Paul Z. Meyers
pharyngula
Posts by this author
September 7, 2012
To mate many times, see the eggs laid in droves, and to swim among the mighty accomplishments of fecund females!
(via Moss Landing Marine Labs)
August 31, 2012
It's wearing a cape!
(via Real Monstrosities)>
August 30, 2012
In my post bashing that silly article claiming to have figured out how endoskeletons evolved from exoskeletons, there was a good question buried in the comments, and I thought I'd answer it.
Are there any models pulled out of arses which explain the turtle's unique skeleton?
Yes! I mean, no, not…
August 29, 2012
It doesn't look like much, but it's got a cute trick.
August 29, 2012
It's a shame I have to say that right from the beginning.
I'm beginning to develop a distaste for computer models of biological processes, which is a shame. From Andrulis to Fleury to Pivar, the field is tainted with people who don't know a lick of biology but are good at inventing algorithms that…
August 28, 2012
Do you remember Terry Hurlbut? Of course not. He's another boring creationist whose schtick is to claim that creationists really are scientists — after all, Isaac Newton was a creationist. He also maintains something called the "Creationist Hall of Fame" which lists a lot of legitimate pre-Darwin…
August 26, 2012
I saw that Doonesbury made a joke of it, so I had to look it up. It's true. Americans were surveyed to see which presidential candidate they thought would handle a UFO invasion best.
The channel surveyed 1,114 Americans in late May to get their thoughts on all things alien in anticipation of the…
August 24, 2012
The mirror test is a well known indicator for some degree of self-awareness: surreptitiously mark an animal's face, show it a mirror, and see if it recognizes that the reflected image is of itself by whether it reaches up to touch or remove the mark. We see that behavior and infer that the animal…
August 22, 2012
A recent meeting of neuroscientists tried to define a set of criteria for that murky phenomenon called "consciousness". I don't know how successful they were; they've come out with a declaration on consciousness that isn't exactly crystal clear. It seems to involve the existence of neural circuitry…
August 17, 2012
I don't know whether it's by design or fortuitous incompetence, but creationists are masters of the fuzzy statement that opens the doors to all kinds of new opportunities for ignorance. Missouri, for instance, just passed a law giving themselves the freedom to pray (a freedom they already had,…
August 17, 2012
The phrase has entirely different connotations for cephalopods.
Bonus! Spot the female before going to the diagram.
(via Giant Cuttlefish)
August 13, 2012
There is a magic and arbitrary line in ordinary statistical testing: the p level of 0.05. What that basically means is that if the p level of a comparison between two distributions is less than 0.05, there is a less than 5% chance that your results can be accounted for by accident. We'll often say…
August 9, 2012
I'm getting a bit peeved at all this new technology. Why, back in the day when I was doing electron microscopy work, I'd spend days slicing up tiny fragments of zebrafish embedded in epon-araldite with an ultramicrotome, and I'd end up with hundreds of itty-bitty copper grids that I'd put in the EM…
August 8, 2012
See? It's a plant that looks like a baseball! And on Friday, the Minnesota Atheists Regional Conference will be sponsoring a baseball game in St Paul, the Mr Paul Aints vs. the Amarillo Sox. You should come. Here's the schedule for the meeting: Dave Silverman, Hector Avalos, Ayanna Watson, Robert…
August 6, 2012
As we all know, now that the trivial and relatively uninteresting business of mere engineering has cleared a hurdle, Mars Curiosity can get to work on the important stuff: finding evidence of biology on Mars. This is where it's also going to get peculiarly controversial, because some creationists…
August 6, 2012
Even though they are African fish eagles. I think we own the symbolism of all eagles everywhere, don't we?
(via NatGeo)
August 2, 2012
It always seems to be the case that there are gaps in the fossil record just where things get interesting — probably with good reason, that forms in transition will be relatively rare. One such gap is the period where insects first emerge and begin to conquer the terrestrial world, a period called…
August 1, 2012
My wife keeps sending me photos of Australian plants for this series. I think she wants to go back.
(via Australian Geographic)
August 1, 2012
Ken Ham's boondoggle in Kentucky is still mired in sluggish fundraising, but he still believes they'll be open in 2014…only now with an incomplete park. They're now talking about building it up gradually over a decade, starting whenever the can begin construction. Looking at AiG's numbers, though,…
July 30, 2012
I would have thought that it was a relief, a minor bit of unconcern, that Mitt Romney nominally supports evolution (he's one of those waffly theistic evolutionists, so he doesn't really…but at least he wouldn't be brazenly contradicting all of the evidence). But there's a potential problem looming…
July 30, 2012
I do all my work at a desk — I'm not hauling mud! — and I don't look this good.
(via Entomolog)
July 29, 2012
Richard Muller used to be a doubter — he didn't think global warming was a concern, and he didn't think people were responsible for it. Now he has changed his mind, and he explains why.
Call me a converted skeptic. Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind,…