Paul Z. Meyers
pharyngula
Posts by this author
December 25, 2006
If you had a crummy Christmas morning (I didn't, so I'm just linking these as a public service), here are a few outlets.
Silly Humans finds an Evil Santa Generator — create your own nasty, scabrous, ugly Santa Claus, suitable for framing.
If you really want to know why Santa gave you such a crappy…
December 25, 2006
You all know about the Koufax awards, the best weblog awards around because they're non-commercial, non-weird, and sincerely try to reward the best of the progressive blogosphere (I don't just say that because I won one). One of the unfortunate side effects of being non-commercial, though, is that…
December 25, 2006
Ah, Christmas morning…with teenagers. Their natural sloth wars with their desire for the Christmas loot, and they compromise by getting up at 10:00 rather than noon—so it means that I get to sleep in and everything is calm.
Although I do confess to now and then missing the little guys pounding on…
December 24, 2006
Yes! This atheist family committed atrocities in preparation for the holiday. Here's the gang undermining the true meaning of Christmas by decorating a tree while experiencing a complete absence of any sense of the sacred.
That's Skatje in the coat and hat (it really isn't that cold in here,…
December 24, 2006
Christmas Eve is an excellent time for another edition of the Carnival of the Godless!
In my own strange Christmas Eve tradition, I'm spending this late afternoon sorting flies and setting up Drosophila cultures — I'm not even done with grading and I have to get to work on next semester's labs.
December 24, 2006
I am horrified. The J Train tries to ruin Christmas Eve with this…abomination. Don't watch it if you value your eyes, ears, sense of equilibrium, and sanity. It's Celine Dion doing AC/DC.
And here I've been using Cthulhu as a signifier for incomprehensibly monstrous alien horrors. There's a new…
December 24, 2006
There's a common refrain in the criticisms of Dawkins' The God Delusion(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll) that I've taken to categorizing with my own private title—it's so common, to the point of near-unanimous universality, that I've decided to share it with you all, along with a little backstory that will…
December 23, 2006
We got our Christmas tree today at a little tree farm down the road from us; the last few years we'd have to wade through the snow to pick our tree, and the owners offered sleigh rides. This year…sere and brown and bare everywhere, with only a trivial dusting of snow.
At least Olduvai George gives…
December 23, 2006
You may be wondering what that strange "Blank post" was all about. The science blogging crew has been having a discussion about the "Most active" box you can find in the right sidebar, and RPM challenged me that I could put up an empty post titled "Blank post" and it would get 10-20 comments. I…
December 23, 2006
Check out this heartwarming tale of a Republican staffer who tried to retroactively get his GPA adjusted by hackers—he got caught, his pathetic attempts to cheat publicly aired, and now he has been fired.
The really sad thing is that GPAs aren't that big a deal. They make a difference if you are…
December 23, 2006
Almost ten years ago, there was a spectacular fossil discovery in China: microfossils, tiny organisms preserved by phosphatization, that revealed amazing levels of fine detail. These specimens were identified as early animal embryos on the basis of a number of properties.
The cells were dimpled…
December 23, 2006
Are you all as exhausted from the festivities as I am? I partook a little too heavily of the traditional Driving-Long-Distances-In-The-Snow-To-Pick-Up-Returning-Progeny-Whose-Bus-Was-Over-An-Hour-Late part of the celebration, which means my brain is turning over a little slowly this morning. I'm…
December 22, 2006
The rest of you might be totally lost. Here's a soon-to-be-classic paper on the characterization of the Hoho2 gene (292K pdf)—the Santa phenotype seems to represent an optimization for an arctic niche. They suggest the allele might have had an origin in Neandertal populations, but then they also…
December 22, 2006
Since it is Cephalopodmas, I think it's only fitting to throw in another Friday Cephalopod, the psychedelic Wonderpus.
Wonderpus
Figure from Cephalopods: A World Guide (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Mark Norman.
December 22, 2006
Better sit down for this one. Santa Claus is dead.
Children watched in horror as a Santa Claus collapsed and died as he handed out presents at a Christmas party on Sunday.
December 22, 2006
This country is thoroughly screwed up. Compare these two stories.
A man was found guilty of a $2 robbery, released on parole, then sentenced to life in prison after he tested positive for marijuana. It was in Texas, and the sentence has been commuted (after he'd served 16 years for smoking pot),…
December 22, 2006
Every war needs its bold reporters, sharing the news from the front lines…the War on Christmas has Mike Argento.
December 22, 2006
Look! It's a dumbo octopus! There are some very good shots of this weird creature swimming near the middle.
December 22, 2006
Everyone knows you're supposed to be reading Deep Sea News today for all things cephalopodial, right?
December 22, 2006
My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is: His Most Noble Lord PZ the Liminal of Tempting St Mary Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title
(via Eclecticism)
December 22, 2006
Octopus berrima
Figure from Cephalopods: A World Guide (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Mark Norman.
December 22, 2006
Since there's more to the world than Cephalopodmas, here are some refuges if you get tired of my giddy squiddiness.
Skeptics' Circle: the Sagan celebration!
Four Stone Hearth #3
Animalcules
Carnival of the Feminists #29
Carnival of the Liberals #28
Friday Ark #118
Talk among…
December 22, 2006
Well, if we can't find the new Architeuthis video, we can at least enjoy a little Cephalopodmas carol, Squid and Whale.
If you'd like something more traditional, here are the lyrics for the Twelve Days of Cephalopodmas. You already know the music.
Lastly, should you really want to get into the…
December 22, 2006
We have a sign: there are reports
of a new video from Tsunemi Kubodera of an Architeuthis—unfortunately, I haven't been able to find a copy of the video online anywhere yet. If anyone finds it, let me know!
There's a small and rather grainy copy of the video on the BBC website!
The copy at CNN…
December 21, 2006
Don't try and tell me this is a fake holiday. Macy's in New York is celebrating it! That's the gold standard, man.
Watch out, Kwanzaa.
December 21, 2006
Oh, man, I feel for the kids nowadays. When I was an itty-bitty dinosaur-happy tyke, it seemed like there was a manageable amount of Latin nomenclature you had to memorize to keep up with the dinosaur clan. Now it's like there's a new one added every week, and you've got to be a freakin' genius to…
December 21, 2006
It's a good ol' American tradition: the telling of tall tales in a perfectly dead-pan style. There's enough weird stuff in Kansas, though, that maybe the story is actually true.
December 21, 2006
…despite being an imaginary monologue. Read how Richard Dawkins would explain Santa Claus to the Fair Hills kindergarten class.