Paul Z. Meyers
pharyngula
Posts by this author
May 2, 2011
Would you believe that Greta Christina of Greta Christina's Blog, Hemant Mehta of Friendly Atheist, Jen McCreight of Blag Hag, and JT Eberhard of Zerowing21, after the severe beat-down I gave them and even before they had belatedly dragged themselves over the finish line in our race to raise…
May 1, 2011
There isn't much information available, but apparently Osama Bin Laden has been killed and his body recovered. I'm expecting his head to be mounted on a pike outside the White House now.
So…are we done? Can we bring the troops home and call off the war on terror?
Some people don't seem to realize…
May 1, 2011
…except for the reminder of all of the surveillance cameras my parents used to keep me out of trouble.
May 1, 2011
You know I'm coming to the big city in less than two weeks, right? I'll be at the Anti-Superstition Bash on Friday, May 13, 2011 from 7:00 PM to 11:00 PM at the Corinthian Yacht Club, in Essington, PA. You know you want to go, if for nothing else for the snooty thrill of being able to tell your…
May 1, 2011
Say hello to Grady Warren, presidential candidate representing the Florida Tea Party. He's not a racist, he says, he's just "tired of Blacks, nigras, Muslims, and Hispanics, especially the illegals, calling us racist for trying to save the America that we love."
I bet you can't make it all the way…
May 1, 2011
Michele Bachmann opened her mouth again. She compared increasing the tax rates for the rich to the Holocaust.
She said she was shocked to hear that many Americans weren't aware that millions of Jews had died until after World War II ended.
Bachmann said the next generation will ask similar…
April 30, 2011
This video begins with a clip from Glenn Beck which nearly had me running away screaming, but stick with it — it thoroughly explains the false scandal.
April 30, 2011
Read the latest from Gregory Paul and Phil Zuckerman. Are we smug and arrogant? Damned right, and with good reason.
A growing body of social science research reveals that atheists, and non-religious people in general, are far from the unsavory beings many assume them to be. On basic questions of…
April 30, 2011
It's always interesting when some god-walloper honestly follows through on the logical implications of his beliefs — he basically is compelled to admit that if you worship a tyrannical monster, you have to end up rationalizing monstrous tyrannies. The latest to enlighten us with excuses for bronze…
April 29, 2011
I've done this 200 times now?
(Last edition of TET; Current totals: 12,283 entries with 1,355,799 comments.)
April 29, 2011
As you know by now, we're in a fierce competition between myself, the mega-behemoth of godless blogging, against a ragtag flock of motley pee-wee bloggers, all to raise money for Camp Quest.
I am privy to certain emails that have been flying, I should mention, and they reveal that my opposition…
April 29, 2011
HBO has this show now — you've heard about it? — recreating a most excellent fantasy series by George R.R. Martin. I enjoy a good fantasy story, and I think Martin is a fabulous writer…but man, I read the books, and I felt burned.
Here's the basic premise established at the start of the first novel…
April 29, 2011
I've been asked to compete in a fundraising contest for Camp Quest. But look what they did to me!
Five awesome atheist bloggers are competing to see who can raise the most money to support Camp Quest!
Since one of those bloggers is the indomitable PZ Myers of Pharyngula, we have made two teams…
April 28, 2011
Coral Ridge Ministries, that awful fundagelical organization founded by D. James Kennedy, has "discovered" a couple of former workers willing to testify about the evil practices of Planned Parenthood.
"They have an abortion budget and they have a certain number of patients that you have to perform…
April 28, 2011
Ellen Lewin is a professor in the anthropology department at the University of Iowa. Like all of us, she is constantly dunned with email announcing this, that, and the other thing at our universities, and sometimes we get email that makes our blood boil. In this case, she got mail from the College…
April 28, 2011
The last mission of the space shuttle will contain a student-initiated experiment: a collection of bobtail squid embryos will be launched into space. Which is cool, I suppose. I like squid, I like space, I like science, I like student research, let's just throw them all into one big tossed salad of…
April 27, 2011
Well, it is, but I don't recommend voting on it. It's on WingNutDaily, and the only way to vote is to register with them…which is not recommended. Them folks is craaaaazy! They were asked their opinion of Obama's birth certificate.
Sound off on Obama's release of his purported long-form birth…
April 27, 2011
No more, no more, please. We're already taking off our shoes, getting our junk scanned, waiting in line, dangling our goo in plastic bags, and basically suffering through ludicrous post hoc measures that do nothing to improve our security. And now the TSA is dispatching 'behavioral experts' to…
April 27, 2011
Yeaah…I'm pretty sure this video isn't safe for work. Ladies and gay men, I give you Hunky Jesus.
(Last edition of TET; Current totals: 12,272 entries with 1,353,192 comments.)
April 27, 2011
I've been giving talks at scientific meetings on educational outreach — I've been telling the attendees that they ought to start blogs or in other ways make more of an effort to educate the public. I mentioned one successful result the other day, but we need more.
I give multiple reasons for…
April 27, 2011
The president has announced that he has an American birth certificate, like this was really an issue. If he thought this would end the yammering inanity, he was mistaken.
Donald Trump is preening.
He should have done it a long time ago. I am really honored to play such a big role in hopefully,…
April 27, 2011
The existence of Ken Ham proves that creationism changes, therefore proving that it is not absolute, inerrant truth as he claims, therefore Ken Ham disproves creationism. QED. We can all go home now.
By the way, that's not a bad diagram for illustrating the relationships of the various versions of…
April 27, 2011
Oh, look what's on the pharmacy shelves! It's "medicine" for cute little babies! Everyone loves babies, and we want them to gurgle and coo and be happy, so when their widdle tummies make them cranky, we give them a little medicine to make them feel better.
Only…Brauer is marketing homeopathic "…
April 26, 2011
That open letter to the NCSE by Jerry Coyne really seems to have set the cat among the pigeons — it's an amazing flurry of ruffled feathers. I don't see how there's any hope of reconciliation, either, as long as the apologists for religion continue to be as obtuse as they have been. Roger Stanyard…
April 26, 2011
Steve Novella is going to appear on the Dr Oz show today, and that promo has convinced me that Oz is an unforgivable charlatan. I'm swamped with work — we're into the final two weeks of classes — so I don't think I'll be able to tune in, but any of you who do…report back! I'm sure Novella will…
April 26, 2011
I have to agree with Ezra Klein's explanation.
President Obama, if you look closely at his positions, is a moderate Republican from the early 1990s. And the Republican Party he's facing has abandoned many of its best ideas in its effort to oppose him.
April 26, 2011
I read this story with mounting disbelief. Every paragraph had me increasingly aghast. It's another case of physicists explaining biology badly.
It started dubiously enough. Paul Davies, cosmologist and generally clever fellow, was recruited to help cure cancer, despite, by his own admission,…