Paul Z. Meyers
pharyngula
Posts by this author
March 21, 2007
Nooooooo!! The proliferation of special purpose wiki encyclopedias has gone too far!
March 21, 2007
Every once in a while, a reader sends me a link to something I've already dealt with (and that's OK, I don't expect everyone to have committed the entirety of the Pharyngula database to memory), but it's a link to something so dang weird it's worth reposting. In this case, I was sent a link to a…
March 21, 2007
Here's a clever (I think) observation in the efforts to eradicate malaria: the mosquitos that transmit malaria are also infected with the disease-causing parasite, so maybe if we cure malaria in mosquitos, it will end one intermediate step in the transmission chain. It sounds like a crazy idea, but…
March 21, 2007
In a good pirate movie, you need flamboyant excess, so I guess it's not surprising that the final installment in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise is going to have every pirate in the world in a final climactic battle.
It's going to give every pirate fan an arrrrgasm, I think.
March 21, 2007
Today is the vernal equinox, Bérubé has returned to the blogosphere, and the WAAGNFNP has manifested itself. I don't know what it all means, unless perhaps that all the snow and ice is going to be melted by a giant nuclear fireball, ending the hockey season.
March 21, 2007
Perhaps you thought Lisa Nowak, the pampers-wearing jealous lover, was enough of a stain on the reputation of astronauts. Here's another one, though, to give you more excuses to kick them off their pedestal: There's going to be a "Back to Genesis" conference sponsored by the Institute for Creation…
March 20, 2007
I've finally had it with my mail software. I need advice on what I can do.
Here's the situation: Mac OS X (that's not going to change), the standard Mac Mail program, everything up-to-date with the latest versions. I've got about 20 folders set up in Mail, with filters to automatically redirect…
March 20, 2007
Coturnix is organizing an informative google bomb — if you look up Michael Egnor on the web, what should you find? How about lots and lots of critics?
It seems only fair. Teach the controversy!
Michael Egnor •
Michael Egnor •
Michael Egnor •
Michael Egnor •
Michael Egnor •
Michael Egnor •
Michael …
March 20, 2007
So, Mike Haubrich stopped by my office yesterday, and during the conversation he mentioned that there was a video of me on the Seed site … with some trepidation, I took a look, and there it is: it's my short presentation at the Inspiration Festival last fall. Ouch. I just cringe to see and hear…
March 20, 2007
H. Allen Orr and Daniel Dennett are tearing into each other something fierce over at Edge, and it's all over Orr's dismissive review of Dawkins' The God Delusion. It's a bit splintery and sharp, but the core of Orr's complaint, I think, is that he's unimpressed with Dawkins' 'Ultimate 747' argument…
March 20, 2007
In order to help pay for the tremendous amounts of bandwidth Pharyngula and its Sciblings are sucking off the internet, there are new video ads inserted below the first article on each page. They are a kind of visual noise, but they aren't supposed to slow down access—they should only load…
March 20, 2007
Clearly, the Hemelshots have a much more sophisticated relationship than we have. We're flying the pirate flag outside of our house, but every time we try to move on to the full pirate phase, we run aground on the fact that she thinks she should be the Cap'n, and then there are the swordfights on…
March 20, 2007
We're so accustomed to hearing about good Christian parents complaining about the material their kids are taught in science class, and lobbying school boards to ban the eeevilution word from the school, that it's rather nice to see an example of the shoe on the other foot. A school in Sisters,…
March 20, 2007
The Biology in Science Fiction blog has a short article on color-changing chromatophores in cephalopod skin, and asks for examples of biological adaptive camouflage used in SF stories — I want more. I want to know what SF novels have used cephalopods or cephalopod-like aliens as major characters or…
March 19, 2007
I'm joining Larry Moran in applying the thumbscrews to John Logsdon, who has just started a new blog. He's got to do more than just one short tease of a post!
March 19, 2007
Ann Coulter is coming out with a new book: If Democrats Had Any Brains, They'd Be Republicans. I read Coulter's last book, Godless, and I can tell you that having Ann Coulter call anyone else stupid is like seeing cockroaches complaining about vermin, or a pig farmer turning up their nose at…
March 19, 2007
What are we going to do with Michael Egnor? He seems to be coming up with a new bit of foolishness every day, and babbling on and on. Should we ignore him (there really isn't any substance there), or should we criticize him every time (although he's probably capable of generating idiocy at a…
March 19, 2007
Since I previously mentioned GodTube, which is all Jesus all the time and has lots of creationism videos, it's only fair that I reveal that there is also an IslamTube, where you can listen to speeches about the religion of peace or watch humvees get blown up.
Somebody introduce these two to each…
March 19, 2007
The Lynn Margulis blog tour has moved on to Memoirs of a Skepchick—if you weren't satisfied with her answers here, you can try again.
March 19, 2007
The blog Startling Moniker has a nice acknowledgment for being added to my blogroll, but the main interest in that post is that he admits to a guilty pleasure I share: fishing through seedy bookstores. You can sometimes find the weirdest stuff in old bins in fringe bookstores. DaveX explores a…
March 19, 2007
Geoffrey Simmons, a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute, is going to be on the prestigious Coast to Coast AM show to talk about evolution and the impossibility thereof on Tuesday night. Simmons is an MD (lately, we're seeing a trend in DI's taste in proponents, aren't we?) in Eugene, Oregon ……
March 19, 2007
Gary Farber has been collecting reviews of 300, the new movie about the Spartans at Thermopylae, and they certainly are amusing — I haven't seen the movie, but I suspect my opinion of it will be close to Howard Waldrop's and Lawrence Person's. I saw the trailer, and while the cartoonish style is to…
March 19, 2007
Raymond Finney, MD of Tennessee wants to ask a bunch of pompous questions of his state board of education ("Is the Universe and all that is within it, including human beings, created through purposeful, intelligent design by a Supreme Being, that is a Creator?" etc., etc., etc.). Although I'm…
March 18, 2007
Once again, in the nomination thread for the Molly award, two names came up over and over again, and since this isn't the kind of thing where we should nit-pick, I'll put up two winners once more:
Date
Winners
Sample comments
March 2007
Blake Stacey
He's a smart feller.
whenever I'm reading a…
March 18, 2007
Avoid Las Vegas between May 17th and 20th. There's a conference going on there that will be like a black hole of stupid, with both Sylvia Browne and Deepak Chopra and a host of low-wattage luminaries of woo in attendance, and there may be a kind of intelligence implosion going on. Your brain may…
March 18, 2007
The Discovery Institute seems well pleased with their new anachronistic acolyte, a modern neurosurgeon who harks back fondly to the ancient wheeze of Natural Theology from a few centuries back. He's been promoted to being a regular contributor on the DI Media Complaints Division web page, and he…
March 18, 2007
Have you ever noticed that just about any atheist article will get labeled as a "rant", no matter how thoughtful it might be? I guess that means you'll find the Carnival of the Godless #62 loaded to the gills with howling, savage, unbridled ranting.
I like it.
March 17, 2007
It's a slide show! It's a song! Watch and listen to Crowson's Evolution Blues! You won't know whether to tap your toes, laugh, or cry.
March 17, 2007
You really should take a closer look at this map of publication links between scientific disciplines. Here's the description:
This map was constructed by sorting roughly 800,000 published papers into 776 different scientific paradigms (shown as pale circular nodes) based on how often the papers…