pharyngula

Yesterday, the Panda's Thumb revealed that Michael Egnor had only been pretending to be a creationist. They even linked to his confession at Evolution Views and News. I chimed in, defending our prior work on Egnor's absurd claims with argument that "the line between creationist parody and…

Salon has an interview with Elaine Pagels on the Gospel of Judas. I'm really not much interested in yet another quaint twist on Christian dogma — I can understand how historians may differ, of course — but in the course of the interview she pulls this stunt … this ridiculous, absurd, cowardly claim…

Sure, you can talk while looking at this page, but it's even funnier to have it loaded while someone else is talking to you. (My wife is going to kill me now.) (via Present Simple)

I feel a bit peculiar watching these "bloggingheads" episodes — it's like sitting in on two people's private conversation, and by the nature of the medium, you can't even join in. And then the recent Althouse spectacle made me cringe — it was just too Jerry Springer, and I half-expected a tall bald…

Over at Street Anatomy, you can find some utterly stunning anatomical images from a series of books called Pernkopf Anatomy; really, it's beautiful stuff, with artfully posed models and exquisite detail. If you get on Amazon and look up the books, you'll see that you might be able to find used…

A world-class neurosurgeon couldn't possibly have been as stupid as Michael Egnor — the denial of even the most basic and medically relevant evidence of evolution in bacteria, the outright denial of the importance of the scientific literature, dismissing it as "chaff", the obtuse insistence on self…

Almost two weeks ago, I wrote about that creationist teacher who was fired in Sisters, Oregon — Kris Helphinstine had been showing his freshman biology class some PowerPoint presentations designed to cast doubt on biology, rather than to inform the students about the facts and evidence. Now a Bend…

…except that I can't stand poker or gambling of any kind, and I refuse to believe that cephalopods would be stupid enough to indulge in it. Maybe it's mocking the dumb one-eyed squid morph.

NOVA is going to be showing a program on the cuttlefish Tuesday evening, 3 April — it's called Kings of Camouflage, and the website for it is also very well done, with nice illustrations of anatomy and behavior, and one excellent clip of color changes. I'm definitely going to tune in, check it out!

Well, Skatje's going to Minicon next weekend—sending her off to hang out with intelligent nerds and geeks and people like Charles deLint and Lois McMaster Bujold and the Nielsen Haydens and Jane Yolen is probably the most responsible thing a parent can do. If any of my readers are also going, make…

I must disagree with Larry Moran, who accuses the field of evo-devo of animal chauvinism — not that it isn't more or less true that we do tend to focus on metazoans, but I disagree with an implication that this is a bad thing or that it is a barrier to respectability. Larry says we need to cover…

A gay rights group called Soulforce had a sit-in (it warms my heart to hear the traditions of the 1960s have not completely died) in the offices of Al Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and typical homophobe. One of our local bible scholars, Reuben David, an assistant…

Minneapolis is a lovely city, except for the geysers of blood erupting out of the sewer system. Don't get the wrong idea, though—only some of it was human blood.

I've been seeing this xkcd comic everywhere today, and it might be heresy to do this, but I have to disagree with part of it. It just didn't ring true. Here's the original: I'd have to add a third conclusion, the professional scientist. In our favor, I would add that we'd cheerfully substitute a…

Afarensis takes on both Sal Cordova and Jonathan Wells on the subject of anthropology. Would you believe that those two creationist frauds are talking out of their hats and are readily spotted as dishonest kooks when they discuss anything in which their reader has any expertise? I know, I was so…

"There's something enchanting under his sari!" What is this, silly religion day? I just got sent a link to this marvelous story of a young unemployed British fellow who became a goddess in India — he is now the incarnation of Bahucharaji, the patron of Indian eunuchs, and he goes around blessing…

Friday Ark #132 Gene Genie #3 Carnival of the Liberals #35 Skeptics' Circle #57

Bill Donohue is hopping mad again — he's got another wild hare up his butt and is fuming over another insult to his very Catholic sensibilities: Catholic League head Bill Donohue called it "one of the worst assaults on Christian sensibilities ever". The latest affront is a life-size sculpture of…

Boy, you jump on one bandwagon that starts to creak and rattle and fall apart and take a wrong turn down an ugly path, and no one lets you forget it. The Republic of T resurrects the ugly corpse of "Blogroll Amnesty Day", I'm mentioned as one of the cruel participants, and Lauren and Chris get in…

OK, simple story: kid goes to school dressed as a pirate, eyepatch, inflatable sword, and talking about the flying spaghetti monster; kid is asked to remove the eyepatch several times; kid refuses; kid gets kicked out of school for a day. You may be disappointed to learn that I don't see a problem…

Octopus mototi In case you're baffled by the rather arty shot, here's another image: Figure from Cephalopods: A World Guide (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Mark Norman.

(via Frolix-8)

I strongly recommend Larry Moran's analysis of the paper on mammalian macroevolution that I briefly described earlier today.

We win! In a debate in London pitting Hitchens, Dawkins, and Grayling against a team of theists, Neuberger, Scruton, and Spivey, the audience voted solidly in favor of those obnoxious atheists. I'm not sure what the consequences are, but it may mean that every Christian in England has to leave the…

Francis Collins was on Fresh Air this afternoon, and I listened. I was not bedazzled. Collins seems like a very nice fellow and he sounds sincere, but sweet jebus, what a load of tedious platitudes. He made excuses for religion and how it can be accommodated by science, but wasn't convincing to…

The mammalian tree is rooted deeply and branched early! (click for larger image)All orders are labelled and major lineages are coloured as follows: black, Monotremata; orange, Marsupialia; blue, Afrotheria; yellow, Xenarthra; green, Laurasiatheria; and red, Euarchontoglires. Families that were…

Hmmm…it seems Dr Egnor, shill for the DI, has been criticizing me in some podcasts. I don't listen to the DI's podcasts and I'm not planning to start, but fortunately, Orac caught a few of his remarks. It's all very peculiar: in a previous post, I showed him that it is easy to find lots of…

Terry Gross's Fresh Air program had an interview with Dawkins yesterday — it's not too late to listen to it, you can either get it by way of streaming video, or download the Fresh Air podcast. Also, today she's interviewing Francis Collins, which could be very interesting, in a gruesome, messy,…

Well, I've been wrong all this time. It's always been my opinion that if someone says they're a Christian, they're a Christian — I'm not going to nit-pick fine theological distinctions with someone, and if they want to claim the soiled and tattered title of Christianity, they're welcome to it. An…

He mangles science, now he defames history. Michael Egnor is like the Swiss army knife of creationist hackery. Former Vice President Al Gore famously claimed to have invented the Internet because years ago he was in the Senate and sponsored a bill. The assertion that Charles Darwin's theory was…