pharyngula

Martin Rundkvist has some complaints about the Skeptical Inquirer magazine, specifically about their staff and contributors. They're all men, and their mean age appears to be about 55. This is perhaps not surprising given the age and gender of the editor-in-chief. Now wait a minute—being in your…

I knew someone would eventually be brave enough to try and support Coulter's "science" in Godless…wouldn't you know, though, that it would be a columnist on the disturbingly unhinged RenewAmerica site, Wes Vernon, the fellow whose disturbingly asymmetric visage you see here. It doesn't quite do…

Dave Thomas explains Genetic Algorithms and demonstrates that, as usual, the Intelligent Design bigwigs don't have any idea what they're talking about.

The most amusing coverage of the Nature top science blogs article comes from The Technology Chronicles, which begins by calling scientists "sober, dispassionate, precise" and suggests that we've abandoned "Olympian impartiality" to compete with Cute Overload. I get the impression the author hasn't…

The only eulogy Kenny Boy needs is Al Swearengen's (warning: not for the lily-livered or the sanctimonious.)

Last week, I received some delusional e-mail from Phil Skell, who claims that modern biology has no use for evolutionary theory. This will raise hysterical screeches from its true-believers. But, instead they should take a deep breath and tell us how the theory is relevant to the modern biology.…

Declan Butler has a short article in this week's Nature on the "Top 5 Science Blogs". This was determined by identifying blogs written by scientists and determining their rank on Technorati. The top five are: Pharyngula, at #179 The Panda's Thumb, at #1647 RealClimate, at #1884 Cosmic Variance, at…

Reading some of my favorite blogs today, I can't help but feel the looming hand of fate preparing to destroy us all. Jon Voisey is praising a director of the Oklahoma ACLU, Joanne Bell. You're in Kansas, Jon. It's not that far from Oklahoma. What happened to Bell could happen to you. Ophelia…

Oh, no. I've wasted my life prepping students for med school. (via Skeptico)

One more piece of creationist email for you: this one was addressed to me and all of my fraternity of Godless Atheists, which I think means you readers here. Never mind protesting that some of you are Christian—get used to it, to these guys you will never be truly Christian. Anyway, it's not a very…

There is a new edition of the Tangled Bank at e3 Information Overload.

Time to go punish my daughter for the crap she posts on her weblog.

It's been three years since I visited Washington state, and Kerry of Federal Way just had to make me homesick by sending photos from the West Coast Chainsaw Carving Competition. I've been there before! It's fun and noisy. It's just as well I didn't go this year: I would not have been able to resist…

Since it is the Fourth of July, it seems only right to post something from the Revolution. Our reading for the day is the Age of Reason, by that fierce freethinking firebrand, Thomas Paine. All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human…

I'm going to go fire up the grill in a little while, so here's something for those of you not yet doing the traditional Fourth of July thing to chew on…a tasty scrap of the kind of email I get. EVOLUTION IS ENTIRELY FALLACIOUS. MEIOSIS CASTRATES EVOLUTION.KARYOTYPES DISPROVE EVOLUTION. THE…

Carl Zimmer tells us all about the recent big dodo find, in both the pages of the Grey Lady and a podcast. He's a master of multimedia, that guy.

You can ignore the gushy science-groupie parts of this post (it just makes me blush, and wonder where all these girls were when I was single*), but the movie—which is on a completely different topic altogether—but the imbedded movie is hilarious. *It was so long ago, they probably hadn't even been…

You know, I really can't stand George Gilder. He's one of those pompous poseurs who pretends to be a fan of science and technology, yet whenever he opens his mouth you discover that he doesn't know jack about the subject. I've excoriated Gilder before (a whuppin' so cruel that Gilder's daughter and…

Here I am, in the upper midwest, and I still haven't made it to the Field Museum in Chicago—Chicago is just far enough away that I can't quite make the trip, and it's close enough that it doesn't sound at all exotic. I just have to rely on other people's accounts. (I've also noticed that…

The picture says it all, doesn't it? Well, maybe not everything. There's lots that could be said, but personally, I find it hard to get much beyond shocked silence. Can we please take our country back from the christianists soon? Here's something else to prompt your disgust.

Be astounded: there was actually one astrologer who, in 2000, published a book of advice that specifically said, "Avoid terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001." She didn't fake it, there wasn't any post-event modification of a prediction going on, she actually did it. Can you guess how? Under…

I like Kansas and Kansans—I've got a copy of Oceans of Kansas(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll) on the coffee table at home, I think the paleontological history of the region is wonderful and represents a great opportunity for the residents to learn. And then there's this news: a major meteorite find, and…

Lindsay makes a factual error: Minnesota does not have a state fossil. We had a bill introduced almost 20 years ago to make Castoroides ohioensis, a 6-foot long, 250 pound giant beaver, our state fossil…but some people objected to the fact that it's named after Ohio, and I suspect there might have…

Normally, I'd get indignant at plagiarism and any student who tries it with me is likely to get axed on the spot. In Ann Coulter's case, though, while not disagreeing with the assessment, ripping off "33 word passages" and such just doesn't get me worked up. That she literally transcribed scattered…

This is helpful. Senator Ted Stevens explains how the internet works. And again, the internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a truck. It's a series of tubes. And if you don't understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in…

Dembski babbles on in his own little world, unaware of how ridiculous his strange contortions look. He has a paper out that compares Evolution as Alchemy, attempting to argue that the incompletely described history of life on earth means that evolution is as phony as an antiquated mystical…

Jesus. If we get a few more signing on, we'll have the start of a movement.

Wingnuttia, O Wingnuttia. There are so many lunacies uttered in that fabled land that one cannot possibly keep up with them all, so it's useful when one of them distills it all down and gives us a condensed list of the properties of a True Conservative. We have such a useful list, written by Rob…

I get lots of email from people—it's not just creationists and wingnuts calling me nasty names, but also people on my side who just want to express their appreciation, or people passing along tips and links to interesting stories. I rarely reply. It's nothing personal, it's just that if I wrote…

The science blogosphere must be getting big if it can support biology subspecialty carnivals: now you can read collections of posts about just bioinformatics or genetics. And here I thought a general science carnival might be too narrow to draw in a wide readership, way back in the dark ages!