Paul Z. Meyers
pharyngula
Posts by this author
July 1, 2009
I am in awe — they did it without anyone noticing. They just infiltrated nations all around the planet, smuggling in individuals to form vast new colonies of billions, all loyal to the overlords back home. Of course, these are very, very short Argentinians, which made them harder to notice: they're…
July 1, 2009
This morning was a long session broken into two big chunks, and I'm afraid it was too much for me — my recent weird sleep patterns are catching up with me, which didn't help at all in staying alert.
Robert Huber: Intracellular protein degradation and its control
This talk was a disaster. Not…
July 1, 2009
I'm here for another long session of talks. Unfortunately, this is Big Chemistry day, and I'm struggling to keep up with the unfamiliar. I need more biology for it all to make sense!
Rudolph Marcus: From 'On Water' and enzyme caalysis to single molecules and quantum dots. Theory and experiment.
I…
June 30, 2009
The old fossil is Pat Buchanan, who has published a freakishly antiquated diatribe against Darwin. It's extremely old school — he uses arguments straight out of 1960s era "scientific creationism", trying to tar Darwin with guilt by association with Karl Marx and Adolf Hitler. He is apparently…
June 30, 2009
Ah, a solid science talk. It wasn't bad, except that it was very basic—maybe if I were a real journalist instead of a fake journalist I would have appreciated it more, but as it was, it was a nice overview of some common ideas in neuroscience, with some discussion of pretty new tools on top.
He…
June 30, 2009
The Minnesota Supreme Court has ruled against him, and finally Norm Coleman has conceded the Minnesota state senate race to Al Franken. Hooray for Al, we have a new senator!
June 30, 2009
As mentioned previously, my interview on British Christian talk radio is now available — you can download the mp3 directly, and you can join in an online discussion, in which I am accused of "scientism"…which is rather pecuilar, given that in the interview I rather specifically said there were…
June 30, 2009
There is a cool program available in the UK only titled Inside Nature's Giants, which is meant to be taken literally — they actually record the dissection of megafauna. The first episode is about delving into the guts of an elephant.
The bad news is that it isn't available outside Channel 4's…
June 30, 2009
There are a few people who will now appear on the blog who will be extremely peevish about Molina's talk, because he simply clearly stated the scientific consensus. We are now living in the anthropocene, when so many people exist that that we are affecting the planet's functions. CO2 and CH4…
June 29, 2009
The first few talks this morning focused primarily on policy as illuminated by science; only the third talk was pure science.
Chiechanover's talk was on both the history and future of drug research, which he characterized in terms of three major revolutions in the last century.
The first revolution…
June 29, 2009
It's getting to be a regular feature—every year, the NY Times must do a story on that bizarre miseducation monument, the Creation "Museum". This time around, the story isn't too awful — it focuses on the recent NAPC meeting, in which several professional paleontologists paid a visit to the…
June 29, 2009
It is time for the first big challenge of the week: getting my circadian rhythms straightened around. It feels like about 11:30 in the evening, my biological time, but it's actually 6:30am Lindau time. Today is actually tomorrow.
My strategy was actually planned. Yesterday was mostly travel through…
June 29, 2009
I really need to learn a good collection of creative German cuss words. It's been a harrowing, overlong day and a half of travel, with late flights leading to missed connections leading to long periods standing in lines with Germans, who were all very nice and helpful, except that I learned that…
June 28, 2009
They're doing it again. There's a new movie being released, The Voyage That Shook the World, that you can tell from the tagline — "One man, one voyage, one book ignited a controversy that still rages today" — is creationist trash (hint: there is no scientific controversy anymore on this matter).…
June 28, 2009
John Wilkins has tried to make some arguments for accommodationism. I am unimpressed. He makes six points that I briefly summarize here, with my reply.
It's the job of the religious to reconcile their beliefs with science, and atheists don't get to "insist that nobody else can make the claim that…
June 27, 2009
Sad (in some ways) to say, Atheists Talk radio will make its last broadcast Sunday at 9am Central time. They will continue, but they'll be moving to a podcast format rather than continuing to be sandwiched in between woo-woo altie nonsense programs, which is a good thing.
The show tomorrow will…
June 27, 2009
It took a while to convince the Trophy Wife to let me take pictures of her feet and post them on the internet. Wait, that's not as kinky as it sounds! She's been loafing about in these nice socks she was sent by our very own Patricia, OM, using yarn colors based on the Spanish Shawl nudibranch, and…
June 27, 2009
In case you missed the trail of links that magically appeared on several blogs this morning, here it is:
Almost Diamonds → Skepchick → Greg Laden's Blog → Whitecoat Underground → Traumatized By Truth → My Fair Scientist → Neurotopia → A Blog Around the Clock → Pharyngula
What it all led up to was a…
June 27, 2009
Oklahoma's bible-thumpingest congresscreature has issued a Proclamation of Morality.
WHEREAS, the people of Oklahoma have a strong tradition of reliance upon the Creator of the Universe; and
WHEREAS, we believe our economic woes are consequences of our greater national moral crisis; and
WHEREAS,…
June 27, 2009
Man, I get some strange email. This one is just weird…maybe one of you can help this person out.
This was sent to me by Jodi Haynes.
Jason is an IT manager for a local tech support call centre. I now work at a vineyard, but the call centre was where we met. I was a noob techie and he approached me…
June 26, 2009
Tomorrow, I get to spend a very long day traveling to the Lindau Meetings, which will be great fun, and you can expect some science blogging from that event (Bora will also be attending, so Scienceblogs has you covered).
However, I am seeing some troublesome stirrings here. A certain demented ex-…
June 26, 2009
Wouldn't it be fun to rap on your neighbors' doors and hand out this tract?
June 26, 2009
Yesterday morning, I was in a discussion on UK Christian talk radio on the topic of "Is Christian faith at odds with science?", with Denis Alexander of the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion. It's going to be available as a podcast at sometime in the next day, but I may not be able to link…
June 26, 2009
At least, given the current tallies. But go ahead and vote anyway.
The Catholic church is a force for good in the world.
For 7.6%
Against 91.2%
Don't Know 1.2%
June 26, 2009
It's very kind of this home school football league to provide their list of priorities.
I would guess that #3 is very, very far down the list.
June 26, 2009
Whirled Nut Daily has announced that the Ark of the Covenant has been discovered and is going to be unveiled in Rome! I urge any of my Italian readers to close your eyes and don't look, because we all know what will happen when the Ark is opened.
You know this is serious—WND even illustrates…
June 26, 2009
There are science crackpots, and then there are journalist crackpots. Suzan Mazur is a strange writer who runs about trying to convince the world that there is going to be a revolution in evolutionary biology…but her sources tend to be fringe figures like Stuart Pivar, or she relies on mangling…
June 26, 2009
Grimpoteuthis sp.
Figure from Cephalopods: A World Guide (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Mark Norman.
June 25, 2009
IT'S STILL ALIVE! Once again, the never-ending open thread has topped the 1K mark, and is now being closed…to be reborn here once again, I'm sure.
I'm trapped in an old Hammer film with Christopher Lee!