Paul Z. Meyers
pharyngula
Posts by this author
December 11, 2009
You've only got a few days left to enter: Everything Octopus is giving away a cephalopod tree ornament, and all you have to do is subscribe to the site and leave a comment. Easy!
I already own this very same ornament, and will be putting up our family christmas tree this weekend. I've received a…
December 11, 2009
Way, way back on 16 July, I got a letter from the Discovery Institute.
Dear Dr. Myers:
I am writing to ask if you have plans to review Dr. Stephen C. Meyer's new book Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design (HarperOne). I would be happy to ask Dr. Meyer's publisher to…
December 11, 2009
A while back, I asked you all to vote in the L'Oréal Women of Worth contest, which gives awards to notable women who have provided good service to their communities. I was a bit self-interested, because one of the nominees was an alumnus of my university: Shannon Lambert runs support services for…
December 11, 2009
I'm a big fan of the gloriously cranky Harlan Ellison, and here he gives his opinion of that whole god business in his characteristic way…which means that if you are at work you should not turn the volume up on this one.
I found this on a SF site, and the first couple of comments are from…
December 11, 2009
Enteroctopus dofleini
Figure from Cephalopods: A World Guide (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Mark Norman.
December 10, 2009
Once again, the repetitively wrong rapture rummy is predicting the imminent end of the world.
I don't care anymore. The guy has just shown over and over again that he's an incompetent prophet; his skills in that department seem to be about on a par with his abilities as a web designer.
December 10, 2009
By now you've all heard about the heinous Ugandan bill that would lead to the imprisonment of homosexuals and the execution of any with AIDS, and you've probably also heard that it was promoted by American right-wingers. There's a curious phenomenon going on right now: people are trying to stir up…
December 10, 2009
Some people are still encountering bugs when trying to register for commenting, and a few of them have been emailing me. I don't know what to do! I've forwarded your email to the powers-that-be, and we'll see if something gets fixed some more.
Otherwise, if anyone out there has suggestions, leave…
December 10, 2009
Bad news, gang: we're going to have to give up on all of science because cranky human beings came up with it.
December 10, 2009
New Zealand will be getting signs saying "there's probably no god" slapped onto buses trundling about, and naturally, the newspapers want to hear what you think about that.
Is there a God?
Yes 37.2%
No 49.0%
I'm not sure 13.6%
I don't know. I would have thought New Zealanders could do better than…
December 10, 2009
One of the most important tools for promulgating religion is fear, and one of the biggest sources of fear is the inescapable fact of personal mortality: we're all going to die someday, and we all know people we've loved who have died. Religion steps up to the challenge of death in its usual glib…
December 9, 2009
Richard Cohen is one of those profit-making advocates of gay deconversion, whose work has been used in Uganda to justify laws that promote killing gay people; Rachel Maddow, of course, is the fabulous, intelligent interviewer who ought to be the model for responsible television journalism.
She…
December 9, 2009
Sometimes, reading the shrill words of theists trying to interpret atheists is a real trip to Bizarro World. What you see, generally, is freakishly far off the mark and often more a case of projection than understanding. It would be hard to get more overt than this: someone named Kathryn Lofton has…
December 9, 2009
Previously, I enviously mentioned this fabulous godless variety show going on in England this year. It's Nine Lessons and Carols for Godless People, organized by Robin Ince, and featuring a host of secular personages of note.
They had a similar show last year, with many requests for recordings. The…
December 9, 2009
The thread still goes on? I can't believe it. But then, I'm a scientist—I don't believe anything.
December 9, 2009
I'd happily hang that on my wall. The trophy wife would even more cheerfully tear it down, shred it, and set it on fire. But then, she's the one with taste*.
*Don't judge her by her taste in men. That was a momentary lapse of reason, a one time thing.
December 9, 2009
Now everyone can read it: Kent Hovind's thesis from Patriot University has been scanned and put on the web. Remember to breathe now and then when you're laughing that hard.
Hello, my name is Kent Hovind. I am a creation/science evangelist. I live in Pensacola, Florida. I have been a high school…
December 9, 2009
Cecil Bothwell was elected to the city council of Asheville, NC. Cecil Bothwell is an atheist. Now some kooks want to deny Cecil Bothwell his seat on the council because the North Carolina constitution forbids atheists from taking public office.
Amazing. I know that several states have these laws…
December 9, 2009
What a horrible, sad waste of a life: Tillmon Webb injured his knee, couldn't afford to get it treated, and sat in a recliner for 8 months, praying for healing. His saintly (and I don't mean that in a complimentary sense) wife tended to him as he rotted to death in the chair.
"He read his Bible…
December 8, 2009
I hate to tell you this, but tomorrow I'll be switching required registration back on. There are far too many spammers and trolls hitting the place right now.
December 8, 2009
I was reading this condescending article by Stephen Prothero that, as usual, chastises the New Atheists for being so danged rude, and I thought I'd have to take time to slap him around a bit. His point is that the reason we're so rude is that we're all arrogant white men, and if only we had more…
December 8, 2009
I don't know about this. It's a page of science-themed cookies, and although I like the sentiment, and they certainly are pretty, little alarm bells go off in my head when I see cookies decorated up like gels. I've had to tell students not to eat the acrylamide, it's toxic. And the cookies that…
December 8, 2009
We are the New Atheists. We do not, however, like the name — ask any of us, and we'll tell you that there's nothing new about our atheism — all we're doing is speaking out about godlessness. I've talked to a lot of the so-called New Atheists, including some of the biggest big shots in this movement…
December 8, 2009
Tim Lambert of Deltoid is discussing a book about climate denialism on FDL. I quite enjoyed his putdown of the ubiquitous Viscount Monckton, and also this familiar joke:
Question: What's the difference between a computer salesman and a used car salesman?
Answer: A used car salesman knows when he'…
December 8, 2009
Brad DeLong has renamed his blog, formerly "J. Bradford DeLong's Grasping Reality with Both Hands," to "J. Bradford DeLong's Grasping Reality with All Eight Tentacles". This is excellent: the conversion process has begun, and the teuthid clan still outnumber him by two.
Other blog makeovers to…
December 8, 2009
That sure didn't take long. Bruce G. Charlton has chastised me.
It strikes me a sleazy and sloppy bit of journalism, unworthy of a scientist, falsely to accuse me in print of corrupt self-publishing.
All of my articles published in Medical Hypotheses since I became editor are editorials. Editor…
December 7, 2009
This is short notice, but hey, it's not like the residents of North Dakota could have anything else planned*: August Berkshire, that other atheist in Minnesota, will be speaking in Fargo on Tuesday evening.
Tuesday, December 8, 2009, 7:00 pm - August Berkshire, past vice president of Atheist…
December 7, 2009
The journal Medical Hypotheses is a weird creature: it has no peer review and publishes, to put it generously, 'speculative' papers. At least it's entertaining in an "OMG they say what?" sort of way. A fun blog called NCBI ROFL, which highlights some of the weirdness that pops up in scientific…