Paul Z. Meyers
pharyngula
Posts by this author
May 31, 2011
It's always a surprise. I'm lounging in St Paul with an iced tea, browsing the City Pages, the news and arts weekly, and after reading a good article about the recent pharmaceutical debacle with levaquin, I turn the page, and there's my name. dang, that's right — I'm expected to perform.
May 31, 2011
In the last episode of our competition to raise money for Camp Quest, I had elegantly and cunningly turned the tables on Team Beat PZ: after trouncing them thoroughly in all fundraising efforts, I had maneuvered them into desperately offering all kinds of humiliating forfeits if they should win the…
May 31, 2011
Hey, I've got a few days free at the tag end of my trip to Ireland and the UK. Would it be a good idea to pop in to visit the Cheltenham Science Festival? Is it easy to get to, and once I get there, will it be easy and reasonable to get lodging for a night? I'd love to see Robin Ince's Infinite…
May 31, 2011
I'm jealous. Jen McCreight is on the Savage Love podcast. She chews him out for a lack of skepticism, too.
May 31, 2011
John Loftus criticizes the Courtier's Reply. How dare he? I thought it was Holy Atheist Writ by now.
But the Courtier's Reply as an answer for theology needs to be discussed critically. First off, I do not expect anyone to understand any particular theology in order to reject it. We all do this…
May 30, 2011
Oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy. This is wonderful news, happy happy joy joy, gosha'mighty, I'm wiggling in my chair like a tickled puppy. What has made me so happy, you might ask?
A week from today I'm going to be speaking at the Crystal Palace in Glasgow, Scotland. I'll be talking about the…
May 30, 2011
I feel a little bit guilty saying this: every time I write about Jonah Lehrer, it seems to be about jumping on his ideas, even though I think he's a good writer and his other ideas, the ones I don't carp about, are interesting. The last time was when I criticized his noise about how science is…
May 30, 2011
Science magazine has published the formal criticisms of the claim to have found extremophiles that substituted arsenic for phosphorus in their chemistry. It's a thorough drubbing, and the most disappointing part is that Wolfe-Simon's rebuttal simply insists that they were right, and doesn't even…
May 30, 2011
The Creation "Museum" is 4 years old, and co-founder Mark Looy was interviewed.
"The number-one comment we get, whether it's from a Christian or a non-Christian, is that this place exceeded their expectations," he reports. "The quality of the exhibits, the special effects theatre, the state-of-the-…
May 30, 2011
On my last flight, I sat next to a woman who had the worst case of fear of flying I've ever seen. She spent the entire trip clutching the armrests and breaking into frequent bouts of tears; when I asked if there was anything I could do, she said, no, she knew it was completely irrational, but she…
May 30, 2011
It's as if the media is finally getting it right and timing the news to match the World Atheist Convention in Dublin with stories that show why we must oppose religion. The New York Times tells the story of the Magdalene laundries, in which 30,000 women were used as slave labor (and victims of…
May 30, 2011
Johan Huibers, the owner of a construction company in the Netherlands, is way ahead of Ken Ham. He has actually begun construction of a replica of Noah's Ark, and his even floats—although he accomplishes that by cheating, building his ark as a wooden superstructure on top of an array of bolted-…
May 30, 2011
Somehow, I just think that's what all the wildlife of Ireland wander about bellowing.
May 29, 2011
I'll be brief. I'm sure you all find these things as tiresome as I do. Once again, we've got a couple of indignant wanna-be bureaucrats of atheism complaining about those cranky, rough-hewn gnu atheists. Chris Stedman and Karla McLaren are shocked that people don't realize their hectoring is good…
May 29, 2011
Rabbi Moshe Averick asks, "Seriously, Aren't Atheists Embarrassed by P.Z. Myers?"
Seriously, aren't you? What's the matter with you people?
What prompts his outrage is his discovery of a lecture I gave some time back on the complexity argument from intelligent design creationists. He is appalled at…
May 29, 2011
I didn't get the right leg up on my financial situation from my mother. If she'd done her job right, I might be in Bristol Palin's situation. Bristol Palin, famous for being the daughter of a wackaloon politician and nothing else, was signed on to be the public spokesperson for a foundation…
May 29, 2011
Believers and I have a fundamentally different view of history.
There are these words that religious people throw about with abandon — prophecy, fate, destiny, God's plan — that I don't believe in at all. We've recently witnessed an extreme example of this, as certain fundamentalist Christians…
May 29, 2011
It's become standard in the US for polling places (real polling places, not the online kind) to hand out little "I voted" stickers after you've made your contribution. This is a totally meaningless act; the stickers aren't used to actually track who has voted or not, they're just there to make you…
May 28, 2011
"Caturday"? What is this "Caturday" frippery I see on various blogs today? It seems to consist entirely of photos and video clips of small furry predators in repose or at play, and it's not very interesting. Let us try something more stimulating.
Loom from Polynoid on Vimeo.
The "ooh"ing and "aah…
May 28, 2011
You know that shark fin soup you get in Chinese restaurants? Fishermen catch shark indiscriminately, lop off their fins, and throw the poor bleeding mangled beasts back in the sea to die. There is a move afoot to ban the practice, what do you think?
Are you in favor of the shark fin ban?
Yes 37%
No…
May 28, 2011
This is a video produced in the 1960s to illustrate life in the 1990s. Nerds will find hilarity in the computer interfaces, women will rage at the gender stereotypes.
May 28, 2011
Read this horror story of a failed pregnancy.
I was taking an afternoon nap when the hemorrhaging started while my toddler napped in his room when I woke up to find blood gushing upward from my body. Though I didn't know it at the time, I was experiencing a placental abruption, a complication my…
May 28, 2011
Minnesota Atheists is trying to raise money to keep their radio program on the air — they have to, because it looks like rich Republican think tanks or gold-sellers aren't paying for ads, and the woo-infested shows that surround its time slot are selling air time to quack medicine companies,…
May 28, 2011
Join me, fellow nerds, in nodding in agreement with this comic.
From the mouseover text: "Also, all financial analysis. And, more directly, D&D." True again.
May 28, 2011
The scientific animation company, XVIVO, has had their work 'appropriated' by creationists before, and I hate to say it, but there is a reason for it. Although their animations of cellular and molecular processes are spectacular and beautiful, they are also annoyingly purposeful: they show tubulin…
May 27, 2011
As you know, we're having a little contest to raise money for Camp Quest, and we've been competing to see who can raise the most money for a good cause. It's me standing alone against the team of Hemant Mehta, Jen McCreight, JT Eberhard , Digital Cuttlefish, Sikivu Hutchinson, Adam Lee, The…
May 27, 2011
I've had people ask me this in all seriousness, but I haven't seen a real sign yet with this message:
There is a church with this name and logo in Richmond, VA, and the sign doesn't match any of the standard church sign generator designs, so I think it's real.
I know I shouldn't be surprised, but…
May 27, 2011
I was reading Roger Ebert's lament over the disgraceful decline of quality in theater projection (a function of theater owners who just don't care anymore and the corrupting influence of bad 3D), and then I remembered that last year I took some pictures of the funky old technology in our local…
May 27, 2011
It's amazing what religion can do. In this case, it motivated some dim old fart who ought to have been loafing about watching Glenn Beck and drowning his anger with a six-pack of Bud to go out and try to murder gynecologists. He didn't actually succeed, fortunately: he was playing with his gun in…