moore's Law!" a lot at conferences Step 3: ?????? Step 4: SINGULARITY!!!11!one There are other, perhaps somewhat more serious, rebuttals at Rennie…

Remember that awful, terrible Templeton-funded prayer study that had no controls, was unblinded, and had nothing but subjective measurements of improvement? Now it's being promoted on healthfinder.gov — with not a word of reservation, just a happy claim that prayer might help sight- and hearing-…

Amnesty International reports that: Reports say a court in Tabuk, in the north-west of the country, had approached a number of hospitals about the possibility of cutting the man's spinal cord to carry out the punishment of qisas (retribution), as requested by the injured victim. I don't know how…

I treated you to a very pretty song in the last instance of the perpetual conversation, so now let's turn it over to a Christian to serenade you. I think you'll learn that the grand days of Christian music are long dead. (Current totals: 10,877 entries with 1,098,158 comments.)

This is revoltingly narrow-minded and stupid behavior by our military. We've got a Christian kook, a Major General James Chambers, who has mistaken morale and discipline for indoctrination in the Christian faith. He's running a program called the Spiritual Fitness (whatever the hell that means)…

I don't watch Oprah enough, so I haven't seen much open endorsement of the nonsense behind that unbelievable bestseller, The Secret. There must be a lot of closet believers, though, because that piece of well-whipped frothy BS sold 19 million copies. Now the author has cranked out another, similar…

Ray Kurzweil has responded to my criticisim of futurist fortune-telling. It really just compounds the problems, though, and gullible people who love Ray will think he's answered me, while skeptical people who see through his hocus-pocus will be unimpressed. It's kind of pointless to reply again,…

Franklin Graham has said something stupid again. He has some peculiar ideas about inheritance. I think the president's problem is that he was born a Muslim, his father was a Muslim. The seed of Islam is passed through the father like the seed of Judaism is passed through the mother. He was born a…

Check out scienceblogging.org — it looks useful. I do wonder if independent science blogs that aren't part of a network will suffer, though — while The Panda's Thumb makes the cut, Highly Allocthonous and a lot of other science blogs didn't.

Bernadette Barton provides an interesting perspective on Ken Ham's wretched little palace of ignorance. The Creation "Museum" is not a happy place. Particularly nerve-wracking were signs warning that guests could be asked to leave the premises at any time. The group's reservation confirmation also…

Many people don't read the comments here, but you might try in this case: Barney Zwartz himself is replying repeatedly to my criticisms. It's a wonderful demonstration of the First Rule of Holes.

Greg Abell wrote to me, requesting answers to his questions, which he doesn't ask, and since he caught me in a cranky moment, I felt like answering. Hello, I wanted to ask a professional scientist how something can come from nothing? No, you didn't. You wrote as an excuse to preach at me, and are…

Sepia pharaonis

I'm a big fan of Ray Bradbury, so I can almost identify with the young lady singing this song. I know, the last song in the thread without respite was nice to listen to as well, so I'm violating my usual habit of punishing you all with the noise here, but this one is worth it. Oh, by the way, not…

I keep hearing from official sources that we're getting Afghanistan under control, but I don't believe it. If we are, how is this happening? The Taliban in Afghanistan has publicly stoned to death a man and a woman over an alleged love affair, government officials said. I guess a mass of soldiers…

A beekeeper did something simple: he put a bell jar over an opening in his beehive. The bees obliged by building a hive within it, where you could see it, and captured the process in a series of photos. I'm fascinated by the fact that the first struts in the framework are regularly spaced vertical…

I have no idea what this cartoon could be about <whistles innocently>. Just a suggestion, though: steak is tough, although it is an excitable tissue. Put a brain in a blender and liquify it, instead, and then you can just use a funnel to pour it in the USB ports.

I knew this was coming. There was an interesting taxonomic consolidation recently: Torosaurus is accused of being simply an older Triceratops, so those two taxa are being lumped into one, Triceratops. Jack Horner is suggesting that Nanotyrannus was simply a juvenile T. rex. These kinds of…

Really, they just don't get it. The struggle for equality applies to everyone, not just a few dimensions of the range of human sexual behavior. It's like they're desperately parsing up the range to find something everyone will consistently object to, and it probably won't happen. Should transgender…

Quite the little hissyfit is brewing on the far right. One one side is Joseph Farah, lunatic publisher of the online teabagging journal, World Net Daily, better known as Wing Nut Daily to rational people. Farah organizes something called the "Taking America Back National Conference", in which the…

Dionaea muscipula Watch it in action.

Sometimes, my email is a little disturbing. I AMI AM the "goddamned cracker" sir. This is a personal invitation. I am Karl Duane Anderson. I live at REDACTED in Fargo, North Dakota. If you want to desecrate the Body of Christ, please find out just what it is that you are desecrating. Come to…

When last we visited Barney Zwartz, he was whining about those arrogant atheists having a conference in Australia. Now he's reduced to filtering and interpreting another anti-atheist, Mark Helprin, who has an essay in a book titled New Threats to Freedom. Apparently, people who are free of religion…

An ape will have sex with anything, as this video shows. I couldn't laugh — I only felt pity for the poor frog.

The Secular Student Alliance is looking for cash, and they're having a fundraiser: check out the book Hemant is auctioning off. Somebody has scribbled all over it! I remember when I was about 4 and my dad discovered I'd scrawled all over some of his books, and he got mad at me — I should have told…

How could they be unaware? (via failblog)

Daniel Merlin Goodbrey is on a mission to write a webcomic about visiting 100 planets. In the latest, he visits a planet of intelligent design creationists. That's harsh, dude, but I sympathize with the attitude.