Paul Z. Meyers
pharyngula
Posts by this author
May 29, 2008
This game, Christian Versus Atheist, is one of those choose-your-own-adventure type text exercises. The good thing about it is that the atheist is particular fierce and monstrous and … hey, wait a minute…the picture they use resembles someone familiar…
Hmmm. Maybe it's just the blood drooling out…
May 28, 2008
And it must also be time for the 106th edition of the Tangled Bank. Read it!
Check back at Pharyngula later — I've just arrived at the IEDG 2008 conference on Integrating Evolution, Development, and Genomics, and I'll be filling you all in on the latest juicy cool evo-devo stuff.
May 28, 2008
Did you know that the World Science Festival starts today in New York City? I expect all you eastern city folk to go. Unfortunately, I'm in an airplane flying west today, on my way to Berzerkeley, where we'll have to celebrate science amongst a band of evolutionary/developmental biologists.
May 28, 2008
My brief summary of the position of apologists for religion, The Courtier's Reply, continues to rankle the believers, and they continue to make responses that only make me laugh at their cluelessness. The standard rebuttal is to claim that I was making an argument in favor of ignorance in the face…
May 27, 2008
Are you worried about the Rapture? Of course you will be called up into heaven, but those hateful bastards among your family and friends will certainly be stuck here on earth for the tribulation. So yet another service has sprung up to help you help your stranded loved ones: You've Been Left Behind…
May 27, 2008
Do you think a class focusing on the Bible should be taught in public school? This is from a Virginia school that is trying to implement a Bible studies class — and if you've got some idea that maybe it's an intellectual course which discusses the social and literary contributions of an important…
May 27, 2008
In case you too have an obsessive fascination with our home on the prairie, Morris, Minnesota, there is another blog based in my neighborhood, and the latest talk is about all the construction going on. College Avenue, the street running in front of my house, is being ripped up and reconstructed, a…
May 27, 2008
There is a famous statue of a seated Charles Darwin in a strange place in the Natural History Museum in London — it's tucked into a basement cafeteria. I visited it while I was there, and more unfortunately, Ben Stein posed with it in his awful movie.
It's been moved!
Now it's in a much more…
May 27, 2008
I'm having some difficulties with my lab server, difficulties that I can't sort out right now since I'm going to be leaving town for a week and a half. Unfortunately, this is also the server that handles mail coming in to my pharyngula.org and tangledbank.net addresses — so if you've sent stuff to…
May 27, 2008
James Gurney (yes, that James Gurney) has an interesting approach to visiting proselytizers: he sits them down and draws them. It's useful in that it disarms them and opens them up to discussion, but of course, it doesn't get around to actually challenging their beliefs, and it also requires a…
May 27, 2008
John urges all to read a "lovely, lyrical and wistful piece" on religion. So I did.
Sorry, John, it's the same old noise.
The essay by Peter Bebergal has some good points: it's premise is to deplore biblical literalism because it's bad theology that is trying to ape science, and it cripples the…
May 26, 2008
Greg Laden has posted a video that is wonderfully representative of life in rural Minnesota. If you can grok this short movie, you will have come a long way towards comprehending Minnesota.
May 26, 2008
Which should I be more worried about: this not-safe-for-work-but-flattering fantasy, or the fact that I was informed about it by Phil Plait, who must be searching the web for "PZ Myers tag team fantasy".
My wife isn't going to let me travel any more, either.
May 26, 2008
Apparently, NASA has dropped a new probe, Phoenix, on Mars. I'm looking at the first pictures beamed back, and so far, it looks a little too dry for squid, and they're also promising the existence of ice, which doesn't sound cephalopod-friendly, either. I'll keep checking the Bad Astronomer, though…
May 26, 2008
The Aussies love to brag about their exotic fauna, so I probably shouldn't inflate their egos further, but they've done it again: they've netted another ginormous squid. This one is about 6 meters long, and 230 kg.
They always look so flabby and pathetic when they're shown flopped down dead on a…
May 26, 2008
A Ford dealership is taking a novel approach to advertising: by telling a small subset of their potential customer base to shut up.
But did you know that 86% of Americans say they believe in God? Since we all know that 86 out of every 100 of us are Christians, who believe in God, we at Keiffe…
May 25, 2008
We need an open thread! Here are a few carnivals to prime the pump.
Humanist Symposium #19
I and the Bird #75
The Molecular and Cell Biology Carnival #2
Skeptics' Circle #87
Carnival of the Liberals #65
Friday Ark #192
May 25, 2008
First and most importantly, there will be a new edition of the Tangled Bank on Wednesday, at Ars Technica — send pzmyers@gmail.com entries soon!
The other issue is that my lab server which hosts the old Tangled Bank page is experiencing some technical difficulties, which I'm not going to have an…
May 25, 2008
It's another transitional form, this time an amphibian from the Permian that shares characteristics of both frogs and salamanders — in life, it would have looked like a short-tailed, wide-headed salamander with frog-like ears, which is why it's being called a "frogamander".
Complete specimen in…
May 25, 2008
Hey, classes are over … aren't I supposed to be lazing in a hammock, slacking off until September? Instead, it looks like I'm going to be prepping and giving lectures for the next couple of weeks. Here's the schedule:
On 28-30 May, I'll be attending IEDG 2008: Integrating Evolution, Development,…
May 25, 2008
Tune in at 9am Central to Atheists Talk — this week, it's humanists and godless soldiers. (In case you're wondering what a Minnesota zip code might be, you can try 56267.)
May 24, 2008
Don McLeroy is the deranged creationist dentist who was appointed to the chairmanship of the Texas State Board of Education, and who is responsible for the recent purge and intimidation of people who support good biology — he's trouble all the way through. Take a look at his latest stunt.
The State…
May 24, 2008
There's a Wilkins/Myers conversation up on Bloggingheads. The quality of the recording is horrible, and I have to apologize — we did a little experimentation and deviated from the usual bloggingheads recording proocol, and it's clear now that we shouldn't have done that. I recommend not watching it…
May 24, 2008
We mammals have been beaten again. Shrimp have more sophisticated eyes than we do, with the ability to see things we can't, and I'm feeling a bit envious.
There are a couple of general properties of light that can be captured and measured with a light detector. One is the amplitude of the light…
May 24, 2008
There's a whole site dedicated to polling visitors on one question: Do you believe in God?. Just as it is, it's a testimonial to the worthlessness of internet polls (100% of the residents of Saint Lucia are atheists! n=1), so it seems superfluous to send the Atheist Legion in, but hey, go ahead,…
May 24, 2008
Seriously. And if you want to see the very definition of 'clueless git', watch this video of Andy Schlafly droning on. Would you believe he accuses wikipedia of bias, and then says that he founded Conservapædia to strengthen Christian faith?
May 23, 2008
Yeah, I know, I already had you listen to our drecky Christian radio station earlier this week, but today at 5pm Central, KKMS-AM will have the president of Minnesota Atheists, August Berkshire, online for an interview titled "Understanding and Responding to Atheist's Beliefs". It could be…
May 23, 2008
One more has joined the official academic mafia. We'll never be able to trust her again.
May 23, 2008
Octopus cyanea
Figure from Cephalopods: A World Guide (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Mark Norman.
May 23, 2008
Randy Olson doesn't like you. He says some very harsh things about the science blogs readership on the Skepticality podcast — you guys are all just so darn mean to him. This is all very unfortunate, because he does have some good things to say, but he's also taking disagreement very personally, and…