Paul Z. Meyers
pharyngula
Posts by this author
December 14, 2007
Take a look at this interview with Lizzette Reynolds, the Bushite behind the resignation of Chris Comer. The unbelievable claims come out in the second question.
Were you surprised she resigned?
Yes, because I had asked her supervisor to look into the e-mail issue. But I wasn't kept in the loop. I…
December 14, 2007
You may recall the event a few weeks ago at the University of Minnesota in which John West of the Discovery Institute attempted to tell us how Darwin was responsible for eugenics. Greg Laden has mentioned that we now have an account from Mark Borrello, who rebutted West in a too-brief ten minutes…
December 14, 2007
I've already mentioned that the Texas biologists are coming out on the side of science, but there's also another group gearing up to fight: would you believe that they are oxymoronically (or perhaps, just moronically) called Texans for Better Science? They're no such thing, of course — they want…
December 14, 2007
Octopus kagoshimensis
Figure from Cephalopods: A World Guide (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Mark Norman.
December 14, 2007
They're violent, murderous bastards. Rudi Boa, a scientist, got into an argument with Alexander York, an ignorant ass, while on a backpacking trip in Australia. Boa was arguing for evolution, while York was arguing for idiocy. Later, under the influence of alcohol, York attacked, stabbed, and…
December 13, 2007
Your puny space shuttles are as toys to our powerful invertebrate overlords.
December 13, 2007
My last class for the semester is over as of this minute. All that's left is to proctor one final exam, and then…the horror of grading. Exams and more exams and term papers and lab reports, all to be done next week.
I guess I can't quite celebrate freedom just yet. But I will soon enough. I'll…
December 13, 2007
Put a couple of illustrators together to draw superheroes, each one able to defeat the previous one, and what do you get? Weirdness. Especially when one of the superheroes is…The Creationist.
The ability to make evidence disappear sounds powerful, until you realize that all it really is is the…
December 13, 2007
And the outcome is pretty ugly for Christianity. The lesson from this story is that when people set aside their religious beliefs, they can be decent to one another; when they use them to provoke violence, well, they look rather stupid.
December 13, 2007
My university is making a big push for the environment, with an environmental studies curriculum being added, an ongoing effort for energy independence with wind and biomass power, and conservation in the construction of a new green dorm, so this holiday project for everyone is particularly…
December 13, 2007
Hector Avalos sent me his response to the Discovery Institute's 'shocking' revelation that people had been discussing Guillermo Gonzalez's affiliation with Intelligent Design creationism before they denied him tenure. It's a classic pointless objection: of course they were, and of course his openly…
December 13, 2007
IRONY OVERLOAD! The pope opened his mouth again.
Pope Benedict XVI has launched a surprise attack on climate change prophets of doom, warning them that any solutions to global warming must be based on firm evidence and not on dubious ideology.
You've got to wonder — does the pope think this is a…
December 12, 2007
All right, this comic convinces me that the tactics of godless rationalism and saintly religion are indistinguishable.
(I'll also be curious to see how many creationists overlook the sarcasm and accuse me of wanting to torture them on the rack…)
December 12, 2007
This exercise in false equivalence, Duelity, is beautifully animated but promotes a poor idea. It's basically two videos, one telling the Christian creation myth inaccurately and in the style of a scientific explanation, and another that inaccurately summarizes the evolution story as if it were…
December 12, 2007
I have to consider this a rather dispiriting story:
In 1818, a whale oil dealer refused to pay a fish-product fine on whale oil, because a whale isn't a fish. The inspector insisted on the tax, and a spirited court and public battle played out.
It's dispiriting because you'd think the weight of…
December 12, 2007
In a field of nightmares, it takes a special person to elevate themselves to the position of the worst of the worst…and Huckabee is that special person.
Here's his special take on the purpose of his presidency…
I didn't get into politics because I thought government had a better answer. I got into…
December 12, 2007
I've known that scorpions have fluorescent cuticles — if you go out into the desert with a black light and shine it on the ground, the scorpions will often glow green and blue and be easy to spot. I had no idea that many spiders exhibit the same phenomenon, but there they are, glowing away. I may…
December 12, 2007
The bad news: Terry Pratchett has been diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's disease. The good news: there's no immediate danger, he's still optimistic, and he's got more work in progress.
December 12, 2007
One of the small disadvantages of academia is that we get hopelessly busy just before Christmas, which makes squeezing in the gift shopping difficult. I'm probably not even going to step into a store until sometime around the end of next week. That's why you have to appreciate these online gift…
December 11, 2007
All right, who's in charge of pool predicting the location of the next big creationist trial? The odds on Florida have just gone up: another Board of Education member has said something stupid.
I would support teaching evolution, but with all its warts. I think that some of the facts have been…
December 11, 2007
We shouldn't leave the Moslems hanging with all the blame for bad behavior — so here's some more deplorable activities that have show up in my mailbox in the last few hours.
The typographer who designed the popular font Gill Sans was a devout Catholic…who had sex with his sisters, his daughters,…
December 11, 2007
Daughters (and sons) have a special property: normal people simply can't kill them. They drive us crazy, they can break our hearts, but we just can't do them harm ourselves.
So I really don't understand how a father can kill his daughter over her clothing choices. I can yell, and I could ground her…
December 11, 2007
Steve King (Rotten-Iowa) has our house of representatives pondering a resolution that states that Christmas is peachy-keen…and that also contains implicit assumptions that the US is a Christian nation. It's very devious: under the cover of empty, feel-good fluff, it advances right-wing religious…
December 11, 2007
I'm feeling left out. The mathematicians — Mark, Blake, and Tyler — are having so much fun bullseyeing a certain womp rat over there in Creationist Canyon. Yeah, Slimy Sal Cordova has poked his pointy head up and claimed that, somehow, Intelligent Design and Advanced Creation Science (whatever…
December 11, 2007
Our puissant overlords are considering further directions in which to expand after their opening of ScienceBlogs.de, so now they're running a poll: let them know what languages you know and what language the next Sb should be in. They appreciate your input. It simplifies the assimilation.
December 11, 2007
Classes aren't quite over, but I gave my last lecture for the fall 2007 semester today. I still have a discussion session, a lab, and an exam to give, but it's still something of a landmark in the trajectory of the term. No more lecture prep! No more daily theatrical performances! What's left is…
December 11, 2007
A number of readers were peeved at the Connecticut Valley Atheists' choice of a holiday display — I was not, and I applauded their assertiveness. So what do you think of the Chester County Atheists' display?
The group's display, "The Tree of Knowledge," will include a 15-foot evergreen with color…
December 10, 2007
Who knew we were so wicked? Slimy Sal Cordova thinks that being
sodomized by horses is concomitant with "Darwinism", and Joe Blundo claims The Golden Compass is superfluous as a recruiting tool for atheists because we have the video game Grand Theft Auto, some stupid sitcom called Two and a Half…
December 10, 2007
We can all breathe a sigh of relief. The gunman who killed four people at evangelical churces in Colorado was not a buddhist atheist Jew evilutionist. He was a deranged disgruntled former member.
The gunman believed to have killed four people at a megachurch and a missionary training school had…