pharyngula

I have been receiving lots of triumphant mail from anti-choice people claiming vindication, that abortion is wrong, and demanding to know how I can possibly support abortion rights after hearing about the case of Dr Kermit Gosnell. Gosnell ran an abortion mill in Philadelphia, and was a hack who…

Robert Bentley must have been feeling some political heat. After openly announcing his sectarian bias in a MLK Day speech, Bentley has offered a not-pology. If anyone from other religions felt disenfranchised by the language, I want to say I am sorry. I am sorry if I offended anyone in any way.…

It's the 50 Most Loathsome Americans of 2010, from the Buffalo Beast. It's epically brutal.

People keep sending this to me, and I listened to it once — and that was enough. But it keeps piling up in my mailbox! Maybe if I inflict it on the tortuous thread, it will stop. Although it does have some virtues: technically, it's well done within the conventions of country music, and the two…

I don't really need to comment on this story, do I? A vial containing blood drawn from Pope John Paul II shortly before he died will be installed as a relic in a Polish church soon after his beatification this year. It's as if they aren't even trying to avoid the connection to voodoo, vampirism,…

A representative from Answers in Genesis will be speaking here in Morris, Minnesota! And none of the scheduled talks conflict with any of my classes! Not that I'll go to them all — I do have limits on how much BS I can be served before gakking up chunks — but I'll go to some, and will live-tweet…

As all rational, well-informed people know, Andrew Wakefield has been thoroughly discredited: his poor study that claimed a link between vaccination and autism has not only been debunked, but Wakefield has been found to have committed fraud for personal profit, manipulating the data to get the…

Well? Don't just sit there! You have to go give meaning to Jesus' sacrifice!

An interesting letter has been unearthed. It reveals that the Vatican was officially instructing its clergy to hide pedophilia cases from civil authorities. Signed by the late Archbishop Luciano Storero, Pope John Paul II's diplomat to Ireland, the letter instructs Irish bishops that their new…

I told you that maybe talking real fast would be a viable lecture strategy, and here's Ben Goldacre proving me right!

This is an awesome coincidence. The availablity of all those quantifiable metrics extracted by Google Books has fueled the establishment of a Science Hall of Fame, which lists scientists by an objective measure of their fame, the frequency with which they are cited in books. It was announced in…

The Republican governor of Alabama, Robert Bentley, has moved on a little bit from the 1950s — he made a speech on Martin Luther King Day in which he declared himself colorblind and the governor of all the people of Alabama. How nice! But then, unfortunately, he had to ruin it by making a few…

Ken Ham is complaining bitterly about the newspaper article that showed his attendance estimates for the Ark Park are unlikely. He's reduced to nonsensical whines about persecution, and acts as if he's baffled about the criticisms. The article raises a question: why is the Courier-Journal even…

The next Australian census is coming up in August, and the Atheist Foundation of Australia has begun an awareness campaign to clarify one issue. When you're asked about your religion, don't simply answer by default with what faith you were brought up in; answer accurately about your current views.…

The IDiots at Uncommon Descent are horrified and appalled by my ideas about the status of fetuses and babies … so horrified, in fact, that some of them want to make me the poster child for the fall of Western Civilization into a godless, nihilistic chaos in which babies are casually destroyed, and…

The spring semester starts tomorrow, and this term I'm teaching three classes: one I'm familiar with, one I haven't taught in four years, and another one I've never taught. It's going to be a busy busy busy term. But then I had an idea. If I could just lecture like this… …then I could probably…

Awesome. Italian police caught someone trying to smuggle away an ancient piece of Roman statuary, and traced him back to find…The Lost Tomb of Caligula. That should have been the title of the last Indiana Jones movie — at least it would have promised a little more excitement.

Thorny Devil

In my previous post about an absurd NIMBY protest in Canada, I suggested that it would be far worse to live next to a pig farm than a hospice. I was not aware of the sordid story of Canadian serial killer and hog farmer Robert Pickton and the rather traumatic associations people in that region have…

Not in my backyard! I wouldn't want a hog farm to be built upwind of me, because of the stench. I wouldn't want an airport built next door, because of the noise. I don't want a church in my neighborhood, because of the traffic in stupidity (but too bad, I'm stuck with several of them). There are…

The Edge annual question and its answers are out. This year, John Brockman asked, "What scientific concept would improve everybody's cognitive toolkit?" He got 158 people to send in answers. I was one of them. If you like my answer, you might also like Sean Carroll's and Carl Zimmer's — we seem to…

There are days when I simply cannot bear the entire field of evolutionary psychology: it's so deeply tainted with bad research and a lack of rigor. And that makes me uncomfortable, because the fundamental premise, that our behaviors are a product of our history, is self-evidently true. It's just…

It sounds like Ricky Gervais was wonderfully caustic in his turn hosting the Golden Globes awards last night — so brutally acerbic that I wouldn't be surprised if there aren't many celebrities lined up to complain about their treatment to the organizers. I wonder if he'll ever host an award show…

How long can the immortal thread go on? It probably won't have the longevity of this piece of music, composed in about 1400BCE, and preserved in cuneiform for 3400 years. (Current totals: 11,700 entries with 1,246,452 comments.)

Ken "The Squealing Piglet" Ham is irate again. The Louisville Courier-Journal ran an article today (a print-only exclusive, so I haven't been able to read it) in which they had independent experts review Ham's claims about prospective attendance at his silly theme park. The headline is "Ark park…

Oh, gosh, the visitometer rolled over to a total of 100,000,000 a few days ago, and I wasn't paying any attention. I should celebrate. I think I'll have a bowl of oatmeal and a cup of tea this morning. That should about do it.

Don't worry about what it means. It just came to me in a dream last night, so I wrote it down. I often have very odd dreams. Al, Bill, Chuck, and Dave have a weekly Gourmand's Club, and this week Al has baked a perfect and delicious cherry pie. However, Bill has invited a friend, Ed, to join them…

I'm getting a lot of sad stories about bloggers struggling financially, and I just thought I'd mention a few of them. There's the perennially struggling Gary Farber, of course. He's a blogger emeritus, having been around for several years longer than I have. Check out his left sidebar for options…

I don't suppose, given the reaction to a simple demonstration, that my suggestion that this video be shown in all high school sex ed classes will get much traction. Lyrics not safe for work; if you're at home, turn it up! Don't turn it off before you hear the message at the end, either.

Here's an interesting exercise for you: summarize the Bible in one sentence. A bunch of theologians and pastors took a stab at it, and failed to escape their preconceptions and say anything that made any sense. The statements all vary in their length and their floweriness, but I picked this one…