pharyngula

No hard feelings, people, I lived there for a while…but Hoosiers sure can pick 'em. I was there when Dan Quayle was the hero of the hour, and I had no idea they could sink even lower. Here he is, though: Congressman Mark Souder, who claims that the highlight of his year was appearing in Expelled.…

Rename the town "Peckerwood".1 It would be more fitting. Addition of the modifier "two-bit" is entirely optional. Here's the story. Local citizen walks into the Public Library, and notices that it is displaying a Christian nativity scene. He asks to meet with the library director to complain. This…

Ho hum, it's Madeleine Bunting, who we've encountered before. Her essay starts out well enough, cheering on the coming Darwin celebrations, explaining how this is a great opportunity for the promotion of science, etc., etc., etc., but—there's always a but—oh, deary me, it's going to be hijacked by…

Well, it's nothing to be concerned about. Just more of the same ol', same ol', with nothing much of substance to grapple with. Let's tackle Andrew Brown's complaints first. Brown is not a stupid fellow, but I see here a hint of irrationally roused hackles, with little explanation of what exactly he…

A reader sent me this photo of a lovely monument in Antwerp, and I just had to post it. You see, when you're a biologist, it's not just all about the squid and the barnacles, there's also all the hot babes. The voluptuous young lady is, apparently, the personification of Nature. I just knew she…

Checking my mail today, I discovered one curiosity, one holiday card, and one piece of Very Official Stationery from the University that employs me. The curiosity: I actually got a reprint request. Those are very strange — it used to be that you'd always get a flurry of these after publishing…

I've been seeing this argument a lot lately: it's a brand of exceedingly indiscriminate relativism that is being prominently peddled by Answers in Genesis. Creationists and evolutionists, Christians and non-Christians, all have the same evidence--the same facts. Think about it: we all have the same…

Another study finds that abstinence-only sex ed is a failure. Not that it will matter, proponents of such fantasy solutions will just close their eyes and pray harder. Teens who take virginity pledges are just as likely to have sex as teens who don't make such promises -- and they're less likely to…

And it was just like this story of a man and a squid.

This is sad news. Greg Cahill, an old acquaintance who had been a fellow graduate student with me at the Institute of Neuroscience at the University of Oregon, has died suddenly. I did not know him well, but I remember him as a fine fellow among my small cohort of fellow students, and it's sad to…

Another casualty in the War on Drugs: an enthusiastic science student, of the sort that would normally go on to be a scientist, is arrested for having a chemistry lab. A Canadian college student majoring in chemistry built himself a home lab - and discovered that trying to do science in your own…

The sound quality is awful, but the sentiment comes through clearly: Tim Minchin describes a typical evening with a woo artist.

Tune in on Sunday morning at 9am Central time to Atheists Talk radio for an all-science hour, reviewing the top science stories of the past year. It's going to have a bit of a developmental bias, and maybe even some zebrafish bias, as the big man of the hour will be Perry Hackett of the UMTC, a…

An amusing take on my battle with the Creation "Museum": it was me against Jesus. The good news is that I won. I had an edge, though, in that I'm not an imaginary being.

First of all, I have to point out that sometimes, amazingly cool people are incredibly stupid about biology. Case in point: Jack Kirby was an evolutionary ignoramus. Now that's just sad. Of course we share this world with related forms of life — we've been looking for years, and what would be a…

No, I haven't forgotten how to blog all of a sudden — I've been distracted. I wrenched an ankle wrestling with a snow blower the other day, and woke up this morning with my foot all swoll up like a lumpy ol' potato with five little toes wiggling at one end. It's not good. Joints are such a fragile…

Vampyroteuthis infernalis (via TOLweb)

Go ahead, guess. Would you be surprised to learn that Warren is a creationist? I believed that evolution and the account of the Bible about creation could exist along side of each other very well. I just didn't see what the big argument was all about. I had some friends who had been studying the…

Also, Jolly Squidmas! Calculating Newtonmas! Even Happy Holidays! Now get off the computer and go spend some time with the loved ones. That's what this day is all about, you know.

If Bill O'Reilly ever gets a Christmas special, he'll need an opening musical number…

The New Humanist Advent Podcasts continue, with entries from Marcus Brigstocke, Mark Steel, Ann Druyan, Josie Long, Tim Minchin, Philip Jeays, Dara O'Briain, and in a grand finale, Richard Dawkins. I know, it's a little early — you purists can wait to open the last little door.

There's another blog crashing polls — which I must encourage. Go help Sadly, No! swing a wingnut poll. It'll be fun! Well, except if you actually read the entries. Then you might cry.

When power plants burn coal to produce energy, the coal doesn't just vanish into the atmosphere to cause global warming. No, there's a substantial amount of left-over sludge called coal ash, a nasty mess that is enriched for toxic heavy metals. It is seriously nasty stuff. This glop has to be…

Once upon a time, one of the more popular atheist sites on the web was The Raving Atheist. Then the blogger became the raving anti-abortionist, and most of his readership left — they even set up an independent forum where they could continue their discussions without the weirdo in charge of the…

Squid don't just make sperm: they package it up into fairly elaborate little torpedoes called spermatophores, which are either handed to the female with a specially modified arm called the hectocotyl arm, or squirted onto her with a penis. Once on the female (or a male, it really doesn't matter),…

Yeah, the Pope babbles dicta against people who are different from him, so what else is new? In comments at the Vatican that are likely to provoke a furious reaction from homosexual groups, Benedict also warned that blurring the distinction between male and female could lead to the "self-…

Oh, all right, the ladies can chime in, too.

Since I professed that Intelligent Design creationism is zombie pseudoscience, but that creationism was far from dead, people were wondering what new slogan or tactic will emerge. It's already here! It's been lurking about for a few years now, and Glenn Branch and Eugenie Scott discuss the new…

People keep trying to tempt me into Tarvuism, and I do admit that they have some lovely reverential imagery. However, I am a hardcore atheist, and I deny Tarvu. I even deny Oobu. So I'm sorry, I won't be joining, even if it is so easy to join. I do encourage and endorse their right to display a…