Paul Z. Meyers
pharyngula
Posts by this author
August 17, 2007
I just finished Sean B. Carroll's Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo-Devo the other day, and I must confess: I was initially a bit disappointed. It has a few weaknesses. For one, I didn't learn anything new from it; I had already read just about everything mentioned in the book…
August 17, 2007
If you want to take a look at one of the sources of creationist thought, the workshop where the red-hot anvil of pseudoscience and the inflexible hammer of theology are used to forge the balloon animals of creationism, The Journal of Creation (formerly the Creation ex nihilo Technical Journal) is…
August 17, 2007
I think that citing Gregg Easterbrook approvingly ought to be a criterion in the Crackpot Index.
August 17, 2007
Wonderpus is a spectacular cephalopod that has appeared a few times on the Friday Cephalopod. How can you forget an octopus with this kind of psychedelic color?
Wunderpus photogenicus
Now a reader has sent me a link to the formal taxonomic description of Wunderpus photogenicus, and we can get more…
August 17, 2007
(click for larger image)Vampyroteuthis infernalis
Figure from The Deep(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Claire Nouvian.
from Kim Reisenbichler © MBARI 1995
August 16, 2007
I was bad. I completely forgot to have Molly nominations for July, and here it is August. So let's catch up: name your fave commenter for either month right here, or just your favorite for any time, and I'll tally 'em up when I get back from New York — we'll have a super-duper double induction…
August 16, 2007
If it's been a bit dead here today, it's because I've been on an aeroplane most of the afternoon, and am now holed up in the lovely little village of New York for a few days of urban thrills.
While I was cruising through the skies, Vox Day has responded to my rebuke of his pathetic anti-scientific…
August 16, 2007
Gary Farber has oodles of dread-inducing discussion of the surveillance capabilities of satellites — all in the hands of bureaucrats who don't seem to value privacy, but urge us to trust them.
August 16, 2007
Jonathan Eisen dresses down university press departments that oversell science, and also hits on one of my pet peeves: the attempt to portray all scientific research as addressing human ills. In this case, it's claiming that research on shark gene expression will help treat birth defects.
In my own…
August 15, 2007
If Pastor Drake's curses are fizzling, I know exactly what he needs: a blessed medallion made from an eggplant to potentiate his jebus-power. It's true: this miracle occurred spontaneously, and is exactly the holy artifact any righteous smiter would want on his side.
I will also call your…
August 15, 2007
Uh-oh. Americans United for Separation of Church and State is in trouble now: some wrathful priest is cursing them in the name of God and has used the power of imprecatory prayer to ask the Lord to smite them.
Oooooh. There hasn't been any detectable lordly smiting in millennia, or even longer.…
August 15, 2007
I'm sorry, Scott, but thinking you can engage Vox Day in a serious discussion of evolution is an act of hyper-optimistic lunacy. Hatfield has set the terms, and Day has replied … and his argument against evolution, if not nuts, is dishonest. He doesn't believe evolution could have occurred because…
August 15, 2007
Nooooooo! Don't remind me! Classes resume for me in exactly two weeks.
August 15, 2007
Thanks to Blake for mentioning this: you can watch Dawkins' The Enemies of Reason, part 1, on Google Video right now. Yay!
August 15, 2007
David Colquhoun, author of DC's Improbable Science page, has written a fine criticism of the New Credulity (I know, it's no more "new" than the New Atheism) which he presents as a symptom of an age of endarkenment.
The past 30 years or so have been an age of endarkenment. It has been a period in…
August 15, 2007
Sandy is peeking at and playing with Jim Watson's most intimate bits. So can you!
August 15, 2007
OK, nice reference to both Darwin and cephalopods, but doesn't it bother anyone that the viscosity of the medium would make baseball impossible to play, and that wooden bats would cause a serious buoyancy problem for the animals?
(Via Zeno, who has frightened the creationists out of his state)
August 14, 2007
It looks like my talk to the Minnesota Atheists (you know, the one Egnor viewed by remote sensing or something) is available on the Atheist Talk Podcast. I haven't seen it — I am constitutionally incapable of watching myself without curling up into a quivering ball and mewing piteously — so don't…
August 14, 2007
I sometimes say things that outrage people and get me volumes of angry mail. This will be one of those times.
I saw the latest Harry Potter movie tonight, and I must confess: I wasn't a fan, nor am I particularly interested in the whole series. My kids liked them, and I read the first couple, but…
August 14, 2007
The Tangled Bank came early this week — the latest edition is online at Fish Feet.
August 14, 2007
I gave two talks this weekend to the Critical Thinking Clubs of St Paul and Stillwater. Herewith a brief account of the events therein.
The Sunday morning session was the most conventional. The title was "Progress and Opportunities in Evolution", and the focus was on the utility of evolutionary…
August 14, 2007
Some outfit called the Christian Outdoorsman is selling bibles with camouflaged covers, which seems so appropriate — after all, when you're sneaking up on the Christ you wouldn't want to alarm him.
And why, you might ask, should we sneak up on the Messiah? The clue is in the company's logo. You…
August 14, 2007
Julie Haberle, the born-again who splattered Minnesota billboards with creationist apologetics, has revamped her website. It's prettier and twice as stupid now; it still has the very clumsy bulletin board that was utterly ruled by evolution supporters poking holes in her bad arguments. What the…
August 14, 2007
Some fellow calling himself "homersimpson123" (who thinks he is doing the world a service) has uploaded all of the Kent Hovind DVDs to bittorrent, as well as the horrendous gemisch he uses in his presentations. Since Hovind is rotting in jail for a good long while, this is your chance to torture…
August 13, 2007
Well, I was trying to get home from my talk in Stillwater (more about that later), but the weather did not cooperate. We're having one of those spectacular midwestern summer storms — a watery deluge, non-stop lightning so close and so bright it blinded me, a threat of tornados, etc. Since I couldn'…