Paul Z. Meyers
pharyngula
Posts by this author
August 25, 2006
Here's a little Friday reading:
Friday Ark #101
Carnival of Feminist Science Fiction and Fantasy Fans #4
Carnival of Education #81
Also don't forget to send in those links for Tangled Bank #61 to pzmyers@pharyngula.org, host@tangledbank.net, or Epigenetics News.
August 25, 2006
The secret life of married couples is exposed by Belle Waring: my wife and I also sit up late at night in bed with our laptops.
If you're distressed at the idea that what you're reading was composed by a PZ in dishabille, though, no worries. I only browse and read in bed, and don't actually write.
August 25, 2006
Hey, this is a very good site for us Minnesotans: the Minnesota Monitor.
Minnesota Monitor is an independently-produced political news daily featuring original and investigative reporting.
As a coalition of long-time progressive bloggers, freelance writers, and professional journalists our aim is…
August 25, 2006
I've been prodded by Marcus to mention a recent article by Brian Leiter, Could Mencken Write for a Newspaper Today? I think I just assumed everyone was already reading the Leiter Reports regularly.
Anyway, where are our modern Menckens—the acerbic, secular critics of the culture of the mindless? It…
August 25, 2006
Janet asks, "How should we professorial types be addressed by our students?" I'm introducing myself to a new crop of students in an hour, so this is something I also go through every year.
My answer: if the students don't know the professor, the default should be "Dr" or "Professor." Always. It's…
August 25, 2006
Euprymna tasmanica
Figure from Cephalopods: A World Guide (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Mark Norman.
August 25, 2006
DefCon Blog has put up a video clip of an unused embryo's fate.
Watch it get eliminated. It sounds horrific, but it's a matter of pulling a tube out of a flask of liquid nitrogen and putting it in the trash. That's what the Religious Right is getting all worked up about.
August 25, 2006
It's cute, but where did this cartoon convention of one-eyed cephalopods get started?
August 25, 2006
We have a more complete demolition of the odious Mr Wells wretched book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design, on the way at the Panda's Thumb. Different chapters were farmed out to different contributors (as you can see, I got the chapter on idiotic embryology), and…
August 25, 2006
The comment section at Pharyngula is becoming a bit too wild west lately. I am all for vigorous, unhindered language and the expression of strong opinions, and I think dumb ideas need to be dealt with harshly, but we also need to allow opportunities for those ideas to be fully expressed. Too often…
August 24, 2006
Darwin's Deadly Legacy, the program that Coral Ridge Ministries is airing this weekend that supposedly links Hitler to Darwin, is beginning to look like a public relations catastrophe for the organization. First Francis Collins repudiated the show, then the ADL put the hammer down, and now another…
August 24, 2006
This article is part of a series of critiques of Jonathan Wells' The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design that will be appearing at the Panda's Thumb over the course of the next week or so. Previously, I'd dissected the summary of chapter 3. This is a longer criticism of…
August 24, 2006
The situation on the right wing must be getting bad when you can't even tell Jack Kemp and Phyllis Schlafly apart anymore.
August 24, 2006
Shelley asks what we think of the death penalty…that's an easy one to answer. I am absolutely against it; I think it brutalizes the culture, puts untoward power in the hands of government, and since I have little trust in the reliability of the court system, allows irreversible and tragic errors. I…
August 24, 2006
Here's an idea. If I'm worried that my wife would object to squid art, I could ease her into the idea by first exposing her to rooms with an arthropod theme. As another advantage, when I opened the door to salesmen and Jehovah's Witnesses, they'd see giant spiders clinging to the walls and run…
August 24, 2006
In a surprising discovery, reading the Wall Street Journal opinion pages will make you 57% dumber, will kill 8,945,562,241 neurons, and will force you to invent ridiculous statistics. Don't follow that link! The article will make you cry as you go through a Flowers for Algernon experience.
You…
August 24, 2006
If you've been following the Australian lungfish saga, there's a new development, and it's an ugly one. As the Noosa Journal reports (they don't seem to have a web accessible archive, so this issue may vanish soon; here's a screenshot), the Queensland government is actively suppressing scientific…
August 24, 2006
The Friends of Charles Darwin website update I mentioned yesterday is complete (I toasted it with a latte instead of a whiskey, I'm afraid). You do know that if you join, you are then entitled to put an official "FCD" after your name, which looks very distinguished and high-falutin' (I just…
August 24, 2006
Oooh, I love this idea: art prints on a plastic adhesive that you just stick on the wall. They've got squid art! Unfortunately, they've also got a hefty price, and doubly unfortunately, my wife has this annoying thing called "taste" which precludes me slapping squid up everywhere in my house.
(via…
August 23, 2006
Hrrrm-hah. Well. The FrinkTank has delivered a little addendum to the last Tangled Bank. Sneaky. You knew those guys couldn't possibly do everything conventionally.
Meanwhile, Tangled Bank #61 will be appearing at Epigenetics News next Wednesday. Send in those links!
August 23, 2006
The syllabus for Biol 4181, Developmental Biology is now online. Start reading! It looks like I'll have you reading 50-100 pages of Wolpert and Carroll or Zimmer a week.
I want you all to know this is something of a miracle—I usually finish my syllabus the night before the class starts, so I'm very…
August 23, 2006
Douglas Theobald passed along an interesting collection of quotes from that atheist evolutionist, Adolph Hitler. It's particularly interesting the he outlawed atheist and freethought groups in 1933.
It's a long list of quotes, so I'll tuck it below the fold.
"The anti-Semitism of the new movement…
August 23, 2006
Aaron Kinney makes a good point about claims that the Holocaust was Darwin-inspired:
I would argue that even if Hitler really did use Darwin's theory as inspiration for the mass-murder of Jews, he got it wrong. Throwing millions of Jews into death camps is, in my opinion, artificial selection! It…
August 23, 2006
Chris Mooney did send me a copy of the new paperback edition of The Republican War on Science, so it's official: he's now the man who tried to kill me twice.
At least I can testify that a Mooney attack is survivable. I toughened myself up since the first edition with a regimen of Coulter and Wells…
August 23, 2006
Chris Mooney is trying to kill me.
It's true. He sent me this book, The Republican War on Science(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll) (now available in a new paperback edition!), that he knew would send my blood pressure skyrocketing, give me apoplexy, and cause me to stroke out and die, gasping, clawing in…
August 23, 2006
I have just received word that the Friends of Charles Darwin website is getting a facelift and will be relaunched tonight, at 21:30 BST, and everyone is supposed to simultaneously sip from a glass of malt whiskey. That's in about 4 hours…hey, that's tea time! We can't be guzzling alcoholic…
August 23, 2006
If you've heard the strange little anecdote about GW Bush that's going around, you will find Tild hilarious today. The illustration is perfect.
August 23, 2006
George Coyne, the Vatican astronomer, has been sacked. Red State Rabble and John Wilkins speak out on it.
They cite one source condescendingly claiming that Coyne "appointed himself an expert in evolutionary biology," while Bruce Chapman of the Discovery Institute (speaking of unqualified gits…
August 23, 2006
Wow…so this mysterious stuff called dark matter actually exists? Sean Carroll gives us the context and the beautiful pictures, while MarkCC explains the math.