Paul Z. Meyers
pharyngula
Posts by this author
December 6, 2006
The angry young anti-evolutionist who made that ill-informed video has been complaining in the comments about how rude we all are, and saying that he's got other, more substantive gripes about evolution that he hasn't told us about yet.
Well, here's his chance. Mr Henry can instruct us in what he…
December 6, 2006
Hmmm…there are a couple of regional links that have popped up recently.
Tyler Cowen writes a "my best friends are Minnesotans" post. Does everyone who praises the state have to mention Prince and Fargo and Bob Dylan?
Hey, there's a Drinking Liberally Holiday Party next week at the 331 Club in…
December 6, 2006
Go read Effect Measure on the recent events in the case of the Tripoli Six. This is the story of a team of health care workers who were blamed for an outbreak of HIV among young patients at a Libyan hospital—they've been tried in a kangaroo court and face very unpleasant prospects.
Now, in a…
December 6, 2006
Hey, Minnesotans—anyone want to tune in to KKMS Christian radio right now? I'm about to be tied up in class stuff for a while, so I'll say more later—it seems we have a new creationist group mobilizing in the state.
I caught a few bits of the radio show (that hurt—it's a fundagelical radio station…
December 6, 2006
Take a voyage with Captain Collins on the 68th Tangled Bank expedition. No squid or pirates were spotted this time, but it's still fascinating stuff.
December 6, 2006
Today, it's Peter Hitchens' turn to make a mealy-mouthed appeal for an unearned respect for Intelligent Design creationism. This one is another generic whine, begging that people be fair and give some version of equal time to an underdog heterodoxy…creationism. After all, the only possible reason…
December 6, 2006
Because, honestly, The Atheist Delusion sounds exactly like the usual argument from real theistic apologists.
December 6, 2006
I get a badge!
There's a bit of chagrin involved in being nominated for one of these Weblog Awards, since if you look at the finalists in "Best Blog", you'll see Malkin, LGF, Power Line, InstaPundit, and The Corner listed…you have to figure, whoa, standards are awfully low here.
However, I am not…
December 5, 2006
The direct confrontation between Bérubé and Horowitz has been recorded for posterity at the CHE—I think Bérubé handled it perfectly, not taking the reactionary clown seriously, and getting a free lunch out of it.
Next, though, he's going to be on the Dennis Prager radio show. I'm beginning to think…
December 5, 2006
Everyone must go welcome Omni Brain, the newest addition to the Seed blog empire. Go ahead and bring Sandra and Steve a little blogwarming gift, like a comment or a link or something.
December 5, 2006
Synthesis is a good thing: Mark Chu-Carroll finds a similarity between Notch signaling and something mysterious called The Itai-Rodeh solution. It's not surprising that similar algorithms might arise by design and by evolution—which is why the IDists have to demonstrate something unique to their…
December 5, 2006
Since Orac is confessing to a stupid thing, I thought I'd repeat my own public admission of stupidity.
Public Service Announcement: Things Not to Do
Don’t carry batteries in your pocket.
This evening, I was stretched out on my recliner, enjoying a little light reading, when I smelled something odd—…
December 5, 2006
Ouch, this is painful to watch. It starts with pictures of kittens and Bambi and bagpipers (bagpipers?), and then this 12 year old kid comes on to declare evolution invalid. He throws up a list of objections to evolution culled from some creationist website somewhere—among them, for instance, is…
December 5, 2006
All-too-common-dissent finds another crazy creationist engineer. This one opens a molecular biology and genetics text, discovers that it doesn't talk about "Darwinism" (not surprising), and concludes that biology doesn't need evolution.
My hypothesis is that the field of molecular biology is…
December 5, 2006
Now you can take
tour of Darwin's sandwalk, too, by way of a video from the AMNH. Don't expect high drama, though—it's a series of shots of a path, trees, and brush—but look for restfulness and contemplation.
(via the Sandwalk, of course)
December 5, 2006
I like 'em. There are a few you absolutely must read today.
Teresa Nielsen Hayden on why she blogs.
Zuska on why she isn't polite.
Digby on our government's unforgivable inhumanity.
December 5, 2006
The Atheist Ethicist has written a book: A Better Place: Essays on Desire Utilitarianism.
When I was young I decided to try to leave the world better than it would have been if I had never lived. To do this, I had to know what 'A Better Place' actually was. Thus, I spent 12 years in college…
December 4, 2006
Oh, man: this is classic crank pseudoscience:
The heretofore unknown science of "earthing", patented by Clint Ober, is that your body needs to be earthed so that you can have the earth's antioxidizing flow of free electrons to go through your body and extinguish free radicals.
Earthing Axiom:
The…
December 4, 2006
Shorter Deepak Chopra: "I don't know how DNA works, so there must be an omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient God-field who does."
Wow, but that guy is one long-winded, boring gomer. It sounds like he might be planning to fart out just one more of these stinkers, but I'd thought he'd run out of gas…
December 4, 2006
I take my criticisms back. It seems Intelligent Design creationism has made a profound contribution to computer science.
Introduction
Intelligent design sort is a sorting algorithm based on the theory of intelligent design.
Algorithm Description
The probability of the original input list being in…
December 4, 2006
The denizens of the local chimpanzee refuge have begun to document their strategies in the War on Christmas. I have my own grand scheme, and all I'll say now is that it is subtle and eeeeevil.
December 4, 2006
Any parents out there? I bet you know the children's book, Goodnight Moon. I read it a few million times myself, with each kid as they came up through those preschool years, and I can still remember each page and how the little ones had to repeat each goodnight. Lance Mannion finds the strangest…
December 4, 2006
This story says it all in the title: He was naked, on crack and in alligator's mouth. It does make me feel a little better about waking up to single-digit temperatures and that blowing powdery stuff on the ground, I will say—we don't have much of a problem with naked unconscious people getting…
December 4, 2006
One of my favorite signal transduction pathways (what? You didn't know that true nerds had favorite molecular pathways?) is the one mediated by the receptor Notch. Notch is one of those genes in the metazoan toolkit that keeps popping up in all kinds of different contexts—it's the adjustable…
December 4, 2006
What could be worse than sharing a long border with hundreds of millions of ignorant, gun-crazed Americans? How about sharing a border with hundreds of millions of ignorant, gun-crazed, hungry Americans? Here's an evocative map for you.
That's how the primary wheat-growing region in North America…
December 4, 2006
This story has been simmering for a while: Kenyan fundamentalists are trying to suppress the fossil evidence, so well represented in their country, of human evolution. On one side, we have Richard Leakey:
He told The Daily Telegraph (London): "The National Museums of Kenya should be extremely…
December 3, 2006
Some real estate agent, Bill Wiese, had a bad dream: he thought he was in hell, and that Jesus had put him there so he could see what it was really like, and testify to the people. Alas, some people think this guy's fantasies are reality. That link is to a painful half-hour interview with Sid Roth…
December 3, 2006
Since Wilkins, Lynch, and Mike are doing this, I must follow (my mom said something about friends and cliffs once…I'm hoping that they don't ever decide to jump off one). The two mad biologists achieve parity!
Your 'Do You Want the Terrorists to Win' Score: 100%
Â
You are a terrorist-loving,…
December 3, 2006
Another video: watch the octopus escape through a small hole in a box. Bones are such a nuisance, aren't they?