Paul Z. Meyers
pharyngula
Posts by this author
April 22, 2009
There is hope in Texas. Deranged creationist dentist Don McLeroy is getting grilled in confirmation hearings.
State Board of Education Chairman Don McLeroy, R-Bryan, faced searing questioning during his uncommonly long confirmation hearing Wednesday at the Senate Nominations Committee.
And…
April 22, 2009
Over on an MSN site, there is an image of Ötzi the iceman with a very strange caption.
The iceman is believed to be the 'missing link' between apes and humans that roamed the mountains, encased in ice.
How many ways is that wrong? The "missing link" remark, applied to a human being let alone…
April 22, 2009
It's long and fairly detailed, but this synopsis by a lawyer will give you the gist.
This lawsuit is gloriously insane. From top to bottom, this is exactly the kind of lawsuit you would expect from the kind of minds who think the world is 6,000 years old.
April 22, 2009
Scienceblogs has a new addition to the stable, and appropriately enough, it's an environmental science blog: say howdy to Guilty Planet.
April 22, 2009
I know how much Orac dislikes the Huffington Post — I despise it myself as the doman of airheaded woo of the type represented by Deepak Chopra, and the only time I glance at it is to remind myself that the left can also sink into sloppy stupidity as deeply as the right. But poor Orac — his head…
April 22, 2009
Oy, this has been a long day of travel, and it's not over yet. I'm at the Salt Lake City airport right now, with a long 5 hour layover. At least I have wireless and my kindle.
It's a bit of a shock being here, though. I'd forgotten how much those big lumpy whatchamacallums, you know, those giant…
April 22, 2009
It's another one of those long traveling days for me today. I'm on my way to Oregon (I'm at the airport already, so don't worry about any more accidents!), so I may be a bit quiet for a while. Which means I should put something here to keep everyone in a busy uproar for a while.
My job is done, and…
April 22, 2009
This is an old, tired joke that has just been posted on the site of a right-wing moron's radio show. I have heard it quite a few times before, usually by smug nitwits who think they've delivered a knock-out themselves.
A United States Marine was attending some college courses between assignments…
April 22, 2009
The NCSE has been posting videos of events at the Texas Board of Education — they are very informative and well worth spending some time watching.
Here's an example of the bad guys: Don Patton preening smarmily and accusing Darwinism of failing because a 'prediction' had failed. The 'prediction',…
April 21, 2009
Those astronomers keep finding new extrasolar planets — 350 of them so far — but none are just right. Two new planets have been discovered that are almost earthlike.
Gliese 581 e is the closest in size to Earth, only 1.9 times larger. Unfortunately, it's also too close to its star, and is probably…
April 21, 2009
Once, religion gave us Bach and the Sistine Chapel. That was then; now religion gives us…
Holy Flash Abuse, Batman! You have to see the intro page for the International Congress of Churches & Ministers to believe it. Somebody had way too much coffee.
If your religious kitsch preferences are…
April 21, 2009
Yeah, crazy people write to me, too.
Hello dear Ladies and Gentlemen!
I would like inform you that Scarlett Johansson “actress” actually is a clone from original person Scarlett Galabekian last name, who has nothing with acting career,
surname Galabekian, because of adoption happened in 1992.…
April 21, 2009
All right, I like cephalopods. I admit it. So why do I find this article about hunting octopus in the Mediterranean so entertaining? I mean, the guy is diving down, stabbing the octopus between the eyes with a pointy stick, and then…
Next step: the octopus must be tenderized by slamming it against…
April 21, 2009
The SSA is having a fund raiser. This is an excellent and fast-growing organization that promotes rational thought on college campuses — if you've got a few dollars to spare, give them a little. It's money well spent, since this organization has been marvelously successful in organizing student…
April 21, 2009
Ah, what can be better than a good night's sleep, a hot shower, a cup of coffee, and finding a book review by AC Grayling on a cool spring morning? In this case, it's not so much a review as a cheerful dismemberment and deposition of the fragmented corpse into an acid bath. John Polkinghorne has…
April 20, 2009
For some reason, I find this hilarious — it's an exercise in applying the mathematics of population ecology to the dynamics of human-vampire interactions. It's the real deal, the actual kinds of math used by those wacky evolution and ecology nerds, all built around some estimates of the rates of…
April 20, 2009
A while back, the Institute for Creation Research tried to get approval to issue degrees in the state of Texas — they would have used this authority to churn out science teachers whose knowledge would have been derived entirely from the Bible and young earth creationist tracts. Fortunately, the…
April 20, 2009
President Obama has released memos on the policies on prisoner interrogation under former President Bush. These are horrifying documents that expose the immorality of the previous administration. Unfortunately, Obama has not gone far enough: it's a good start to reveal the truth, but what needs to…
April 20, 2009
If anyone is in the Roseville area tomorrow, somewhere near Northwestern College, you might have an entertaining time if you drop in on a meeting of the Twin Cities Creation Science Association. I can't even imagine what they're going to say in this one.
God's Design in Weather
Weather is more…
April 20, 2009
The physicist Stephen Hawking has been hospitalized, a serious business for a 67 year old man with ALS. We should all hope for the best, but don't pray — we shall trust in modern medicine and science, and the stamina of a man who has demonstrated remarkable persistence in the face of daunting…
April 20, 2009
Jerry Coyne carries out an amusing exercise in reasoning like an evolutionary psychologist: why does human semen taste bad? It turns out that it is really easy to invent all kinds of entirely reasonable rationalizations for it: in particular, it's to promote ejaculation in the orifice that is more…
April 20, 2009
I was sent this story about genes and IQ, and right from the beginning, my alarm bells were ringing. This is crank pseudoscience.
Gregory Cochran has always been drawn to puzzles. This one had been gnawing at him for several years: Why are European Jews prone to so many deadly genetic diseases?…
April 19, 2009
Legislators in Louisiana are considering a bill to prohibit human-animal hybrids. We've been all over this subject before — it's ridiculous and founded on complete incomprehension of what the research is all about. How ridiculous is it? SB 115 bans the "mixing of human and animal cells in a petri…
April 18, 2009
Humanists, humanists, humanists. Sunday's Atheists Talk radio is all about secular humanism and the big AHA meeting in June. Tune in at 9am Central time.
April 18, 2009
That ridiculously serious National Organization for Marriage video — which was mocked mercilessly on Colbert — now has some competition. This is an anti-gay video put out by an Illinois church that claims Christians are being oppressed by the Homosexual Agenda right now.
So this is where the…
April 18, 2009
Perhaps you remember the PCR song from Bio-Rad…or perhaps you tried hard to purge that from your memory. Then Eppendorf upped the ante with a pipettor love song. Now Greg Laden finds another pop tribute to PCR from Bio-Rad. The genre? Disco. By all that's good and rational, not disco.
Two can…
April 18, 2009
Sometimes I get requests for assistance with creationists. Usually, it's because some unwarrantedly confident ignoramus has been lying his butt off. Here's a perfect example:
I have a quick question concerning an encounter I had with a man last night who claimed he was a scientist (although,…
April 18, 2009
The horror…if you're at all squeamish, you may not want to read this article by an editor at a textbook publisher on how public school textbooks are made. If you're curious about why Texas has such an absurd weight in the world of textbooks, though, it will explain all.
It's a system that needs to…
April 18, 2009
The churches open their doors to everyone who wants to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the central mythological event in their belief system…except clowns. No clowns allowed!
I have been moved by this tragic rejection, and while they are obnoxious and annoying, I can see where clowns…