Paul Z. Meyers
pharyngula
Posts by this author
February 2, 2007
Tara is talking about a trial that's putting the HIV-denialists in the same position the creationists were in the Kitzmiller trial—having to publicly defend absurdities in a critical venue. It sounds like they aren't coming off well, and this might be another trial where we collect amusing snippets…
February 1, 2007
Well, heck, Darren Naish has been posting here for a week, so it's past time to give a belated welcome to Tetrapod Zoology, the latest addition to the Scienceblogs family of fine sci-punditry.
February 1, 2007
Well, obviously, the problem isn't the "screwing up", it's that the teacher was caught, so you make that more difficult. In this case, the Kearney school district has decided to ban tape recorders in the classroom. That sounds smart.
It makes me wonder how many teachers other than David Paszkiewicz…
February 1, 2007
I've received a few interesting links on the state of religion in America, so I'll just dump a brief hodge-podge below the fold. The quick summary: one clueless twit, one poll, and one philosopher weigh in.
Let's get the ugliness over, first. Andrew Sullivan is still an obnoxious fool. He gets…
February 1, 2007
I only mention this because it infuriates the wingnuts and religious ravers, but if you go to my university's main web page you might see an article about me (I say "might" because only 4 are shown at a time, and which 4 is random). It's awfully hard to get across to the critics, but the university…
February 1, 2007
Go, Al! Franken will definitely be running for Coleman's senate position in 2008. This is promising: the Republicans are already upset.
After seeing an account of Franken's calls [to DFL leaders] on the Star Tribune website, Minnesota Republican Party Chairman Ron Carey issued a statement…
February 1, 2007
Commenter Rheinhard worked hard to get this up last night, so how can I not promote it to more prominence, and so everyone can see the inimitable Molly Ivins?
February 1, 2007
As is traditional at the end of the month, a new Circus of the Spineless is up at The Voltage Gate. And the next Circus of the Spineless at the end of February will be…here! Start sending me good stuff on invertebrate organisms—remember, there are over 30 animal phyla, and all but one of them are…
January 31, 2007
I was thinking of doing something with this paper, but dang it, Omics! Omics! beat me to it. Read it anyway…I suppose there might be some other science in the universe left for me.
January 31, 2007
He must be a smart guy: he just picked Amanda Marcotte to run the John Edwards blog. And since Amanda will be slightly distracted, she's brought in five (it takes five people to take Amanda's place?) new people to keep Pandagon humming…and one of them is Chris Clarke. Everything's shuffling around…
January 31, 2007
…is to go say Happy Birdday to GrrlScientist.
January 31, 2007
Don Boys is not happy that Kent Hovind has been sent to jail.
Kent's enemies are painting him as a greedy tax resister when he has said repeatedly that he will pay all the taxes he owes. He could not get any response from the IRS nor did the judge, prosecutor, or anyone else inform him why his…
January 31, 2007
Molly Ivins has died.
I'm surprised at how this affects me. She was a wonderful woman, wise and funny, and this is a great loss to the nation. Whenever I'm tempted to just write off the whole state of Texas (thanks to a few of its rather prominent representatives), I just remind myself, "Molly…
January 31, 2007
Uh-oh. Evolution has just been refuted by a very sophisticated simulation. Try it; you'll quickly discover how frustratingly boring evolution can be, and you'll give up on it.
The 'simulation' is simple: put some random text in a box, click on a button, it randomly substitutes a random letter for…
January 31, 2007
James Trumm has a single issue, one that trumps all the others in the election booth, and I have to agree with him. It's a kind of signal flare that says the person advocating it is a total loon and not to be trusted on anything.
That issue is creationism.
I will never vote for anyone who favors…
January 31, 2007
Since I got ribbed a bit for my antique D&D lore in a previous comment, I have to defend myself from charges of extreme nerdlitude by distracting you all with a real nerdfest: a discussion of who would win in hand-to-hand combat between a first level magic-user and a housecat, complete with…
January 31, 2007
You all recall the Beagle Project that I recently mentioned was trying to raise money to reconstruct the Beagle and sail off to Patagonia (with me hiding belowdecks, of course). Miss Prism had a terrific idea: she's knitting a Darwin puppet that she'll sell off to some lucky commenter on Darwin's…
January 31, 2007
The latest Tangled Bank is online at Ouroboros, and it's a big one. I noticed what seemed to be an awful lot of entries whizzing through my mailbox on the way, so I had a suspicion that we were giving Chris a workout with this edition.
January 30, 2007
We went round and round on this well over a year ago. Scott Adams, of Dilbert fame, wrote a shallow and ignorant argument that sort of shilly-shallied over a pro-creationist argument; I pointed out how stupid his reasoning was. The response was insane; criticize Adams, and his horde of Dilbert fans…
January 30, 2007
The Little Professor has A Compendium of Professorial Magic that looks useful—I'm going to have to master these.
The list, though, is of low level spells. I think I really need an "Enchant Knowledge" area-effect spell that infuses all of the targets with mastery of the subject matter. It's probably…
January 30, 2007
Since I mentioned my fondness for Jane Fonda the other day, I think I have to respond to this insane wingnut rant I found via Atrios:
Seeing Jane Fonda Saturday was enough to make me wish the unthinkable: it will take another terror attack on American soil in order to render these left-leaning…
January 30, 2007
Zimmer describes some of the more recent work on Flores Man — people are still arguing over whether the fossil is of a peculiarly abnormal human with microcephaly, or whether there was a species of 'miniaturized' Homo living on the islands of the Pacific. Trying to establish common characteristics…
January 30, 2007
Looking to slap more slogans on your Volvo, you latte-sippin', book-readin', over-evolved liberal, you? Here's a good selection of appropriate ones. These two are my favorites:
January 30, 2007
One of the great developments I'm seeing is the emergence of specialized weblogs that focus hard on a specific issue, and here's an example: the Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog. There's good science there on a topic of considerable importance. Let a thousand flowers bloom, I say.
January 29, 2007
Oh, but I am dragging this morning. Have you ever done that thing where you start reading a book and you don't want to put it down, and eventually you realize it's late and you need to get some sleep, so you go to bed but you can't sleep anyway so you get up and finish the whole book? And then you…
January 29, 2007
You really must take a look at this video clip from an HBO special on American Christianity and specifically creationism.
I just got finished watching Alexandra Pelosi's Friends of God documentary on HBO and was taken aback at what has become an increasing trend among American christianists. This…
January 29, 2007
Everyone should congratulate ScienceWoman—she manage to land a 7 pound minnow.
January 29, 2007
Here's a sweet idea: rebuild Darwin's ship, the Beagle in time for the bicentennial of Darwin's birth in 2009 (and also the 150 year mark for publication of the Origin).
2009 is the bicentenary of Charles Darwin's birth, an event which will be celebrated throughout the world. The Beagle Project…
January 29, 2007
Read Twisty and Amanda for an encouraging story about how community activism can shut down a sleazebag operation, "Girls Gone Wild". It's a good lesson that I hope gets spread far and wide, and leads more people to cut off exploiters like Joe Francis.
January 29, 2007
That third-rate right-wing wanker, Dinesh D'Souza, had a article in the Washington Post, in which he attempted to defend himself from accusations of appalling stupidity in trying to blame radical Muslim attacks on the US on liberal culture. Of course, he failed. Instead, he just repeated his crazy…