Paul Z. Meyers
pharyngula
Posts by this author
February 20, 2007
DaveScot, the anti-science slug from UncommonDescent, is doing an experiment: he's got a friend who is taking dichloroacetate (DCA) to treat his cancer. DaveScot thinks this is wonderful and useful, but quite the contrary: a one-person uncontrolled trial is pretty much a perfect example of bad…
February 20, 2007
Ugh. Jim Wallis. That left-wing theo-nut.
Progressive politics is remembering its own religious history and recovering the language of faith. Democrats are learning to connect issues with values and are now engaging with the faith community. They are running more candidates who have been emboldened…
February 20, 2007
A sense of giddy enlightenment emerges from reading Jennifer Ouellette on chocolate and Carl Zimmer on tapeworms. They were the highlights of my morning browse, anyway.
February 20, 2007
He really is stupid wanker—it's no wonder his followers have problems.
(via Atheist in a mini van)
February 20, 2007
So I lack tact. I would have been pleased if the fellow had left it there, but suggesting I get tips from Dilbert? Bad form.
February 20, 2007
Larry Moran takes apart the Marcus Ross case in some detail. Ross is the young earth creationist who recently received his Ph.D. from the University of Rhode Island.
In this situation we have an example of someone who carefully hid his true belief from the thesis committee, or at least went out of…
February 19, 2007
That guy, John Wilkins, has been keeping a list of presentations of basic concepts in science, and he told me I'm supposed to do one on gastrulation. First I thought, no way—that's way too hard, and I thought this was all supposed to be about basic stuff. But then I figured that it can't be too…
February 19, 2007
Somebody shoot me now. The Washington Post tallies up congressional votes, and in an astounding display of technological mastery, allows you to sort and display them by the congressperson's astrological sign. If you've ever wondered whether Scorpios were more likely to vote for highway…
February 19, 2007
Gonad.
Testicle. Testes. Seminiferous tubule. Vas deferens. Prostate.
Penis. Corpora cavernosa. Urethra.
Urethra, urethra, urethra.
Ovary. Fallopian tube. Cervix. Uterus. Vagina. Labia majora and minora. Skene's and Bartholin's glands. Wolffian and Mullerian ducts.
Pudenda!
Pubococcygeal. Pelvic…
February 19, 2007
This looks like it could be a spectacularly vigorous discussion: Do Organized Religions Suppress Women's Rights? A Panel Presentation on Women, Faith and Society. It'll be held at the MCB on the UMTC campus next week — I'm tempted to go, even though I know the answer (yes) and the subject doesn't…
February 19, 2007
Quite a few people have written to me asking what's wrong with richarddawkins.net…they can't get through to it, and get DNS errors. No worries, everyone—it's good news. They've been experiencing ever-escalating levels of traffic, so to cope with the incoming hordes, they've just migrated to a new…
February 19, 2007
Cool: here's a duck with four hindlimbs.
I have to gripe about the description, though:
A rare mutation has left eight-day-old Stumpy with two extra legs behind the two he moves around on. … The mutation is rare but cases have been recorded across the world.
No, no, no. This is almost certainly…
February 19, 2007
Nathan Newman asks a good question about Mitt Romney's rejection of the godless:
And at some level, why shouldn't a person's religious beliefs be relevant?
They should be. However, when one holds a minority belief about religion, one that is widely reviled, then it is to one's interest to insist…
February 19, 2007
Edward Humes, the author of Monkey Girl, has an excellent op-ed in the Lawrence Journal-World.
The talk-radio version had a packed town hall up in arms at the "Why Evolution Is Stupid" lecture. In this version of the theory, scientists supposedly believe that all life is accidental, a random crash…
February 19, 2007
As I might have guessed, it seems to have been rather unimpressive. No genuinely outré exhibits, just more average work with bible verses slapped on. He does observe that quote-mining the bible means these kiddies are going to burn in hell someday, which does add a little frisson of horror to the…
February 18, 2007
Hooray, I just finished grading a stack of genetics exams (they passed, mostly), so I'll let you all celebrate with a quick and dirty Carnival of the Godless and the Oekologie Carnival. I think I'll just go to bed.
February 18, 2007
…annoyingly hard to pick. You people just named almost everyone, and some of you seemed to name everyone in a single comment. It's not like there was a runaway leader; it's more like there's this huge base of commenters that everyone likes. This is a good situation for the blog as a whole, but…
February 18, 2007
Revere reminds us of the low esteem in which atheists are held, and specifically, that we are regarded as much less trustworthy than Mormons, a question brought up by the candidacy of Mitt Romney of Massachusetts (24% would refuse to vote for a Mormon for president, while 53% are against the idea…
February 18, 2007
Here's an excellent and useful summary of the appendix from a surgeon's perspective. Creationists dislike the idea that we bear useless organs, remnants of past function that are non-functional or even hazardous to our health; they make up stories about the importance of these vestiges. Sid Schwab…
February 18, 2007
Blake Stacey just asked me to pick on Scott Adams and the Dilbert blog some more—he wants practice taking potshots at fools. Well, Blake, I did a quick browse through the latest entries at the Dilbert blog, and I had a hard time finding anything with even a tiny germ of substance to attack. He…
February 18, 2007
Time magazine has a science blog, Eye on Science, and the writer, Michael Lemonick, doesn't hesitate to take on the Intelligent Design creationists. A recent entry criticizes the Discovery Institute's silly list of dissenters from 'Darwinism'. Not only is the number that they cite pathetically…
February 17, 2007
Since I'm grading genetics exams this evening, a class that involves a tiny amount of math, I can understand where this response to a math problem comes from.
I'd be tempted to give partial credit for a creative answer, but since I'm one of those evil professors, I wouldn't succumb.
February 17, 2007
Contrary to popular myth, I do not sit around instructing my family in the fine points of evolutionary biology, nor do I subject them to tirades against creationists. In fact, I almost never discuss those subjects at home. So why is my daughter giving competent discussions of Intelligent Design…
February 17, 2007
What a great story—a Japanese whaling ship is disabled and begging for help, and guess who is available to rescue them? A Greenpeace vessel.
February 17, 2007
Lately, the Discovery Institute has stuck its neck out in response to the popularity of showings of Randy Olson's movie, Flock of Dodos, which I reviewed a while back. They slapped together some lame critiques packaged on the web as Hoax of Dodos (a clunker of a name; it's especially ironic since…
February 17, 2007
A reader sent me a wonderful diagram from Wellington Grey, contrasting faith and science—I see that somebody sent it to Omnibrain, too.
Here's how science works—it's got that all-important feedback loop from real-world evidence to our interpretations, so it's grounded in something other than our…
February 17, 2007
I've mentioned before that I get lots of wacky email from creationists. I usually throw it out, but there's this one kook who is persistent and sends me stuff like this:
Control must be taken from the people, and turned over to one individual, Satan!
Anyone with an eye towards God, and God's word,…
February 17, 2007
One of the subjects I mentioned at the Thursday Flock of Dodos discussion was that an obstacle to getting the public excited about science is the state of science writing. It's a very formal style in which the passive voice is encouraged, caution and tentative statements are demanded, adverbs are…
February 17, 2007
Our old pal Kazmer Ujvarosy of the American Chronicle has a long and boring rant against the whole system of peer review. There's nothing really new in it; we know peer review is flawed, and practically every scientist can give you gripes about cronyism and bad reviewers and yadda yadda yadda, but…