Paul Z. Meyers
pharyngula
Posts by this author
December 26, 2007
Ann Coulter is unhappy with Huckabee, but not for his many failings that rational people see as an obstacle—but because he is insufficently critical of evolution. She really wants a presidential candidate to not just deny modern science, but to advocate a platform that proposes to take action in…
December 25, 2007
Holiday, Festivus, Saturnalia, Kwanzaa, Agnostica, Cabmas, Hanukkah, Squidmas, Cephalopodmas, Newtonmas, Yule, Humbug Day, Solstice, Nativity, Winterfest, 25th of December, and, oh yeah, Christmas!
December 24, 2007
A mysterious person going by the name Red Mage sent me the following poem. If your kiddies are still awake and having trouble sleeping, you might want to read it aloud to them. Then they'll really have trouble sleeping.
'Twas the night before Squidmas, and all through the house
Not a cultist was…
December 24, 2007
You've got to have something better to do.
We're having the traditional white Christmas here in Morris: a foot of snow on the ground, temperatures around 10 to 15° below zero C, a nice stiff 10-15 mph breeze, and no one with any sanity stepping outside.
Which rules me out right there. I made the…
December 23, 2007
And for a little grim pre-Christmas reading, it has preserved all of their last statements on the web.
I wonder how many of them were innocent?
December 23, 2007
We're going to have to start calling ourselves the Three Wise Atheists of of Scienceblogs: as Revere reveals in his Sunday Sermonette, he, Greg, and I don't seem to have much difficulty with this Christmas stuff, and contrary to the Fox propaganda channel, most atheists and cheerful holidays with…
December 23, 2007
At least somebody tried to meet the green gingerbread house challenge—Janet and the sprogs built one, although they cheated a little bit.
Everyone else has until 31 December to send in entries!
December 23, 2007
And when you hear the grand announcement
That their wings are made of tin.
Then you will know the Junior Birdmen
Have sent their box tops in.
Human beings cannot fly.
It's simply impossible, and we've known it for centuries; there is, however, a conspiracy of committed, dogmatic aerodynamicists…
December 23, 2007
The archbishop of Wales thinks one of the greatest problems facing the world is "atheist fundamentalism". The only problems he seems to be able to ascribe to it, though, are a dearth of school nativity plays and stewardesses failing to drape themselves with religious paraphernalia, neither of which…
December 23, 2007
…since Richard Dawkins is making a grand tour of the US, and he might just show up in your town.
Don't worry, though, I don't think he's planning to go door knocking and handing out atheist tracts.
December 22, 2007
Everyone ought to mark their calendars: on the weekend of 21-23 March, the 34th Annual National Conference of American Atheists will be held in lovely Minneapolis, Minnesota — my backyard. Well, my distant backyard. I'll be going, of course. If you read the Minnesota Atheists newsletter, you also…
December 22, 2007
So how many species of giraffe are there? 1? 6? 11? You've got to love how messy and complicated biology is.
December 22, 2007
Sunset approaches, so I have to go outside and do the evening chant to the Old Dark Ones and I just don't have time to deal with this colossal wanker, Roland S. Martin. He's a commentator on CNN (why, oh why, can't we have better media?) It's a crazy whine that demands a return to "traditional…
December 22, 2007
I sought reassurance in an internet quiz, and did reasonably well.
I received 92 credits on The Sci Fi Sounds QuizHow much of a Sci-Fi geek are you?
Take the Sci-Fi Movie Quizdigital camera ratings
I think I missed the one where the voice says something like "The captain is not on the bridge…
December 22, 2007
I admit I'm a a geek, so I'm disappointed in this cartoon that describes 56 categories of geeks, and I don't fit any of them.
Maybe you're in there, though…
December 22, 2007
The threat of an eruption of creationism in Polk County, Florida, is dying down. The school board hasn't changed, it still has a number of confident creationists on it, but they're all going to keep their religious beliefs at home and in church, and in fact, they have a "great eagerness simply to…
December 21, 2007
Godless heathen that I am, even I can read the subtext in Don McLeroy's recent letter to the Dallas Morning News. First he reassures us that he is very, very, very Christian, and then he promises to purge the dogma from Texas education. We know what that means in the up-means-down world of…
December 21, 2007
Steve Fuller, the smug sociologist who testified for the creationists in the Dover trial, has a new book out. Who cares about the book, though? You want to read Norman Levitt's review, "The Painful Elaboration of the Fatuous". Wow. Fuller gets deconstructed.
Here's a small taste.
A similar farce…
December 21, 2007
Those canny publicizers at Seed have come up with a ScienceBlogs Latest Posts Widget — if you've got a blog, you can put this bit of code on it and advertise Scienceblogs for us!
December 21, 2007
I already mentioned that I'm not a big fan of traffic rankings for blogs, but despite the focus on traffic numbers, this is at least a subjectively filtered list of popular liberal/progressive blogs. The ranking isn't as interesting as the fact that it's a good list of politically copacetic blogs.…
December 21, 2007
A while back, I summarized a review of the evolution of eyes across the whole of the metazoa — it doesn't matter whether we're looking at flies or jellyfish or salmon or shrimp, when you get right down to the biochemistry and cell biology of photoreception, the common ancestry of the visual system…
December 21, 2007
Initially, I was horrified at what was being done to the hapless cephalopod, but then I saw the stereotype on the right, and realized the real crime was against the kids reading this tripe. (No, my name isn't Fredric Wertham.)
December 21, 2007
So go give them to her. Little Miss Shelley is almost out of the larval stage, and is well over half my age now.
P.S. I hope Karmen is bringing cookies to the party.
December 21, 2007
Sepiadarium sp.
Figure from Cephalopods: A World Guide (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Mark Norman.
December 20, 2007
Hey, now New Scientists is cashing in on the LOL_you_name_it craze. The web is being overrun with bad grammar and cutesie pictures!
(I think this is also the first I've seen of the New Scientist blogs — I knew they were planning them a while back. They need to let more people know about these…
December 20, 2007
There's a cathedral for sale in Los Angeles. Makes a great squidmas present for any atheist.
December 20, 2007
Uh-oh. Those liberal artsie literature types at Crooked Timber, led by the wicked John Holbo, have revealed the breadth of the alliance. Oh, yeah, you're used to the god-hating shenanigans of the evilutionists, but now Holbo has gone and engaged in the War on Christmas™ and disclosed himself as a…
December 20, 2007
This would be an ordinary photo if it were a young girl and her father or grandfather.
But no… they're a 'couple'.
He's forty, she's eleven. And they are a couple - the Afghan man Mohammed F.* and the child Ghulam H.*. "We needed the money", Ghulam's parents said. Faiz claims he is going to send…
December 20, 2007
Someone did—they lost it on an airplane, and the information on it hints that it is someone from the University of Minnesota Morris. If you think it's yours, go here: the WaltzingRhino Weblog might be able to return it to you.
The owner, a UMM student, has been found, and the iPod is coming home.…