Paul Z. Meyers
pharyngula
Posts by this author
December 29, 2009
People send me the strangest pictures. This one was very confusing: I couldn't tell whether it was food, science, or porn. Anyway, it trips a few triggers.
I should mention that in the flood of peculiar email, I do often get squid porn: attractive young ladies draped with various molluscs, and…
December 28, 2009
Liberty University is fielding an expedition to Turkey to dig up Noah's Ark.
When your professors are looking for a 4,000 year old boat that beached on a mountain top after a global flood, you might as well give up on any pretense to scholarly credibility, OK?
December 28, 2009
You may recall that irritating essay by Nicholas Wade in which he butchers the philosophy of science — well, his book is out, it's gotten a mixed review in the New York Times, and Jerry Coyne mentions that it's Templeton-endorsed. It's all the kiss of death as far as I'm concerned — I don't think I…
December 28, 2009
Rick Warren regularly scribbles up these cloying little messages he calls the Daily Hope — and rather than hope, they offer nothing but trite platitudes and unfounded certainty about a godly purpose that I find extremely discouraging. How can people find this lying tripe uplifting?
God deliberately…
December 28, 2009
You can play the "Where's Waldo" game and browse an interactive album of animal mimics, too.
December 27, 2009
It's like taunting the bull while standing in the middle of his field. It's just not smart. Anyway, there's another of these online polls ranking atheists, and Hemant Mehta has come out on Twitter threatening to destroy me in the voting. You know I can't stand for that. Go vote!
Who is the Most…
December 27, 2009
True, heartwarming tales from the Bible, sure to gladden the hearts of children everywhere:
December 27, 2009
But then, you elected this profoundly stupid man to be your governor, so it's all your own fault. I was reading an interview with Governor Mitch Daniels of Indiana that was just embarrassingly bad.
To me, the core of the Christian faith is humility, which starts with recognizing that you're as…
December 26, 2009
A small mob of atheist students (and a confused, deluded mob of hapless Christians) are going to be making a trip to New Orleans to help rebuild homes. This is a wonderful idea, and I commend all of the students, even the misled theistic ones, for making the effort. However, they need money to…
December 26, 2009
Obama has been a disappointment (but still better than the alternative!), but one candidate continues to make me happy: Al Franken. He recently tacked a praiseworthy amendment to a defense bill: there will be no defense contracts to companies that "restrict their employees from taking workplace…
December 26, 2009
I'm a fan of the comic strip Lio — the one with the weird little kid with the pet squid and whose antics clearly make him a descendant of the Addams Family. The strip for Christmas eve was a little different, though.
It hit home for me because the day after Christmas is my day of melancholy. It…
December 25, 2009
Carl Zimmer has some videos of explosive erections in ducks you might not want to miss. Or might want to miss, depending on your kinks. I may have nightmares tonight.
December 25, 2009
It's just a silly online poll, and I don't have a stake in how it comes out one way or the other, except for one thing: I must defeat Brad Pitt. I like the guy, and I've enjoyed his movies, and I'm happy that he's come out as an atheist, but you know…I'm looking forward to being able to go into the…
December 25, 2009
The agenda on this video made me so happy. I want a president like this!
December 25, 2009
This is absurd. The Italian National Research Council is sponsoring the publication of a creationist book, titled Evolutionism: The Decline of an Hypothesis. Right away, from the title alone, you can tell that the book has problems: evolution is not a theory in decline, no matter how much the…
December 25, 2009
Octopus alpheus
Figure from Cephalopods: A World Guide (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Mark Norman.
December 24, 2009
THIS. IS. MINNESOTA. We like our Christmases white around here, and it's not enough just to have a few decorative snowflakes tumble down — we need a blizzard, and that's what we're going to get. I was out there in the frigid whiteness earlier today, clearing the driveway and sidewalks, and now I'm…
December 24, 2009
It's Christmas Eve. You're probably all busy with holiday preparations, getting together with family, making the traditional dinner, all that secular stuff that makes the day worth celebrating. I know that in the midst of this hustle and bustle you already don't believe in Santa Claus, but I'm…
December 23, 2009
There is a sign among the various holiday displays at the Illinois state capitol, set there by the Freedom from Religion Foundation.
At the time of the winter solstice, let reason prevail. There are no gods, no devils, no angels, no heaven or hell. There is only our natural world. Religion is just…
December 23, 2009
Jim Lippard has put up an excellent post identifying the major institutions behind climate change denial. They are almost uniformly conservative and populated with old and unqualified cranks, although Jim is too genteel to put it that way. It's useful information if you need a scorecard to keep…
December 23, 2009
Perhaps your idea of the traditional holiday week involves lounging about with a full belly watching football — not me, though. I think if I did, I'd be eyeing those muscular fellows with thoughts of muscle biopsies and analyses of the frequency of α-actinin variants in their population vs. the…
December 23, 2009
Next Fall, I'll be back in the classroom teaching introductory biology again. One thing I'm planning to do is to use Shubin's Your Inner Fish for that course…and just look what the good man has done just for me: all the figures from the book have been released as powerpoint slides.
OK, he probably…
December 23, 2009
Strapped for cash? Don't know how you're going to afford a few gifts for the family? Don't worry about it, just steal them! It's OK because a priest says it is, and they've got the backing of God. Just remember: don't rob the little stores, always hit the big ones, since they've got capital to…
December 23, 2009
Last night, Larry King Live (without Larry King, who was off getting his internal organs stuffed into canopic jars or something) was all about life after death, and guess who they brought on? Deepak Chopra, new age nutcase; Dinesh D'Souza, dithering moron; and Sanjay Gupta, their usual token MD,…
December 22, 2009
The lower Congo river is deep and complex, and there are a surprising number of hydrologic features that act as barriers separating populations of fish — this very nice video explains the diversity of species and the ongoing evolution of the fish in this environment.
They too briefly showed a…
December 22, 2009
Tonight, on NOVA, it's The Last Great Ape, promising to have lots of sex and violence (violence provided by the genus Homo, I'm afraid). These are very cool apes, well worth watching.
December 22, 2009
The old thread is dead, a new one lives. Now dance, monkey boys and girls! Dance!
December 22, 2009
I thought I'd stumbled onto FSTDT, but no…it's a collection of quotes from the Texas board of education collected over the last year. At least I learned that Don McLeroy is an honest man.
Am I a religious fanatic? Absolutely. You'd have to be to do what I do.
December 22, 2009
Tom Coburn, the odious Republican from Oklahoma, is one of the America-hating pseudopatriots opposing even the lame and neutered health care bill sludgily working its way through the senate, and he recently sent out a call to his teabaggin'* electorate and fellow travelers to pray that "somebody…
December 22, 2009
Ken Ham is distressed that he gets no respect. This triggers a little litany of self-defense.
Guess what's missing from Sunday's Cincinnati Enquirer's (our main Cincinnati newspaper) long articles about local Christmas/holiday activities?
This long piece-plus other Christmas-related articles--…