pharyngula

Now I have a Life Before the Dinosaurs t-shirt, and you probably don't. So there. This is the science blog by a 7-year-old kid. One of the networks ought to snap him up, he's good … I wonder if we should draft him for Freethought Blogs. (Also on FtB)

It only took five years. Remember, my Coulter Challenge was for someone to take any of Coulter's paragraphs about evolution from her book Godless, and cogently defend its accuracy. It's been surprising how few takers there have been: lots of wingnuts have praised the book and said it is wonderful,…

The LA Times did a story on those wacky Catholic geocentrists who read the Bible and insist that, by a literal interpretation of the words therein, the earth must be at the center of the universe, with everything else rotating about it. They quote verses and everything, so actually, in a very…

Someone had to know what they were doing, mixing "flash", "tits", and "sperm" all in one short title, "Flashier Great Tits Produce Stronger Sperm, Bird Study Shows". I don't care what the article said, I'm currently having palpitations and am having trouble focusing on my work. (Also on FtB)

I raised a few questions about those 3.4 billion year old bacterial fossils, primarily that I was bugged by the large size and that they cited a discredited source to say that they were in the appropriate range of diameters for bacteria. Now my questions have been answered by Chris Nedin, and I'm…

So Bryan Fischer came out swinging like a lunkhead, and now Ann Coulter scurries out to try and get in a sucker punch. Neither are very effective. Roughly one-third of my 2006 No. 1 New York Times best-seller, "Godless: The Church of Liberalism," is an attack on liberals' creation myth, Darwinian…

I'm getting too old for this. The idiots keep making the same arguments, over and over again, and they just get dumber with every iteration. Bryan Fischer makes me want to stick an icepick in my brain just to stop the stupidity coming out of his mouth. His latest article is Defeating Darwin in four…

(via Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand) (Also on FtB)

The pair of psychic frauds, James van Praagh and Allison DuBois, who were featured on Nightline, have been called out by the JREF: The JREF's Million Dollar Challenge Director, Banachek, also featured in the episode, said, "We're issuing a challenge to these fakers: for once, show that you can get…

Ann Coulter is a horrible, ignorant person who once wrote a whole book accusing liberals of being Godless, as if that were an insult, and advancing arguments against evolution that made the standard noisy creationist look like a veritable scholar. I looked at her arguments, and I made a public…

Remember that silly blood type nonsense from the Canadian Blood Services? It's gone, replaced with a much simpler page that states that your blood type will be determined when you give blood. A few people have received email from CBS admitting that they've removed the nonsense. Dr. Sher has asked…

I don't know how we can get any plainer than this: evolution really happened and is happening. Evolution is a simple fact. We can choose to remain ignorant of it, we can stick our fingers in our ears and refuse to think about it, we can even rail against it and shout and scream that it is not…

Let's imagine that you, a rational person, are a high muckety-muck in some prestigious scientific institution — like, say, the Royal Society of New Zealand — and you're asked whether some fringe subject — like, say, Traditional Chinese Medicine — should receive the endorsement of your society. How…

I hate to discourage teachers (we need them!), but there's a problem in teacher education. Well, guess which students earn the highest grades? It's future teachers. According to a new study by Cory Koedel published by the American Enterprise Institute: Students who take education classes at…

People are still reporting that they can't see current content on the new site. The reason for this is that there was a temporary error in the code which told the browser to cache and essentially never refresh the page from the web. This problem has been corrected, but you've still got a bad copy…

Richard Dawkins hits this one out of the park: he slams the ignorance of Rick Perry specifically and the Republican party generally. There is no excuse for the foolishness we get from Perry, or Bachmann, or Huckabee, or Palin, or Robertson, or any of the candidates who have sought validation…

Both Jerry Coyne and Larry Moran have good write-ups on the recent discovery of what are purportedly the oldest fossil cells, at 3.4 billion years old. I just have to add one little comment: a small, niggling doubt and something that bugs me about them. All the smart guys are impressed with this…

Here's an educational opportunity for everyone! The Community College of Rhode Island [CCRI] has proudly announced that this fall, a "reiki master" will be holding a seminar on "crystal and mineral healing" at the college. This, we're told, is …a type of alternative therapy that involves laying…

There was a little earthquake on the east coast yesterday, which shook up the Washington Monument and may have caused some damage to it. But you know what still stands unharmed: the cherry trees. (via National Geographic) (Also on FtB)

Today is the day I get together with all of my new advisees and tell them how to survive the next four years. Tomorrow, the new semester begins — once again, I've got an 8am course to teach on developmental neurobiology. The madness begins. But at least this year I've got a new tie! (Also on FtB)

These frogs are found on the island of Sulawesi, the same place as that giant-mandibled wasp. I think I sense a theme developing. (via National Geographic) (Also on FtB)

John Abraham, college professor, squares off against Lord Monckton, crank and poseur, in this lecture on the science of climate change. It's very good and fillets the silly old goose quite well. (Also on FtB)

Jerry Coyne is mildly incensed — once again, there's a lot of recent hype about epigenetics, and he doesn't believe it's at all revolutionary. Well, I've written about epigenetics before, I think it's an extremely important subject central to our understanding of development, and…I agree with him…

David Colquhoun has posted an excellent series of posts on the Steiner Waldorf schools, 19th century crackpottery that persists even now, by hiding their fundamentally pseudoscientific basis under a fog of fancy invented terms. He discusses their goofy philosophy of anthroposophistry, their…

I vividly recall the first time I encountered a cicada killer, the amazing huge solitary wasp. I was in eighth grade; I was bumming about in our backyard, not doing much of anything, when I heard this loud clattering buzz overhead, looked up, and saw this giant beast slowly cruising towards our…

In a weird reversal of the normal state of affairs, the Democratic governor of Kentucky has long been pushing support for Ken Ham's ridiculous Ark Park…and now his Republican challenger, David Williams, has come out opposing it. Even more interestingly, he argues that the feasibility study was…

The Dennis Markuze story has made it to Ars Technica. I am much relieved to have that pest gone from my mailbox, but I was thinking about one point everybody is missing: the human brain seems to have an edge over computers. I just checked, and the FtB site has accumulated about 2100 spam hits which…

(via nykida.net) (Also on FtB)

Alex Pareene has a nice roundup of the GOP candidates views on science — all of them, except Jon Huntsman, are science-denying wackaloons who reject evolution. As we in Minnesota know, that's actually where Michele Bachmann's career got its start, campaigning locally against evolution. But poor Ron…

Larry Moran is proudly Canadian, so this must have hurt a little bit: Canadian Blood Services is advertising with a load of codswallop about your blood type. This is complete nonsense: Type A: So, you're an A. You already know that having type A blood suggests that you are reliable, a team player…