pharyngula

I've been tagged with a HalloMeme, and am expected to describe an ocan-themed scary movie. At least this one is easy. I immediately thought of one movie that traumatized me deeply as a child. It was… It Came From Beneath the Sea. There's a wonderful photo essay on the movie if you haven't already…

What an amusing find: a grad level course taught by creationists that claims it is impossible to write out 10262 in decimal notation, which prompts Tiny Frog to immediately commit heresy by writing it out. You'll burn in hell for that, Tiny Frog! That's not the only lunacy on the creationist page.…

Stop me if you've heard this one before! Here is the setup: Police say the 58-year-old Tester was wearing a denim miniskirt and offered to have sex with arresting officers. Investigators say they found a half-empty bottle of vodka and an empty vial that had held prescription painkillers in Tester's…

The Bronze Dog got to be a "pirate chick with panache and a heart of gold", but my past life analysis isn't quite as interesting. Your past life diagnosis: I don't know how you feel about it, but you were male in your last earthly incarnation.You were born somewhere in the territory of modern…

Last night, Jeffrey Shallit debated a creationist. We must now shun him for violating the code of the evilutionist. No, not really. But it's another case where the best tactics aren't clear and simple. On the one hand, we do want to engage the public in a discussion of the ideas, and sometimes a…

You want a useful, practical, obvious example of evolution in action? Try this summary of corn evolution. (via ERV)

What's so good about religion?

Adam Cuerden sent along this old political cartoon that doesn't really make much sense to me. Are we supposed to sympathise with William Gladstone? He's the guy with a big knife trying to murder the lovely creature who just wants to cling to his rock and be left alone. Tattooing his tentacles with…

Octopus briareus, the Caribbean reef octopus Figure from Cephalopods: A World Guide (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Mark Norman.

My least favorite political/economic group is the Libertarians, so it is a wonderfully pleasant experience to watch as China Miéville takes a sharp and dismissive rhetorical blade to a Libertarian pipe-dream. He's specifically criticizing something called the Freedom Ship, a gigantic free-floating…

If you're still interested in weighing in on whether the academic meetings in San Diego should go on in the wake of fires in Southern California, Terra Sigillata has a thread on that very subject. I promise the small meeting I'm planning to attend won't clog up the freeways.

(via Green Tea MN)

How strange that I haven't heard anything about this new movie coming out this Spring — I guess I need to watch more TV. It's a heretical documentary/comedy by Bill Maher called Religulous, combining "religious" and "ridiculous". I'm not seeing much of a buzz for it on the web just yet — a brief…

See that little thermometer to the right? It says we've met our challenge of raising $20,000 for school kids. However, I actually picked a number of projects that required more money than that, and we still have 3 projects that are not fully funded — and they're the embryology/developmental…

While the Weekly World News may be on the verge of extinction (although it still seems to be surviving online), at least Pravda labors on to deliver the truth… Recent studies of Australian scientists indicate that Atlanteans, the people who lived on a legendary island first mentioned by Plato, may…

Homer Jacobson wrote a paper 52 years ago in which he speculated about the chemical conditions underlying the origin of life. After discovering that the paper is frequently cited by creationists, and after reviewing the work and finding multiple errors, he has retracted the paper. Good for him. It…

The Minnetonka school district is one of the best in Minnesota, with an exceptionally concerned and active set of parents and teachers who work hard to keep informed and support their schools. They established an organization, TonkaFocus, to oppose creationism in the schools and attempts to…

The Seed editors asked us to reminisce about our quaint experiences with computing in the Old Days. Old nerds are so pathetic. I'm much more enthused about an event in future computing: Leopard is coming out tomorrow! Laelaps has an anticipatory video of what Leopard is going to do to Windows —…

A reader sent me this picture full of schadenfreude. Maybe this was the Gay Atheist Church of Malibu? In case you are curious, here's Revelation Chapter 4. 1: After this I looked, and, behold, a door was opened in heaven: and the first voice which I heard was as it were of a trumpet talking with…

D'Souza is crowing over his debate with Hitchens — he's got a YouTube clip on his site that he seems to think exemplifies his triumph. His arguments there are 1) the fine-tuning argument for God, which is pathetic, as Douglas Adams scotched that one long ago, and 2) the usual claim that atheists…

I would have guessed because it's very dry and windy, but James Hartline has a less obvious answer. They shook their fists at God and said, "We don't care what the Bible says, We want the California school children indoctrinated into homosexuality!" And then Governor Schwarzenegger signed into law…

The World's Fair has a new meme: find the terms that return your blog as the first hit. Here is the overview: I'd like to suggest a meme, where the premise is that you will attempt to find 5 statements, which if you were to type into google (preferably google.com, but we'll take the other country…

John Lynch seems to have about as little to say about this statistic as I do: 60% of adult, educated, normal Americans believe Genesis is literally true. Or, more accurately, 60% of Americans say they think Genesis is literally true. There is a difference. There is an attitude that religious…

I told you that the Discovery Institute was going to have conniptions over the Stein/O'Reilly interview. O'Reilly defined ID as the idea that "a deity created life," and I could have mentioned this nonsense from Stein: There's no doubt about it. We have lots and lots of evidence of it in the movie…

The latest Tangled Bank is online at the Radula — enjoy the diversity of (mostly) biology!

Here's the true, heroic history of America: You know this is "Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week", right? Now you must check out the true, heroic recounting of the horrors faced by one of Horowitz's neo-con speakers at the deepest pit of hell Wellesley. The girls made mean faces at her. This is cause…

Florida Ciizens for Science reports that their brand new state science standards are available for comment. That means you can click over there and make suggestions, even if you aren't a Florida educator (they do ask for your connection, so don't worry that the creationist mob can just descend on…

Some days, I just have to admit that Canada is cool. They've got no GW Bush, but they do have the Burgess shale…and now I learn that Newfoundland has giant squid. And they treat them respectfully! I'll never tell another Newfie joke now.

Oh, no … we've almost missed it! Now we have to make a mad scrabble for birthday hats and noisemakers and cake and ice cream. It's the big 6010th birthday for planet earth, according to Ed Darrell and Phil Plait and these guys in Austin. Hmmm. Maybe we should at least make a quick trip to the Dairy…

It has just now sunk in that I'm holding plane tickets that I'll be using next week to fly to … San Diego. I hope for everyone's sakes that all is under control well before I get there … but isn't it just like a bunch of infidels to schedule a meeting for the middle of an inferno?