Paul Z. Meyers
pharyngula
Posts by this author
January 8, 2008
The City Pages, the arts and entertainment newsweekly in Minneapolis, had an article on the best artists of the year. One of the entries is jarring in its strange conclusions, the award to Christopher Hitchens:
Fueled by cigarettes, alcohol, ego, and, most importantly, intellect, Hitchens employs…
January 8, 2008
This is a strange one — some kind of weird political rant. I'm pretty sure this fellow doesn't care much for Hillary Clinton.
RE: Coming witchcraft of Senator Hillary RODHAM CLINTON in politics, also.
Like in the witchery, at her age of 61 years old Senator Hillary RODHAM CLINTON is to become…
January 7, 2008
Mark Mathis, one of the people behind Expelled, must be doing the radio tour again. I heard he was on the Minneapolis Christian talk radio station today (I missed it, unfortunately—anyone else catch it?), and you can also hear him lying on the Coral Ridge Ministries podcast. Apparently, you can't…
January 7, 2008
Here's a fine list of 20 blasphemous events, rated by
vulgarity, criminality, religious impact, political impact, and deaths. My favorite has to be number 13.
Rude Buddha
A sculpture of Buddha with a banana and two eggs strategically placed was happily on display at the Royal Academy of Arts this…
January 7, 2008
I know most of you have already read it with your print subscription to Seed, but I'll mention it anyway: my last column can now be read on the web. This one is all about the weird, accidental, clumsy way segmentation patterns in flies are set up.
January 7, 2008
I gripe about the NY Times now and then — the newspaper is an infuriating mix of the best and the worst of print journalism. I've had a couple of the people who work there stop by in the comments now and then, and I'd love to see one of them show up now and explain something to us all.
William…
January 6, 2008
So the Catholic church has a problem with pedophilia. In a rational world, there's a range of options available: stop protecting priests who abuse their position, threaten convicted child-abusing priests with expulsion and excommunication, even revisit this peculiar custom of demanding celibacy for…
January 6, 2008
Cool — John Allen Paulos has a roundup of the events at the Beyond Belief conference this year. It really was a stellar meeting, in part because there was such a variety of talks (almost all in attendance were atheists, but there were some deep disagreements). Paulos had one of the talks I found…
January 6, 2008
Creationist can actively impede science. One of the largest mastodon fossils ever found was discovered on a ranch in Texas owned by a fellow named Joe Taylor — an infamous creationist who runs the Mt. Blanco Fossil "Museum", a wacky little place that peddles fossils while claiming they support a 6,…
January 6, 2008
Hey! I almost forgot! After a brief Christmas hiatus, the Tangled Bank will be back on Wednesday, 9 January, at Aardvarchaeology — so send those links in to me or host@tangledbank.net by Tuesday.
January 6, 2008
I saw the new Will Smith movie, I Am Legend, last night. In short, it was far worse than I expected, with a drawn out and rather boring beginning (Smith is lonely, everyone is dead except for his dog. Got it), and the ending felt like a stapled-on feel-good absurdity that didn't follow from the…
January 5, 2008
It's another meaningless internet award thingumabob—Pharyngula is up for Best Science Blog against my perennial nemesis, Bad Astronomy. It's also up for most controversial blog, against some rather ugly company. Vote or don't — I'm just marveling that I'm in the same category with Perez Hilton.
January 5, 2008
Best line: "You can't be a rational person six days a week…and on one day of the week, go to a building, and think you're drinking the blood of a two thousand year old space god."
January 5, 2008
The NAS has a new edition of their Science, Evolution, and Creationism publication, which is a genuinely excellent piece of work. We've used the previous editions in our introductory biology course here at UMM, and if you want a short, plainly written introduction to the evidence for and importance…
January 5, 2008
Although this article does make a very good case that you can't be a feminist and religious at the same time. Even the most peaceful religions, like Jainism and Buddhism, treat women as inferiors.
The article doesn't mention any female-centered religions, though, like Wicca…I suppose you could be a…
January 4, 2008
I always considered the US a secular nation, but if certain factions in our government have their way, they will make us a Christian nation by fiat and by falsehood. It's a sordid story of the religious right trying to pass a resolution that uses phony history to prop up right-wing claims of…
January 4, 2008
…the newest Scienceblog, A Good Poop. If you've like weird medical science and all the strange things that go into and out of people, it's the blog for you.
Cue the obvious jokes in the comments…
January 4, 2008
Every year, John Brockman comes up with a question and asks the eclectic group on the Edge forum to answer it…then all the answers get bound up in a book. In the past he has asked, "What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it?", "What is your dangerous idea?", and "What are you…
January 4, 2008
Those darn human rights organizations keep meddling in people's personal affairs — for instance, they think fathers and brothers shouldn't be allowed to beat or kill their wives and sisters if they have been dishonorable, and that women ought to report abuse to the police. Don't they know that…
January 3, 2008
I believe "pharyngula" has a Greek root, so it's only natural that someone would translate one of my posts into Greek.
(via Too Many Tribbles)
January 3, 2008
In case you have a tough time keeping the squid family tree straight, here's a nifty simple diagram of cephalopod evolution.
And if that's too complicated for you, there's always the Intelligent Design version.
January 3, 2008
I get to do some more traveling this morning, so I'll leave you with an off-the-wall question: since Denyse O'Leary has taken over most of the posting on Uncommon Descent, and since most of her posts link to some other in her network of poorly trafficked, repetitious blogs (and sometimes she links…
January 3, 2008
I was just notified that one of the people working for Texas Citizens for Science (the good guys) will be discussing the Chris Comer incident with someone from the Texas Freedom Network (more good guys). It doesn't sound like there will be a lot of drama and confrontation, but there will be…
January 2, 2008
All that noise from a pair of rather ugly pissants criticizing my daughter falls short of describing her perfidy. Today, Skatje spent the whole afternoon making lefse — and she's really getting it down. The shape isn't perfect yet, but the texture and the thinness is getting up there around…
January 2, 2008
John and Cynthia Burke have adopted two children. By all accounts so far, they were a decent couple of an appropriate age and financially able to take care of the kids. The first was from the Children's Aid and Adoption Society in East Orange, New Jersey. They recently adopted a second child from…
January 2, 2008
He's just got to dive into the Marianas Trench. Quote-mining (badly) my daughter isn't just ugly, it's vile and loathsome and despicable…but that's typical Cordova, now declared Asshole of the Year.
January 2, 2008
Does your local schoolboard look like this?
(I know — it's slandering the other primates to compare them to creationists.)
January 2, 2008
Neurulation is a series of cell movements and shape changes, inductive interactions, and changes in gene expression that partitions tissues into a discrete neural tube. It is one of those early and significant morphogenetic events that define an important tissue, in this case the nervous system,…
January 2, 2008
There's a group blog for battling creationists (The Panda's Thumb), a group blog for fighting the climate change denialists (RealClimate), and now there's one targeting quacks: Science Based Medicine. Add it to your bookmarks and newsfeeds!