Paul Z. Meyers
pharyngula
Posts by this author
April 12, 2008
Look: it's possibly the world's most annoying, boring video. Turn the sound down, it's a car driving in traffic with a siren howling.
Of course, if you look a little bit more closely, you might notice…nobody is driving! This is an exercise in robotics and computer vision, and it's one of the…
April 12, 2008
Scott Hatfield is asking for assistance: one of the old school Liars for Jesus, Don Patton, is going to be speaking at his public high school. This is disgraceful. Patton is a sleazy fraud, and to have him abuse public school facilities with his dishonesty is completely inappropriate; confine him…
April 12, 2008
Most of you have probably already seen this: David Bolinsky accuses Expelled of theft. Bolinski is the professional who invested a great deal of time and money in generating the "Inner Life of the Cell" video, only to see it misappropriated, misinterpreted, and misused by creationists to promote…
April 12, 2008
If you've ever stopped to think that maybe there might just be something to phrenology, homeopathy, coffee enemas, etc., you should be reading Crap-Based Medicine. It's for you.
April 11, 2008
Euprymna tasmanica
Figure from Cephalopods: A World Guide (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Mark Norman.
April 10, 2008
Well, it's something. After her crazy tirade against atheists, now Monique Davis has apologized.
…after being on the receiving end of a week's worth of public criticism, Davis called Sherman yesterday to apologize.
Sherman says Davis told him she "took out her frustrations and emotions on me and…
April 10, 2008
T. Ryan Gregory has survived a whole year of blogging, and has also managed to produce a blog that is one of my must-reads.
April 10, 2008
This loon, Gerry Rzeppa, has made a challenge to Richard Dawkins. All Dawkins has to do is show up on a stage with Rzeppa, listen to him read from his children's book for about ten minutes, and answer one simple question…and Rzeppa will hand over $64,000 (if he even has it). I don't think Dawkins…
April 10, 2008
Let's see…gentle rain showers, warming temperatures, a few flowers beginning to bloom? No, this is our latest weather prediction:
A winter storm warning remains in effect from 1 pm this afternoon to 7 am cdt Saturday.
Heavy snowfall is expected across central through southwest areas of minnesota…
April 10, 2008
Check it out: it's yet another transitional form, a 92 million year old snake with two hindlimbs. Cool! Just last week I was told that none of these things exist.
April 10, 2008
I've been getting a lot of email about this putatively Islamic public school in Minnesota, Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy. It's a wretched situation — this is a school associated with the Muslim American Society of Minnesota, and clearly all the students and families involved are Muslims who want a little…
April 9, 2008
One thing I know: I never want to piss off Peter Irons, Esq., Attorney at Law.
Re: Copyright infringement in "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed"
Dear Mr. •••••:
This letter will constitute notice to you, as Chairman of Premise Media Corporation, of the copyright infringement by your corporation,…
April 9, 2008
First Fox News, now Scientific American gives Expelled both barrels. They dedicated a fair amount of space to ripping into the movie, and you might be wondering if it isn't giving the movie more publicity than it deserves, a question I'm getting asked a lot, too. Of course it is! The controversy…
April 9, 2008
It's worth a try, and it certainly would stand out against the near-universal background of credulity on television. The makers of the Skeptoid podcast are putting together a pilot for a program on skepticism, with Phil Plait and Steven Novella in the cast. Let's hope it makes it! Network…
April 9, 2008
There has been a recent upsurge in email coming my way. Some of it is very complimentary, thank you very much to all who have written in to say nice things about the blog, and some of it is extremely nasty (no thank you, I'm not interested in being sent to hell right now), but others … others are…
April 9, 2008
Oh, my — you know a right wing Christianist propaganda film is bad when even Fox News pans it.
April 9, 2008
That Willikers fella has a fine post on the differences between science and religion. Even if he obstinately refuses the label of "atheist" I have to go along with him on this:
So, science is universal, while religion is rather local. One relies on an epistemology everyone in the world has access…
April 9, 2008
Some wacky creationists are having a Creation Supercamp in Australia. I am surprised by one thing: their opening description of the event is actually true! I can't find one thing I disagree with in this statement.
The atheists are on the march like never before. Why? Because creation is also being…
April 8, 2008
Our useless governor has just killed the expansion of the Bell Museum. This kind of dimbulb thinking annoys me beyond measure: the role of our government should be to build and sustain common shared resources, yet over and over again we see an intentional deprivation of the most basic tools of a…
April 8, 2008
People are still interviewing me about the silly Expelled movie. The most prestigious news source so far, though, has to be my campus newspaper, The Register. They even ran it on the front page of their April Fool's issue, a signal honor which I only acknowledge at this late date because I was so…
April 8, 2008
Perhaps you've heard of carbon offsets: the idea that if you're going to do something that will release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, you also buy or support something that will sequester an equivalent amount of carbon. It's a rational way to compensate for necessary activities and keep…
April 8, 2008
I can understand that some days you have little time to post — I'm still trying to catch up on work after my long weekend in the west myself — but chumming the waters with Vox Day? Gross, man.
I guess one has to keep the commenters fed, though.
April 8, 2008
Since I was sent this photo from the evo-devo conference by Kevin Emerson, I couldn't resist: this is the aftermath of two scientists duking it out in an intellectual arena.
Greg Wray, left, in the blue "Exons, Schmexons" t-shirt; Jerry Coyne in the red "I'm no CIS-sy" t-shirt.
Obviously, they…
April 8, 2008
On Saturday, 19 April, I'm supposed to be in a debate on campus. It's with Angus Menuge of Concordia University and the Discovery Institute, a fellow who did not impress Josh Rosenau, and who professes to have been converted by C.S. Lewis, which bodes ill right there. The organization has been a…
April 8, 2008
The Florida Senate Judiciary committee is meeting just a few hours from now to conder the fate of SB2692, the bill that would promote the teaching of creationism in science classes in that state. Call the members of the committee and tell them that you strongly oppose SB2692!
April 7, 2008
The New York City Skeptics sent me a t-shirt today, and at last I have the candidate I want.
I know, I know, you're all thinking that there's one little problem with the guy — he's British.* I'm sure we can sneak a little amendment through real fast — we'll tell everyone it's to let Schwarzenegger…
April 7, 2008
By participating in popular entertainment. Richard Dawkins is going to appear on Dr Who!. I know one fan of both who's going to be pleased.
I hope they also got a guest appearance by Lalla Ward…
April 7, 2008
The governor of Illinois has been playing some games with state money, shuffling a million dollars to benefit a Baptist church, and an atheist dared to testify to the legislature against this. The response from one legislator was unsurprising: she shrieked at the atheist to get out.
Rep. Monique…
April 7, 2008
The new generation of creationists has been doing something rather remarkable. Flaming anti-scientific religious nutcases like Wells and Dembski have been diligently going to real universities, not the usual hokey bible colleges, and working hard to get legitimate degrees in actual fields of…