Paul Z. Meyers
pharyngula
Posts by this author
June 21, 2011
This is amusing: it's a blog dedicated to documenting Famous Dead Mormons, listing those well-known people who were posthumously brought into the church. At the top of the list today, Alexander the Great, well-known for his ten-year mission to Persia and India.
June 21, 2011
Animal Aid, one of those mindless animal rights organizations, has just called on everyone in the UK to stop donating to specific medical charities, because they sponsor research that uses animals. I can sympathize with the goal of minimizing suffering in animals, but this is ridiculous: the…
June 21, 2011
I was sent this cartoon by Mia. Mom really doesn't love us any more than anything else.
Environmentalism is actually an act of self-defense.
(via Humon)
June 20, 2011
Since I ran into this on that furry blog, I knew it had to go here. A perfectly distilled 8 minutes of nothing but the Kraken scenes from Pirates of the Caribbean — no plot, no dialog, just tentacles everywhere. Yay!
(Last edition of TET; Current totals: 12,589 entries with 1,407,476 comments.)
June 20, 2011
It's a page from an old Irish Catholic schoolbook.
I like how not only do they clearly indicate the hierarchy of God's love, but they force the child to be complicit in assigning that love by circling the right picture — that's excellent indoctrination technique right there. It's a bonus that they…
June 20, 2011
The Secular Student Alliance is having their annual meeting in Columbus, Ohio on 29-31 July. You should go — it's relatively cheap, it has some cool atheist leaders and me giving talks, and it's a fantastic opportunity to network and find out how other student organizations are operating.
I'm a…
June 20, 2011
I am not a fan of beauty pageants, especially after hearing about the preliminary questions in the Miss USA contest. The women were asked if evolution should be taught in US schools. Only two of the 51 contestants could bring themselves to answer yes.
But here's the good news: one of those two was…
June 20, 2011
Some team in Canada won the Stanley Cup, which prompted happy revelers to…riot and destroy public property? I have never understood that behavior; when something good happens in my life, I've just never felt the slightest desire to celebrate by setting a police car on fire.
I shall now embarrass…
June 20, 2011
I often pick on Texas — that is one screwed-up, backwards, insane state, you know — but just for a change I thought I'd mention a few good people working there and doing what they can to improve the dump.
Aron Ra, of course, who is one of the best purveyors of scientific information on youtube…
June 20, 2011
It's not just a big dangerous-looking weapon, it's an electrosensory organ.
June 20, 2011
It was recorded, and now you can listen to it on Hari's podcast.
June 20, 2011
I honestly had no idea that David Mamet had turned into a flaming right-wing moron. And now he receives his comeuppance: his latest book is reviewed by Christopher Hitchens.
June 19, 2011
I received two packages the other day. The first was a substantial box, and when I opened it, I discovered a Bible, something called the Amplified Bible, a CD called "He is exalted" with recorded sermons just in case I was illiterate, a bookmark with a quote from Proverbs, a thank you note for…
June 19, 2011
My wife remembered, so she sent me a video that reminded her of all the things I've done as a parent: the egg tending, the fungus gnawing, the battling of the interlopers, the affectionate clashing of chelicerae. See, this is what fatherhood is all about.
In case that's not enough for you,…
June 19, 2011
I have a Twitter account, and there's nothing special about it except one nuisance: Dennis Markuze/David Mabus spams it constantly, creating dozens of new accounts every day and sending me hundreds of messages every day, typically repetitive stuff on the lines of "You are a NAZI!" and "We're going…
June 19, 2011
He's completely lost me again. Brown has a couple of posts up complaining about people referring to mental illness as a "brain disease" and confusing mind with brain — he seems to deplore the growing recognition that the mind is entirely a product of the brain, and that psychology is built on a…
June 19, 2011
Here is a sad, sad story: it's the tale of Michael Glatze. He was a gay man, a gay activist, someone who supported and helped gay kids. Now he's straight and crusades for gay conversion therapies. How, you might wonder, did that happen? You won't be surprised to learn that it was that potent…
June 19, 2011
Don't raise too loud a ruckus over this news, because I think she'll be cranky enough when she wakes up and reads about the Obedient Wives Club.
A new club in Indonesia that encourages women to be totally obedient to their husbands and focus on keeping them sexually satisfied has generated an…
June 18, 2011
Tomorrow at 9am central time (you can use the 56267 zip), it's Jamila Bey. She's good. You should listen.
June 18, 2011
Ben Goldacre and others carried out a very interesting study: they analyzed the top 10 UK newspapers for a week for their health reporting, and categorized the quality of the support for health claims. It's not encouraging.
Here's what we found: 111 health claims were made in UK newspapers over one…
June 18, 2011
The Minnesota Senate's loudest voice against climate change, it's chief denialist, is a Republican (of course) named Michael Jungbauer.
Sen. Jungbauer is fond of making pronouncements from on high regarding the scientific weakness of the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (…
June 18, 2011
Launching from my discussion with Muslim wackjobs in Dublin, this video takes my casual conversation and fleshes it out with details and references. Hey, looks like I was right!
June 18, 2011
Do we really need another wretched Texas governor in the White House? Rick Perry wants to be our president, and he has the backing of Bryan Fischer. What a combination…
Other countries of the world: watch out if this comes to pass. At that point, we'd officially be a pariah nation—your only…
June 18, 2011
Someone needs to tell Jerry Coyne that I adore calamari. Could he reply in kind if I posted a photo of fricasseed cat? Oh, wait, maybe it should be barbecued.
Now we all know who the truly heartless, callous atheist is.
June 18, 2011
Oh, jesus…Chris Stedman is coming out with a book titled Faitheist, all about "How One Atheist Learned to Overcome the Religious-Secular Divide, and Why Atheists and the Religious Must Work Together", which leaves me with a strange gagging sensation in the back of my throat. My response is that…
June 18, 2011
I have to give credit where credit is due, and this isn't entirely an anti-cat post. I've had cats; I've had to clean up their puke and hairballs, I've had to change their litter boxes, I've found the secret places in the house where they go to pee, so I know what they're like. And I know the cat…
June 18, 2011
Religion really does make people crazy. Here's a story about a dog who walked into a Jewish court.
The dog entered the Jerusalem financial court several weeks ago and would not leave, reports Israeli website Ynet.
It reminded a judge of a curse passed on a now deceased secular lawyer about 20…
June 17, 2011
Old timers may remember Unscrewing The Inscrutable, and the World Wide Rant, two blogs that preceded mine and were long on my blogroll before they both up and died from ennui or something. Now Andy and Brent have done something unnatural and disturbing: they have taken the dead, rotting corpses of…
June 17, 2011
We don't need no hymns, we just need songs like this.
(Last edition of TET; Current totals: 12,563 entries with 1,404,477 comments.)