Paul Z. Meyers
pharyngula
Posts by this author
September 19, 2009
Those darned Christians are always ruining our fun. Now we're getting preemptive finger-wagging: we have been warned that sex with robots is always wrong. The author is afraid we're going to someday run out and buy life-like android sex slaves, and then humanity will go extinct…because of course we…
September 19, 2009
I am shackled to my laptop, writing, writing, writing for a while as all of my body but brain, eyes, and fingers atrophy, so I'm going to have to send you off elsewhere to find your jollies. Gary Farber has compiled a fine collection of short, strange science links…well, some are only tangentially…
September 18, 2009
Remember Glenn Moon, the strange candidate for city council of Livonia, MI? The primary election is over, and he finished dead last. He did get 301 votes out of 6,432, though, which is a little accomplishment, and we now that 4½% of the population of the town is stark raving bonkers, which isn't…
September 18, 2009
I got many excellent and informed suggestions on how to handle the death threats a certain deranged spammer has been making here, and I've acted on them. I gathered together all of the crazy posts he made over the course of one evening, and printed them out in very small print — it made for a small…
September 18, 2009
This is a very cool fossil, a tiny T. rex cousin called Raptorex. Well, tiny is relative — it was still as big as a human being — but it has the same proportions, the oversized fanged head, the tiny forelimbs, etc., as it's later relative, T. rex. It's simply adorable, in a viciously evil predatory…
September 18, 2009
Greg Laden is entirely correct the case in question reference by this poll is about some teachers who are being tried for contempt of court, and this particular court case is not about separation of church and state. However, the poll is asking a more general question:
Should educators be fined or…
September 17, 2009
Abraliopsis
Figure from Cephalopods: A World Guide (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Mark Norman.
September 17, 2009
Back in June, I reported on this new sleazy tactic by Ray Comfort: he produced an abridged edition of Darwin's Origin of Species, and then had the gall to tag on a preface that he had written himself, full of the standard creationist misconceptions. Comfort is astoundingly ignorant of basic biology…
September 17, 2009
I give you all fair warning: my daughter Skatje has passed her driver's test, and has a license to drive. Alone. Without her father sitting by her side, hands clenched tightly to the armrest, feet pounding the floorboards to hit imaginary brakes, and using the force of his indomitable will to…
September 17, 2009
I used to love to watch barnacles. Well, I still do, but there's a distinct shortage of tidepools here in Minnesota, which makes it a very difficult hobby. Barnacles are arthropods hunkered down in stony shells attached to a substrate, and what they do is unfurl feathery legs like ostrich plumes (…
September 17, 2009
Frank Schaeffer was on fire in this interview with Rachel Maddow, prompted by a bizarre NJ poll that showed 35% of the conservatives in that state believe Obama is the anti-christ. Heh, "We have a village idiot in this country, it's called fundamentalist Christianity". Gold star for Schaeffer!
He's…
September 17, 2009
A recent survey that correlated the degree of fundamentalism, as measured by positive responses to questions about the absolute, literal truth of the Bible, and teenage birth rates, has discovered something we all suspected all along: fundie kids are getting pregnant despite their stern,…
September 17, 2009
Uh, there is a Team Canada, isn't there? Many of you may have noticed that Dennis Markuze has been going on a commenting spree lately. He's leaving a few hundred threatening messages a day, which I clean up as I find them, and has also said he is emailing these threats to every individual member of…
September 16, 2009
Greetings, my friend. We are all interested in this thread, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives. And remember my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future. You are interested in the unknown…the mysterious. The unexplainable. That is why you…
September 16, 2009
The director of the Sam Noble Museum of Natural History (the one hosting a Discovery Institute event) has posted an open letter about the program. I presume there will be more coming, because while it's a beginning, I'm not too impressed yet.
Although the museum does not support unscientific views…
September 16, 2009
You can now buy scents on the web that are inspired by HP Lovecraft. For instance, you could get Cthulhu: "A creeping, wet, slithering scent, dripping with seaweed, oceanic plants and dark, unfathomable waters."
But what if you already smell like that all the time?
(via io9)
September 16, 2009
There are no more excuses. None.
The defining characteristic of all arguments with creationists is how damned ignorant they are. I'm sure many scientists have been stupefied into stunned silence when they first encounter these people; these advocated of creationism are typically loud and certain…
September 16, 2009
You don't need to watch a spooky movie or visit a haunted house to see dead zombies walk: you've got an Intelligent Design creationism conference going on in Castle Rock! Watch them stagger about, drooling, looking for some brains, frustrated because there aren't any on stage. They've got Michael…
September 16, 2009
Look at the interesting snake found in China — it's got a leg.
How can this happen? Genes are pleiotropic — they tend to have lots of different functions. The genes involved in making a limb are also expressed in other places; for instance, the Hox genes that specify identity along the length of…
September 16, 2009
It turns out that there are a few simple rules to follow when submitting your computer dating form.
Around 42 per cent of messages which included the word "atheist" achieved replies, significantly higher than the average response rate of 32 per cent.
References to "Christian", "Jewish" and "…
September 15, 2009
I'm very disappointed in Australia. Here I thought it was the kind of place where individuality was valued, and there was some good old rugged common sense to the people. But then I read this ghastly story.
In short, Tegan Leach gets pregnant at the age of 18, she and her boyfriend sensibly realize…
September 15, 2009
The Discovery Institute is up to their usual shenanigans — they're pushing another propaganda movie (say, whatever happened to their research program?), Darwin's Dilemma. It's complete nonsense.
This documentary will examine what many consider to be the most powerful refutation of Darwinian…
September 15, 2009
Breaking news: the evidence is all publicly available, plain as day.
(Oh, man, bad flashbacks…anyone else remember Reagan's weird fascination with alien invaders uniting all of humanity? That dude was stone cold nuts. Brrrr.)
September 15, 2009
For everyone who rightly complained about the porn ads on the Tibetan Sky Burial post, you can now watch birds devour a dead person via the magic of YouTube, free of distractions.
Again, somewhat grisly: don't watch this if you feel delicate about such matters as the fact that we are all made of…
September 15, 2009
Perhaps there is a god…how else do we explain this lovely miracle? We don't have to stop there, either — there are also these to explain. Of course, the god revealed by these wonders seems to be a bit of a libertine, so he's probably not Abrahamic at all. But definitely a fun guy.
September 15, 2009
We've got a fine gang of nuts coming up through the religious ranks right now. There are some real lunatics associated with Sarah Palin: she's linked to her home-town priests, Ed Kalnin and Thomas Muthee, who are linked to Morningstar Ministries and Rick Joyner. These cranks have a plan.
Muthee is…
September 14, 2009
We just have to make the practice of sky burial popular! Maybe this photo set of a Tibetan funeral will help. (WARNING! Those photos show a large flock of vultures stripping a human body of flesh, with the assistance of some helpful Tibetans who break up the larger bones with hatchets. Don't click…
September 14, 2009
It's another negative review of Unscientific America. I think we're reaching consensus on one thing: the book was awfully light on substance.