Paul Z. Meyers
pharyngula
Posts by this author
September 15, 2010
Pisum sativum
September 15, 2010
Rabbi Daniel Lapin says some of his best friends are atheists, but he still thinks we're all parasites. I've heard that phrase somewhere before, applied to some religious group or other.
(via OneGoodMove)
September 15, 2010
I just got word that I am actually written up in, ahem, Playboy magazine, in the October issue, available 'round about now at your newsstand or via your subscription. Anyone got it? I'm curious to know if they discuss my awesome virility and elegant fashions at all, or if the discussion is confined…
September 15, 2010
Everybody is sending me links to this spectacular cake, but none of them answer the question, "WHY?"
I mean, it could be for PZ Myers' birthday party, but that's almost 6 months away, and I never got an invitation; it could be for some member of the cephalopod cult's entry into manhood at 13; it…
September 15, 2010
A teabagger has won the Republican primary for the senate in Delaware…and now everyone is predicting that Christine O'Donnell doesn't have a chance in the election. She's too crazy, they say, she's a fringe kook, and she can't possibly get elected…but then, she got elected in the primary, didn't…
September 15, 2010
This video is of a crop circle fanatic seeing her dream come true: she actually gets taken to a fresh crop circle to experience the mystic energies emanating from it. It's going to change her life, she says.
In case you don't recognize the mysterious symbol flattened into the grass, all is…
September 15, 2010
This is getting ridiculous: an ad has been banned because it annoyed a handful of Catholics in Britain.
Antonio Federici's advert showed a pregnant nun eating ice cream in a church, together with the strap line "immaculately conceived".
The Advertising Standards Authority has ordered it to be…
September 15, 2010
A transgendered woman is running for political office?
In Oklahoma?
Against crazy church lady Sally Kern? This Sally Kern?
It's no secret that I have a personal belief, I believe it's a belief of most Christians, that the Bible teaches homosexuality is a sin just like gluttony is a sin... There are…
September 14, 2010
Revealing much about Texas education, Governor Rick Perry speaks out proudly about his state.
Texas is a national example of how to best prepare our children for higher education and the workplace.
Oh, really, Governor? Perhaps you could give us a specific example of a well-prepared Texas student…
September 14, 2010
Please, fellow godless folk, stop trying to claim Obama as one of us. He isn't. He goes to church sometimes, he has a religious history, he's happy to use Christian metaphors, he hasn't claimed to be so much as an agnostic. He's a liberal Christian who is not obsessed with religion. Take his words…
September 14, 2010
So Slashdot ran a short article on the rise of religious search engines — customized web search engines to return preferred sources to fit one's personal superstitions. I can't say how true that is, because the examples they gave, such as the Christian SeekFind page, has collapsed under the sudden…
September 14, 2010
The Encyclopedia of Life is a cool tool which is a sort of wikification of taxonomy — it allows a large number of contributors to add descriptions of species with the goal of eventually documenting all 1.8 million known species in a single searchable source. Look at the page for my experimental…
September 13, 2010
Cooper's Hawk
(via Hank Fox's back porch)
September 13, 2010
Yet another edition of The Thread has lept the limited bounds of its previous domain to acquire a new instantiation. And we must philosophize once again over a very serious subject:
(Current totals: 10,989 entries with 1,122,258 comments.)
September 13, 2010
It was very odd, to have somebody from the greater outside world appear out of the east and actually find his way to the remote and mysterious hamlet of Morris, but there he was, and he did bring cameras, and we sat down in my living room, and our conversation was recorded and will someday be…
September 13, 2010
This is John J. May. He has written a creationist book.
He's a barmy, ignorant crank. I read the sample pages, and his big argument is from pregnancy and development (!) — he's looked at it, superficially, and come away from it all dazzled at how complicated it all is, and that's the entirety of…
September 13, 2010
Here's a blog post on the French naturalist Jean Painlevé which I can't read, because it's in French, of all things, but I can look at the pictures…and hey, those Frenchmen do like their innuendos and salacious slipperiness.
I think that may be the raciest video I've ever posted here…whew.
September 13, 2010
I will have you know that I never experienced the red pattern in the diagram.
It does remind me that I need to get a haircut this week, though.
September 13, 2010
Nominally, the Catholic church has no beef with evolution — they've got their own official twisted logic in which God did some invisible indetectable hocus-pocus somewhere in the documented evidence of evolution. Sometimes, though, that seems as thin and neglected as church doctrine on…
September 13, 2010
Charlie's Playhouse is having an evolution and art contest for children — with prizes! They should draw how an animal would adapt to an environment they imagine, and for that, some will get goodies from the store. Deadline is 15 November, so get to work.
September 12, 2010
I'm amused to see an Australian burned pages from a Bible and Koran — to good purpose!
I'm happy to report, too, that Muslims in Australia are reacting in a reasonable way, with the leadership urging no retaliation. There is a bit of silly whining going on, though.
Sheik Wahid said the burnt…
September 12, 2010
Religion's voice is that of a spoiled child having a temper tantrum.
I have been accused by PalMD of lacking empathy for believers; that's not quite right. My response to the Islamic uproar over the Florida preacher who was planning to burn the Koran on 11 September was to say that that's too bad…
September 12, 2010
The University of Minnesota Twin Cities is to be blessed with a visit from Brother Jed on 16 September…and the Campus Atheists, Skeptics, and Humanists plan to be waiting for him with a special event:
As a counter protest to the preacher Brother Jed, we want to get as many people as we can to share…
September 12, 2010
Teach the controversy! Who would have thought geocentrists would still be around? They're having a conference even: Galileo Was Wrong: The Church Was Right, the first annual Catholic conference on geocentrism. They're also arguing that the Earth is less than 10,000 years old. No word yet if any…
September 12, 2010
Stephen Hawking was on Larry King Friday night, and here's a little video of the event. Through no fault of his own, Hawking isn't exactly a dynamic stage presence — he's a bag of bones in a wheelchair with a computer voice speaking for him — and Larry King is…well, King is a genuinely dumb…
September 12, 2010
After brutally splicing the insane Oprah thread to the perennially random thread, it is now my intent to infuse it more deeply with the crazy: Catholics and Oprah.
Mwahahahahahahahahahahahahaahaaaa!
Oprah vs the Catholic Church - Which is More Evil?Uploaded by wiredset. - Discover more gaming…
September 11, 2010
I think this will go over well with rudeness here: bluntcard.com. One could easily get sucked into long reveries here, contemplating exactly who you would send that card to.
Not me, though. I'm off to do a little exercise, then I'm off the internet for a while to get some work done.
I'm going to…
September 11, 2010
That's the usual excuse we here from defenders of Catholicism — that the accusations of pedophilia and sexual abuse are only the work of a tiny minority of rotten people. I can accept that it's a small minority that are the actual perpetrators, but the culture of the church protects its own…and the…
September 10, 2010
Mark (Monty) Montague was an occasional commenter here, and a major contributor at TONMO with a passion for cephalopods. I'm sorry to report that he died in in a diving accident this summer. There will be a memorial service on 2 October at Caltech.
Sepioteuthis sepioidea