pharyngula

Jerome a Paris has a first-rate overview of wind power on Daily Kos. I'm in a windy part of the world where this form of energy has great potential, and there is much local enthusiasm for wind turbines. Our first one is up just north of town, where I can sometimes catch a peek of it from my…

DaveScot, the lunatic who rants at Dembski's blog, has just posted an appalling complaint. He's been falsely sliming Kevin Padian as a racist, and now he's attacking Padian for saying that the religious fanatics who kill abortion doctors are contemptible. You read that right: you are not allowed to…

This is embarrassing. The Atheist Law Center, which I had never heard of before but from its website looks like it is mostly supporting the right stuff (OK, except for the weird calendar reform business), was founded by a guy named Larry Darby, who has since resigned. He is now running for attorney…

I didn't think of this one, Dustin did—but take a look at this comparison of search volume for "pharyngula" vs. "discovery institute". There's perspective for you: one wild-eyed guy with a blog is gaining on a whole gang of creationists with millions of dollars in funding and a machine to churn…

Check out this amusing discovery on Stochastic—there's this new tool on Google, Google Trends, that lets you compare the frequency of various searches. A silly creationist got all thrilled because searches for "Intelligent Design" beat searches for "Darwinism". You know where this is going. "…

Oh, no: it's a whole illustrated series of complicated moral dilemmas. Can you figure out what to do? All right, I lied. They aren't complicated at all…unless you're insane. (via Ezra)

Everybody must have read Michelle Goldberg's "Kingdom Coming: the Rise of Christian Nationalism" by now, right? This quote from George Grant, one of the big guys with televangelist D. James Kennedy, is simply chilling: Christians have an obligation, a mandate, a commission, a holy responsibility to…

For my students, at least—now I just have to buckle down and do a lot of grading over the next few days. I made my poor Human Physiology1 students suffer through a long comprehensive exam. For a lark, my son Connlann2 took the final, and I have to publicly shame him. I don't normally publicize exam…

Take heart, everyone, the magic number today is 29%—less than one third of our American compatriots are insane or stupid! Now we just have to worry that that 29% will become increasingly desperate and vicious, like cornered weasels.

Ooooh, what lovely fun: it's a short photoessay of a squid dissection. I think the photo of the gut contents ought to be made available in a much larger size so it can be used as a desktop image, though.

This one is for those blood-thirsty free-riding sprogs. Sepia apama Figure from Cephalopods: A World Guide (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Mark Norman.

The IDists are promoting a staged event at Biola—they are purporting to put their proponents "under fire"…at Biola. Right. This is the same kind of thing creationists always do, promoting their crap in venues that will guarantee a largely friendly, and largely ignorant, audience. In this case,…

His book, The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America, apparently only contains 100 professors. While some might argue that this is an indicator of his sloppiness, I prefer to think of it as his offering of hope: those of us aren't in the book can now dream that we were supposed to…

I've been catching up with the blogs, and I'm seeing outrage over the revelation that the NSA has been carrying out wide-spectrum data mining of the American people…that it hasn't just been surveillance of suspected terrorists. You know, if everyone would just read Gary Farber, you'd have known…

Crap. Coturnix tagged me with this beautiful bird meme, and I am the wrong person to ask. I don't get out much, preferring to sit in the lab or the library, so my favorite birds are all in pieces and dead. But OK, since he asked… Bird digits Bird teeth Bird brains Jurassic bird brains Bird lungs…

Flitting about as I have lately means I've been missing this, that and the other thing. So here's a quick summary. Tuesday night I was at the Café Scientifique in Minneapolis, where UMM's Timna Wyckoff gave a talk on antibiotic resistance. It was terrific! Lots of good questions throughout, and a…

I'm pretty sure he'd drive a Hummer H2, with a pile of fast food wrappers in the back, a Bush/Cheney bumper sticker, and one of those stainless steel bull scrotum castings hanging from the rear.

Lots of people have sent me links to this—thanks, all!—and it's the perfect thing to lift me out of the finals week blahs, and it's also just in time for Mother's Day on Sunday: The Devonian Blues. Every single girl and every little boy Was born from the clan of the wayward Dipnoi Don't let the…

We're still on the road here—we've ducked into a place in Eau Claire for dinner, and it has free Wi-Fi!—and while sucking in the pile of email waiting for me, I see that our prom photos have arrived. Here's me and Mary at the Geek Prom. Yeah, she does look better than the octopus woman from…

The latest Tangled Bank is online at Science Notes: Go climb a tree!

SkookumPlanet sent me a tantalizing photo. Contemplate the possibilities. (Don't worry, Mary, I'll never trade you in.)

Diploblasts are popping up everywhere this week. If you take a look at the phylogeny in this article, you'll see that one of the diagnostic features of the cnidarians is the presence of the cnidoblast, which contains a stinging nematocyst. This is the 'stinger' of the jellyfish…and now it's been…

This is unnatural. Although, I suppose, if one found that molluscan look really attractive, that gadget and a slathering of a water-based lubricant would do the job.

Need something to talk about while I'm on the road? I think Atrios's post on positive things for progressive bloggers to advocate (which is also echoed by Drum) is an excellent starting point. These are good things that set us apart from them; these are the kinds of ideas we should be talking about…

It's another traveling day for me! I'm off to Minneapolis for a few meetings, and also this important event tonight: Café Scientifique Antibiotics in Agriculture with Timna Wyckoff Tuesday, May 9, 6-8 p.m. Varsity Theater, Dinkytown Free. Must be 18 or older to attend. The Union of Concerned…

The poor man is inundated with hateful email. People don't like him, they're angry at George Bush, they accuse him of being Bush's lapdog (a charge he denies, but Digby provides the evidence—hatefully, no doubt), and he just can't understand why (at least I can answer that one: it's because he's…

Whillikers has found a most excellent scientific paper. If that's what physics is like, you should see the noise we get in biology.

The idiots at ABC News have an article in which they describe the efforts of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists to get good information out there about emergency contraception, and they get it all wrong: Plan B, the brand name for emergency contraception, can prevent a…

My mailbox today contained something very amusing, if it weren't so evil: someone sent me a copy of this 128 page, glossy rag titled "America, Return to God", from Great Commission Center International. It's a wretched but expensive looking thing, full of articles from such lying luminaries as…

The Wnt genes produce signalling proteins that play important roles in early development, regulating cell proliferation, differentiation and migration. It's hugely important, used in everything from early axis specification in the embryo to fine-tuning axon pathfinding in the nervous system. The…