pharyngula

How peculiar — I've gotten several requests in email to comment on this plaint from Theodore Dalrymple, a fellow who doesn't like those "New Atheists" like Sam Harris and Dan Dennett. It's peculiar because I'm here at a conference with Sam Harris and Dan Dennett (and others who do not consider…

I know, it's not very scary, but here's something that might strike terror into a few hearts: October 2007 has been Pharyngula's first million visit month. I remember the first month I broke 300 visitors (Woo hoo! Ten readers per day!) so I find it a little frightening.

Tonight's the night for the inaugural meeting of Café Scientifique-Morris for the 2007-2008 school year. The topic is: Food or Fuel? A simple multi-scale integrated analysis of agroecosystems It will be presented by Abdullah Jaradat of the North Central Soil Conservation Research Lab; I suspect he…

Guilt-ridden Christian: If I don't obey God, he's going to make me suffer for all eternity. Evil-angelical Christian: I don't make you obey God, I'll be responsible for your eternal suffering. That link will take you to a despicably manipulative video on GodTube — a dramatized letter from Hell in…

If you are wondering who that little guy is on my shoulder, you need to be enlightened. Of course they're beautiful. I keep a model right next to my spring-loaded squid toy. So you want a closeup?

This is a troubling story if you just read the right-wing perspective: a student at Hamline University (an excellent liberal arts college in the Twin Cities) was suspended for writing a letter to the university administration. That shouldn't happen, I'd say — we want to encourage free speech. Even…

Who would win? I think this is he definitive answer.

Pope Ratzi confirms the bankruptcy of religion for me once again. Benedict told a gathering of Catholic pharmacists that conscientious objection was a right that must be recognized by the pharmaceutical profession. "Pharmacists must seek to raise people's awareness so that all human beings are…

The other night, I made the mistake of going to the local theater to see the horrible new version of Halloween by Rob Zombie. It sucked. Unimaginative, tedious, unrelievedly grim, plodding, with no insight or interesting ideas, and it wasn't even scary. There was no story except 'serial killer…

Objects of strange affections: Sex doll → mannequin → bicycle → pavement. No word on how many of them vote Republican.

How can you not believe in creationism when such famous authorities in biology and human anatomy accept it?

No three words are more pregnant with the promise of error in a conversation with a creationist than to hear them say "what evolution predicts…". It's practically a guarantee that you're going to hear something bizarre and fundamentally erroneous — but it is at least a good start on identifying…

I'd almost forgotten, myself. But look, Gannon shows up in the virtual flesh at Denialism to try and defend his record. Trust me on this, Jeff. You want us to forget your sleazy softball approach to fake journalism. You aren't helping yourself by reminding us.

Dave Munger has been spearheading a useful tool: Blogging on Peer-Reviewed Research, an aggregator and set of icons to be used on blog posts that are summaries of actual, genuine, peer-reviewed research. Read the guidelines; the idea is that when you see the icon, you'll know that the blog article…

I mentioned that Eric Hovind, son of Kent, was lecturing lying at Shakopee this weekend. A reader, Evan Olcott, made the trip and has reported back. I finally got the chance to see my first creationist in action last night - Eric Hovind (son of Kent) made an appearance at a Russian Baptist Church…

This is the last time I'll pester you, I promise. The DonorsChoose challenge ends after the end of this month, and we've done well. We met my goal of raising $20,000 dollars, 200 freethinkers have stepped up to make donations, and 30 of my 31 chosen projects have been fully funded. That does mean…

Here's an interesting thought and modeling experiment: how to evolve a watch, literally. As an example, it's nice, but there are also real biological examples of organisms evolving clocks — evolution of the period gene, for instance, which also shows evidence of being calibrated to day lengths by…

You guys are so unlucky. You don't get to regularly read the glory that is the awesome creationist Neal. I shall be generous and share a few of his latest rants with you. Note: the language in these comments is about what you'd expect from a potty-mouthed 8-year-old. You have been warned. Lets,…

Not that I'm any fan of fast food anyway, but these photos of what the stuff really looks like has me cured. I may have to become a vegetarian, which wouldn't be too bad. Or at least swear off cheese. (via Greg Laden)

You would not believe what I just caughtSkatje doing — I am horrified at what my own child was perpetrating. She was installing some abomination called "Ubuntu" on her computer. My copy of Mac OS X Leopard is supposed to arrive tomorrow, and I am not going to share it with her. I may have to cut…

A-ha! It's not just the United States that's stocked with religious creepazoids and hypocrites! A candidate for the conservative Family First party has dropped out of his race. He was caught flaunting his junk on the internet, and admits to viewing porn…neither of which are particularly wicked,…

People keep telling me I ought to read Freakonomics, but something about it keeps tripping my bogosity detector, and I've never gotten around to it. Now I've got another reason to avoid it: the Freakonomics blog is hosting a particular silly Q&A with someone who has absolutely no credibility on…

Halloween is coming, and you can enjoy the haunted house theme of the 78th Carnival of the Godless.The Quackometer tells us that we've been very naughty boys and girls, and of course it's perfectly natural at this time of year to hang around in the Boneyard. That's nothing, however, I have…

Scienceblogs is currently suffering from a rogue ad that hijacks your browser and whisks you off to some wretched commercial site trying to sell you software to prevent your browser from being hijacked. It is evil, stupid, and obnoxious, and please do not purchase the software they are trying to…

This is pretty nifty: it's a nine-tentacled octopus. Count 'em! If I may be so bold as to remind you all of the basics of cephalopod development and evolution, the primitive condition in cephalopods is to form ten arms; in the octopods, one pair is secondarily lost by some unidentified…

Those crazy rascals behind Expelled have some new games they want to play: they've put out a casting call for victims of persecution. It's a pitiful plea, but it will probably net a nice collection of complaints — because it's true. We do reject Intelligent Design from the academy, from science,…

We have to rely on comedians to tell us the obvious. And that's because over the last seven years, because of the incompetence that goes by the name George Bush, we've become the most insecure, paranoid superpower ever. We don't think we can get anything right anymore. We can't take care of our own…

The Beagle Project is having a fundraiser — they're selling t-shirts and other gear to raise money for their project of reconstructing Darwin's ship and sending scientists off to sea on it. I'm eyeing that large mug with the Beagle blueprints on it myself.

Tild uncovers a real treasure: a book from the heyday of patent medicines, full of advice specifically for women, and loaded with testimonials for Dr Pierce's ‘prescription’. When you find out what was in the concoction, you'll understand why all the accompanying photos show women looking both…

Lots of people have been sending me this bad article from the Daily Mail, "Human race will 'split into two different species'". I don't quite get it. This is the very same utter nonsense from Oliver Curry that came out at this same time last year. Is this to be a yearly occurrence now? Every…