pharyngula

You've probably seen that placeholder text for websites in progress — piles of nonsense Latin that's just there to represent sample text. Now there's something better: the Samuel L. Ipsum generator. Next time you're designing a website for a church or pre-school, use this program to build up some…

I have no idea. I think my clock face is melting. (Also on FtB)

This is a beautiful illustration of the flaw in applying human sexual conventions to non-human organisms. researchers studying deep-sea squid found that all of the squid, male and female alike, were speckled with sperm packets — the males just flick these things out at any passing squid, on the…

I'm not going to post this email I received, simply because it is insanely long, 15,000 words of random caps and peculiar color changes. Just to give you a taste, this is the subject line: Subject: SCIENCE, AND THEOLOGY {{ Cogent Word for the 100's of new ears in Science and theology we contacted/…

Earlier this semester, I gave my first-year students a thought question. I do this now and then just to wake them up and get them thinking and talking — in this case, I wanted them to speculate and also think hard about how they came up with their answers, and how they would try to evaluate them.…

The state of Georgia is planning to execute a man for murder tomorrow, on the basis of a very shaky case in which most of the witnesses have recanted their testimony, and who have said the police pressured them into their initial accusations. I can't make any judgments on whether he is guilty or…

(via National Geographic) (Also on FtB)

There is a severe and disturbing disconnect in the minds of the fanatics behind the animal rights groups. First there's NIO, harassing and threatening students. Now look at what PETA is up to: they plan to launch a porn site to benefit their cause. The nonprofit organization, whose controversial…

The New York Times has a very nice profile of Richard Dawkins titled A Knack for Bashing Orthodoxy — an an excellent choice of a title, too. (Also on FtB)

Creationism is not quite as pervasive a problem in the UK as it is in the US, but it's still rising…so it's good to see that British scientists are being aggressive in confronting bad educational policies. A number of prominent scientists, including Richard Dawkins and David Attenborough, have…

Remember: it's International Talk Like a Pirate Day. I have to give a lecture on the evolution of the nervous system today. I don't think I can do it with a plethora of "arrr's" unless I drink a lot of rum first. (Also on FtB)

And now I've found it. IHTOASMTIATCOTYHABYWABOL. Don't get me started on smilies. (Also on FtB)

And deeply regrets it. It's very sad. I remember when cable TV was new, and had such promise — there would be channels dedicated to specialty disciplines, that would pursue a niche doggedly for a slice of the audience. The History Channel would be about history, not von Daniken and Nazi UFOs;…

I have never seen one of these alive before, and most of you probably haven't, either: a priapulid worm. You've seen thousands of cats, which are common as dirt, but here's something wonderfully unusual. Definitely uncircumcised. (Also on FtB)

As long as it isn't too complicated and you don't expect much detail or fidelity to a model. So watch this guy. He can draw Rome. (via Noggin Bloggin') (Also on FtB)

I've got my neurobiology students blogging — all I ask is that they write something relevant to understanding how brains work. Let's see where their minds are at this week, shall we? Peer pressure. Cute cuddly animals. Video games. Alzheimer's disease. Rat tickling. Smoking and…

Emily Baldry is six years old. Emily has a little plastic shovel. Emily dug up a 160 million year old cephalopod. I'm 54, I have a little plastic spoon, and I'm eyeing the backyard. There used to be cephalopods swimming around in this neighborhood…of course, there were also some annoying glaciers…

(Also on FtB)

Usually, Oz just dispenses pointless pap and feel-good noise, but now he's antagonized the agriculture lobby. On a recent show, he claimed that apple juice was loaded with deadly arsenic — a claim he supported by running quick&dirty chemical tests on fruit juices, getting crude estimates of…

I just had to share. Look at this sample: at least 5 different fonts, 6 different colors, shadowed text, and all superimposed on an irrelevant and elaborate background. And then there's the content: It's a creation museum! It's a taxidermy collection! And it's run by some antique tools! Savor the…

This orchid actually does just that. Explicit, detailed diagrams of it fertilizing itself below. Tell the children to close their eyes! (via National Geographic) (Also on FtB)

There was another Republican debate (I skipped it; there are limits to the horrors I can endure), and apparently, many people think Michele Bachmann trumped Rick Perry by jumping on his 'liberal' endorsement of using the HPV vaccine to prevent cancers in women. Bachmann ranted about the federal…

She's an up and coming scientist, a young biology student at the University of Florida, and she has been targeted by the animal rights radicals and human-hating monsters at NIO for harassment as a "career animal mutilator". They've posted links to her email address and facebook on a page that…

I completely missed this, because I was distracted: Jerry Coyne celebrated the life of Stephen Jay Gould this past weekend — Gould's birthday was 10 September. I did not know that. It's the same as my wife's! I knew there was something in the stars that attracted me to her. Of course, it's going…

I criticized the Zietsch and Santilla paper on the female orgasm. Now one of the authors has responded. One response he makes is that some of the limitations to the study that I pointed out were also explicitly recognized in the paper. This is true; however, my purpose in mentioning them was to…

(via National Geographic) (Also on FtB)

Dr Charles has put out a call for submissions to a poetry contest on the themes of medicine, health, or science (do obscene limericks about penises count?). Send in your entries before the end of the month for a chance at winning money. Real money. This poetry stuff looks like an immensely…

It's a new beer with some unusual characteristics. Only 12 bottles were brewed, and they sold for $765 each. It had an alcohol content of 55%. Can you even get that without distillation? Does it even count as a beer? Does it taste like beer? It comes in a unique bottle wrapped in preserved…

This is tragic. A unique site where the giant cuttlefish migrates and breeds is under threat by the construction of a desalination plant that would render the local waters unsupportable to cuttlefish life. This must be stopped! There is a petition: sign it. (via Cuttlefish, of course) (Also on…

One of my favorite science books ever is Elisabeth Lloyd's The Case of the Female Orgasm, which does a beautiful job of going case-by-case through postulated adaptive explanations for female orgasms and showing the deficiency of the existing body of work. It's a beautiful example of the application…