pharyngula

This is a thoughtful contemplation of online personas and what they mean to people. It also has some useful implications: "What will happen if Dublin is invaded by zombies?", indeed. I worry about that all the time. Avatar Days from Piranha Bar on Vimeo.

We've got 'em. A St Cloud minister took out an ad: Oooh, it's the usual fear-mongering. I had to do a double-take when I saw Dennis Campbell's summary of the Islamic Strategy, though… Moslems seek to influence a nation by immigration, reproduction, education, the government, illegal drugs, and by…

Papaver rhoeas

I'm really confused by this psychology study — the problem is that I'm getting it second-hand, and the source is a poster at a meeting. It's interesting, but I want to know more. Bethany T. Heywood, a graduate student at Queens University Belfast, asked 27 people with Asperger's Syndrome, a mild…

A curious phenomenon has struck me a few times: in response to my criticisms of religion, someone will bring up the Jains. It's a peaceful religion, they'll say, that promotes kindness to all living beings, therefore my arguments are all invalid. Even more strangely, every time this happens, my…

What did America do to deserve this? Nancy Pelosi exposed her vacuous brain at a conference. At a May 6 Catholic Community Conference in Washington DC, Speaker Pelosi openly touted Jesus Christ, "The Word Made Flesh", as the inspiration for her public policies. CNS News reports a couple of her…

Tony Perkins, president of the Patriarchy Research Council (wait — they don't do any kind or research, so maybe Patriarchy Propaganda Council would be better) is very upset that the "don't ask, don't tell" policy of the US military might be repealed. This would cause terrible suffering for military…

Now that will give me nightmares: the earth just abruptly opened up in a giant sinkhole in Guatemala City. That's alarmingly random. Now I'm wondering how you repair a pothole that's a few hundred feet deep and close to a city block in diameter…and thinking that maybe I shouldn't complain so much…

A pediatrics resident wrote an excellent op-ed on vaccination in the LA Times. LA has seen its first outbreak of measles in four years there, and it's something to worry about. A study published in the April issue of Pediatrics examined a 2008 measles outbreak in San Diego. The index case was a 7-…

As you've probably heard, Stephen Meyer of the Discovery Institute published a book last year calle Signature in the Cell. It stunk, it got virtually no reviews from the scientific community, although it was avidly sucked up by the fans of Intelligent Design creationism. One curious thing about the…

The Vatican is reaching out to atheists. They are creating a foundation called "The Courtyard of Gentiles" to encourage discussion between Catholics and the godly — I can hardly wait. Except, alas, it turns out their invitations are only going to a select few. But in an interview with the National…

Now I fully understand what they've been doing.

Forget all this endless chatter, just watch the video. It's Douglas Adams in fine form. (Current totals: 10,332 entries with 1,010,082 comments.)

Nicholas Kristof seems like a decent enough fellow, with a concern for humanitarian causes. He's also something of a simpering apologist for religion — anything with a whiff of godlessness seems to put him on edge and start him whining about intolerant, obnoxious atheists. He is definitely not the…

I know, unbelievable, isn't it? They're gathering to congratulate Paul Gill on completing his traverse of Ireland to protest the blasphemy law. It sounds like it's been a successful consciousness-raising effort. People all along the west coast have been incredibly supportive. Many people have…

That'll send a chill down Antipodean spines. They've got creationists just like us (please stop sending them here, we're full up), and they've also got crazy anti-vaxers promoting dangerous public health practices in public libraries. Fortunately, they also have skeptics opposing the people who…

Hippos have an odd habit of licking crocodiles — tempting as it may be to want to find out what makes them so yummy, it's not recommended unless you weigh a few tons and have the ability to bite them in half if they protest.

A strange thing has happened in this country: somehow, the United States of America has become a biblical entity. I know, the country didn't even exist for over a thousand years after the Bible was composed and assembled, and there isn't one word about the USA in the text, but you couldn't tell…

Look at this: BP knew about problems at that burning oil rig 11 months ago. They screwed up with bad decisions in the short interval immediately before the explosion, but documents have come to light showing that they were worried about "loss of control" months before the disaster — and what they…

What is it with some English professors and their contempt for science? Some of the noisiest, most obnoxious, most self-indulgently prolix and goofy critics of the New Atheism are full-of-themselves pomposities like Eagleton and Fish, and now we can apparently add another, Marilynne Robinson. She's…

Here's an almost impressive compendium of evolution t-shirts. I say "almost" because, dang it, most of them are variations on the infamous March of Progress image, which I detest. That thing feeds on and is the source of some of the most common misconceptions about evolution. Please, graphic…

Look at this: they've explicitly added creationism to the public school curriculum in Queensland, Australia. That's just nuts. They're even doing it in an entirely bogus way — they're teaching it as a controversy in history classes. In Queensland schools, creationism will be offered for discussion…

John Timmer has written up a relevant paper on the tactics people use to avoid scientific conclusions. When science doesn't feed your biases, reject science. A study published in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology takes a look at one of these methods, which the authors term "scientific…

He called himself Dr Woo. He was a practitioner of traditional Chinese medicine, and even those quacks couldn't stand him, and disbarred him. He was bringing in female patients, asking them to get naked, and then poking and prodding in places totally unrelated to their complaints. Here's one…

Jeffrey Shallit has an excellent post on the conceptual failure of creationists to grasp even the possibility of an absence of intent. You probably know the feeling — you are trying to explain some process in biology or chemistry, and your student is struggling to fit the story into his mental…

At last, this sounds like a practical solution: In an open letter, the girlfriends of more than 40 priests have called for a relaxation of the church's stance on celibacy to allow a limited range of sexual practices, including the reverse Dutch Steamboat, the Stockholm Slip'n'Slide and the Sorcerer…

So, Greta Van Susteren, Fox News babbler, got some hate mail telling her how stupid she is. Instead of just chucking it in the trash, or simply making fun of it (the guy made a spelling error, of course), she had to go out of her way to demonstrate that maybe the fellow was right. How? She turned…

Resetting old thread, resume conversation here. (Current totals: 10,316 entries with 1,008,138 comments.)

It's been a great week for vapid defenses of religion…at least for atheists, that is. It's been a sad week for the godly, given that their paladins are all such flabby purveyors of tepid tea. First up, let us consider the Dalai Lama, revered all around the world because he's such a nice guy and is…

There are no atheists allowed in Catholic schools. A teacher at a Catholic HS in Iowa was fired because she answered a poll about personal beliefs in a way her employer didn't like. Apparently, Abby Nurre was surfing around Facebook last summer (before she started her job at the Catholic school)…