Paul Z. Meyers
pharyngula
Posts by this author
April 21, 2008
We're seeing a lot of new traffic here, and a lot of it seems to be people hunting down that infamous P.Z. Myers dude because they read about his evil ways in some publication, or saw the name in some really bad movie. You're at the right place, welcome, go ahead and leave a comment. If you're a…
April 21, 2008
We have a confession! It was made by Michael Edmondson, and it was produced by the people behind Expelled. He wrote to me, and says, "The intent of the video has been questioned a lot…I suppose the answer is that I tried to make something that was funny to me and It's not really meant to convince…
April 21, 2008
There in the foaming welter of email constantly flooding my in-box was an actual, real, good, sincere question from someone who didn't understand how chromosome numbers could change over time — and he also asked with enough detail that I could actually see where his thinking was going awry. This is…
April 20, 2008
John Horgan actually defended Ben Stein on Bloggingheads. Now I can understand being a little contrarian, but that's going too far.
More importantly, I've been asked to do another bloggingheads session — it could be with John Horgan, and an opportunity to chastise him for that (as well as talk…
April 20, 2008
The views on religion seem much more congenial.
A charity set up by an ardent Christian to fight slavery and the opium trade has identified a new social evil of the 21st century — religion.
A poll by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation uncovered a widespread belief that faith — not just in its extreme…
April 19, 2008
Since we were just talking about those authoritarian science instructors, here's an example from 1956 (even older than I am!). Although I'm going to have to say that the kid is a bit snotty.
April 19, 2008
A fair number of creationists must be leaving a certain propaganda movie and getting on to the internet to find targets of their ire, because I'm getting a little surge in hate mail — mostly short, petty whines and accusations. For any who find this site in addition to my email address, I have two…
April 19, 2008
Another minor blog skirmish has erupted over a perennial issue in the blogosphere: the wickedness of anonymous commenters/bloggers/whatever. I'm going to sort of take the side of Greg Laden.
I despise anonymous commenters. It's pretty much a sure sign that anything the person is going to say is…
April 19, 2008
I mentioned some of the good stuff in Morris this weekend, and some are imminent: at 3:00, it's Vincent Price in Theatre of Blood at the Morris Theatre; then at 8:00, it's the Auditorium of Creationist Blather, as Angus Menuge argues with me about whether neuroscience leaves room for god (answer:…
April 19, 2008
Why? Because we need more competent satirists.
April 19, 2008
Bryan Fischer claims that anyone is capable of defeating Darwin in 4 easy steps, all they have to do is remember his four "scientific" arguments. I've got an easier strategy for creationists: be really stupid, lie a lot, and ignore anything a scientist tells you. See? Only three steps, and none of…
April 19, 2008
I'm a bad, bad man — I've been neglecting the Molly awards for too long. Let's fix that! For those who don't know, the Molly awards are how we acknowledge valued and insightful commenters here, by allowing readers to nominate the names of the people they enjoy seeing in the comment threads, and the…
April 18, 2008
Hey, I remember when this piece from Rush came out, and I remember the snake-like tree in the video, but I don't remember the ending … and it's the ending that makes me laugh now.
April 18, 2008
Apparently, it's a religious holiday called Passover, which refers to some horrible, awful series of afflictions a god visited on some unfortunate people, but passed over some others, so the survivors celebrate. It seems terribly mean-spirited to me. Anyway, here's something "fun": Passover-themed…
April 18, 2008
You can join in, and many of you here are old pros at this exercise:
In promoting the creationist propaganda film Expelled, Ben Stein managed to stick his foot in his mouth over and over again, issuing what seemed to be a ceaseless stream of ignorant, offensive, and just plain daffy claims. Here’s…
April 18, 2008
I knew the Beagle Project was planning to rebuild and resail the Beagle, Charles Darwin's old ship … but who knew their plans were even more ambitious? They're going to resurrect Chaz D!
And you can get the whole evil scheme on a poster.
April 18, 2008
I've been profiled in MinnPost — and it's mostly boring stuff I already knew, but the reporter apparently called around the Morris community, too, which is how I learned this:
Myers acknowledged that he is something of a curiosity in a Minnesota community of church-goers, many of them deeply…
April 18, 2008
I never thought I could actually like a portrait of George W. Bush, but this one isn't bad. Go ahead and click on the link — the overall portrait is fine, and you may not notice anything at all disturbing (well, except for the fact that it is George W. Bush) on seeing it. You might not want to…
April 18, 2008
Octopus abaculus
Figure from Cephalopods: A World Guide (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Mark Norman.
April 17, 2008
Tonight, in about an hour, I'm going to be on Second Life in a talk show called Virtually Speaking. You can show up there in your avatar, or if you aren't quite that nerdy, you can just listen in on the audio simulcast.
Strangely, I just realized that I have absolutely no idea what the topic of the…
April 17, 2008
Yesterday, two great pious leaders of the world met in Washington DC. President Bush has immense temporal power, leading one of the richest countries on the planet with the most potent military force. Pope Benedict is a spiritual leader to a billion people, with immense influence and the…
April 17, 2008
The email below the fold is a fairly typical rant from a creationist who has a teeny tiny bit of information, and therefore thinks he has uncovered an irrefutable disproof of evolution. In this case, he has noted that different species have differing numbers of chromosomes, and therefore, because…
April 17, 2008
Find out for yourself. Darwin Online has acquired a huge digital collection of Darwin's papers, everything from book drafts to personal letters, and has them scanned and available on the web. There they are in all their scribbled, crossed out, penciled over, rewritten glory — historians and…
April 16, 2008
Lewis Black defends the Old Testament? He's still angry about it, at least.
April 16, 2008
This is just getting weirder and weirder. What kind of dummies are behind Expelled, anyway? First they lied about the premise of their movie to get interviews; then they copied Harvard/XVIVO's cell animations; then they
threatened XVIVO with a lawsuit; now it turns out that they're using music from…