Paul Z. Meyers
pharyngula
Posts by this author
June 5, 2007
Now they've got Howard Dean and Wesley Clark giving talks at YearlyKos. They're so vindictive over there—you know they're only recruiting these big names to rub my nose in the fact that I had to back out of leading the science caucus. I hope Tara is pleased that she gets to take over my job.
June 5, 2007
Nick Matzke has dug into the literature on evolution of chloroquinone resistance in a comment so substantial it ought to be a post on the Panda's Thumb. This magic number of 1 in 1020 as the probability that a specific two-amino acid change could evolve that Behe uses as his linchpin metric for…
June 5, 2007
Chris Clarke claims I'm doing a cameo in this video. Was I the jogger? The policeman? The nun? The construction worker? Oh, hey…there I am. Nice outfit.
Chris also wants me to introduce him to Julieta. Sorry, Chris, I think she'd find your appendages…inadequate.
June 5, 2007
Mike S. Adams is pretending to knowledge of evolutionary biology again, in service to his insane ideas about feminism. It's ugly and stupid.
My understanding of (and disrespect for) the underpinnings of modern feminism was actually fostered by a biologist who once made a very candid remark about…
June 5, 2007
Let me add a quick addendum to the previous post. People aren't appreciating yet how hard-core a designist Behe actually is; one comment mentions that "apparently God is directly responsible for the creation of drug-resistant malaria."
No. The Designer, who must have godlike powers, specifically…
June 5, 2007
I peeked.
I was reading Michael Behe's new book, The Edge of Evolution, and I was several chapters into it. All he seemed to be saying was that evolution has limits, limits, limits, and those limits are so restrictive that you can't get from there to here, and he was repeating it over and over, in…
June 5, 2007
This is not fair. Writing a doctoral thesis on a blog? How about doing your masters thesis on a wiki? Don't these people know you're supposed to suffer when writing a thesis?
I remember mine. There were months of tapping it out on an Apple II computer, and occasionally printing it out on the…
June 5, 2007
I want you all to know that I finished Michael Behe's drecky The Edge of Evolution, and that I really will have a review up soon. Although, actually, I suppose I could put up a review right now:
Sucks.
But you probably want details, don't you? So give me a little time to whittle this thing into…
June 4, 2007
My family of five has precisely four cell phones between them. Guess who's the odd man out? I think Apple knows this, and have specifically targeted one of the ads for their new iPhone at me. This is horribly cruel. Not only is the ad focused on calamari, but wow, that gadget is sweet and elegant…
June 4, 2007
Literacity has the beginnings of a discussion of the horror genre, one of my favorite subjects (although I'm a bit picky—I'm a classic horror fan, and consider most of the recent offerings, both on screen and on the page, to be atrocity exhibitions rather than true horror), and one thing mentioned…
June 4, 2007
So, I'm reading about this elaborate, extravagant erection to GW Bush's ego being built in Iraq—
The compound, by the side of the Tigris, would be a statement of President Bush’s intent to expand democracy through the Middle East. Yesterday, however, the entire project was under fresh scrutiny as…
June 4, 2007
Egnor, the smug creationist neurosurgeon, is babbling again, but this time, it's on a subject that he might be expected to have some credibility: the brain (he has one, and operates on them) and the mind (this might be a problem for him). It's an interesting example of the religious pathology that'…
June 4, 2007
Yeah, if Jesus came back, you've got to wonder what he'd think of traditional fashions.
June 4, 2007
Michael Lemonick has an excellent reply to Sam Brownback's recent attempt to weasel away from creationism.
What he ended up doing was demonstrating that he doesn't really know much about science. If, writes the senator, "evolution means assenting to an exclusively materialistic, deterministic…
June 4, 2007
These are some carnivals of science—read about invertebrates, genes, or genetics this morning.
Circus of the Spineless #21
Gene Genie
Mendel's Garden #15
June 3, 2007
No, I didn't watch it.
So, tell me…did anyone ask them if they did not believe in evolution? Did anyone raise their hands?
Which one am I most likely going to have to vote for in the next election?
June 3, 2007
What a delightful and well deserved development! The Australian sister organization to Ken Ham's Answers in Genesis is hammering him with a nasty lawsuit.
The Brisbane-based Creation Ministries International has filed a lawsuit in Queensland's Supreme Court against Mr Ham and his Kentucky-based…
June 3, 2007
Historical perspective certainly does change one's views of our current little struggle with theism. Kieran Healy identifies the original atheists—those horrible people who were defying cultural mores and denying the traditional deities.
It was those uppity Christians.
Matters were very different…
June 3, 2007
The only thing you need to read today: the first hand account of an doctor, explaining why he does abortions: it's because someone has to give those oppressed by circumstance a choice.
By 1967 I was a third year medical student, still with no visible means of support, and we were pregnant with our…
June 3, 2007
One of the common principles used to characterize the rules of growth in developing systems is the idea of allometry. Here, I'll briefly summarize the concept with a few clear illustrations and a tiny amount of simple math.
"Allometry" means "different growth or measurement", and it refers to the…
June 3, 2007
Hey, I've got this wonderful forum that's read around the world, so I'm going to use it to unload on one of our local idiots, Ted Storck. Storck is one of those insufferable self-important Christians who makes the whole religion look like a lobotomy ward. His wonderful contribution to the cultural…
June 3, 2007
Oh, come on. This is no surprise. Public schools mostly take religion for granted—it's rife in athletics, in particular, but many of the ceremonies have prayers and ministers involved—so when a valedictorian speech damns her godless classmates to hell, it's just a reflection of the culture.
The…
June 3, 2007
Hey, theistic evolutionists, you have a new pal and representative: Dinesh D'Souza. Doesn't that just make you want to reevaluate your philosophical foundations?
Don't worry too much about it. D'Souza is a spectacular twit of a theistic evolutionist. He reveals his endorsement of evolution because…
June 3, 2007
After a long hiatus, the Koufax Awards site is chugging back to work, and is accepting nominations. No voting yet; this is just the time to let them know who you think is most deserving in various categories.
June 2, 2007
Just in case you had any doubts about how the Intelligent Design creationists would react to the denial of Gonzalez's tenure, here's how Uncommon Descent illustrated it:
I like the little sign above his head: he's being burned at the stake because he "believes in God"! I assure you that the fact…
June 2, 2007
Yes, I played Dungeons and Dragons in the 1970s, and it was exactly as the Dead Alewives portray it, right down to the guy always cruising for munchies.
(via Dr Bushwell)
June 2, 2007
I can't help it—everything I read only makes sense in the light of evolution. Here, for instance, is a story about the popularity of the AK-47 assault rifle:
The AK-47's popularity is generally attributed to its functional characteristics; ease of operation, robustness to mistreatment and…
June 2, 2007
The president of Iowa State University has rejected Guillermo Gonzalez's appeal for tenure, citing the fact that "he simply did not show the trajectory of excellence that we expect." That, alas, is the result I expected, and that everyone involved should have expected.
Now, if we expected a…