pharyngula

What is it with these loons? They've got nothing, but they're continually telling us what they could accomplish, if only they…what? I don't know. The latest trend in kook blogs is to tell us all the things that would happen if we only accepted their weird premises. Here, for example, is Terry…

Jen McCreight is running an online poll to determine the most influential female atheist of the year. Uh-oh. You'd think she'd learn. But given that the results will be utterly meaningless, it's still useful — there's quite a long list of good XX godless folk, and commenters keep mentioning more…

He has kept his blog Amygdala going for 9 years now. I have to keep Pharyngula up and running for two more years to catch up with him! (Oh, wait, then he'll have been going for 11 years…dang.)

This topic came up earlier this week: creationists are always yammering about the "missing link" and how it's missing and therefore evolution is unsupported by the evidence. It's total nonsense, since evolution doesn't predict a "missing link", but it seemed worthwhile to explain why, since there…

Sorry, gang, I know you were all counting on coming out to cheer me up in my lonely isolation — my wife is away, visiting relatives — but there was that nasty wet storm yesterday, and I just spent a couple of hours digging out the driveway and sidewalks from that (-20°C! A four foot high pile in…

(via X-Ray Mag)

The weather is abominable. We started out the day with thick, slushy, wet clumps of snow coming down with rain, and now we've got fierce winds and an icy fog of blowing blizzardy stuff everywhere. So I fixed myself a dinner of baked salmon and washed it down with Fire Rock Pale Ale. If I close my…

The journal Nature has selected optogenetics as its "Method of the Year", and it certainly is cool. But what really impressed me is this video, which explains the technique. It doesn't talk down to the viewer, it doesn't overhype, it doesn't rely on telling you how it will cure cancer (it doesn't…

People keep sending me this link to an article by Jonah Lehrer in the New Yorker: The Decline Effect and the Scientific Method, which has the subheadings of "The Truth Wears Off" and "Is there something wrong with the scientific method?" Some of my correspondents sound rather distraught, like they'…

The British government has been getting a bit mother-henish lately, arresting people for cruelty to religious texts, and clearly has it in mind to provide special legal protection for a certain class of books. My first thought would be that that is insane, books are mere objects that are easily…

It makes me want to give her a big smile and a hug and whisk her off to get psychological counseling.

Let us prolong the prolonged thread further with a little MC Frontalot. (Current totals: 11,591 entries with 1,228,173 comments.)

Tonight, it was the Mothership Wit. Funky wheaty. Not bad.

If any of you are writing to Governor Beshear of Kentucky about the life-sized Noah's Ark the state will be underwriting, don't wait for a reply — he's sending out a standardized form letter, which many people have been forwarding to me. Here it is, in case you haven't got one. Thank you for…

Don't ask me why, I just found this little story hilarious, and I didn't want to wait until Christmas eve 2011 to post it. While we're throwing around Christmas hilarity, this story is so ironic it made me giggle: The Next Person Who Says Happy Holidays Shall Be Punched In The Throat. It's not a…

I'm struggling with some annoying problems with my computer right now: every once in a while, it spontaneously dies without warning, and the system says there's something wrong with the battery. It's happened now several times today, always right when I'm in the middle of writing something. I've…

S.E. Cupp is a peculiar creature: she insists that she is an atheist, but I've never actually seen her defend or promote or even accept the idea of atheism. Instead, all she ever does is carp at atheists for being arrogant or smug or militant or whatever the current term of opprobrium might be. I…

People don't realize how insane the literal interpretation of the Bible can get. There is no room for ambiguity or error in the book of Genesis, so when God tells Noah to put at least a pair of every living thing on the big boat, he didn't offer any exceptions — therefore, every living thing had a…

A slightly late Christmas present arrived on my doorstep this afternoon: Søren from Denmark had a case of 12 interesting beers sent to me. Thank you! Now, of course, I must drink them all. Immediately. No, wait, that would be unwise. I shall drink one a night until they are gone. Tonight, I am…

My direct experience with prokaryotes is sadly limited — while our entire lives and environment are profoundly shaped by the activity of bacteria, we rarely actually see the little guys. The closest I've come was some years ago, when I was doing work on grasshopper embryos, and sterile technique…

Lawrence Murphy was an evil man. He was a Wisconsin priest who molested over 200 boys, and just to make the story particularly deplorable, they were deaf children. Preying on the weakest and most vulnerable was apparently his life's mission. Furthermore, this was the scandalous case that was…

Atheist Ireland is looking to determine the most fervent believer of the year with an online poll (frivolous topic, frivolous poll), and I was astounded to discover it had hardly been touched. It was an almost virginal poll. The really, truly True Believer™ of the YEAR 2010 And the winner of 2010…

The Pope had a Christmas message for the world this year: we should forgive Catholic priests for raping children because everyone else was doing it. He invented a peculiar history that bears no resemblance to the late 20th century I lived in. "In the 1970s, paedophilia was theorised as something…

Then it's not too late to get this fabulous ornament for it: Even if you don't have a Christmas tree ever or any more, you can still help out with the James Randi Educational Foundation's fundraising campaign. The JREF has been awarding grants to teachers and students to promote critical thinking…

The Prophet has changed in the past few centuries. Don't be confused, Pharynguthreadlians, omnipotent beings have their whims. (Current totals: 11,578 entries with 1,226,199 comments.)

Joe wrote me a letter because he doesn't think my arguments against creationism are very good. Unfortunately, his arguments are…well, pretty much the standard inconsistent and incoherent tripe I always get from creationists. But at least Joe has an excuse: he's only 12. By the way, his email…

Mary listened to Science Friday on Christmas Eve, and now she's all about the bees.

When last we left this subject, I had pointed out that the phenomenon of embryonic similarity within a phylum was real, and that the creationists were in a state of dishonest denial, arguing with archaic interpretations while trying to pretend the observations were false. I also explained that…

I hope you all had a pleasant holiday—I had the strange experience of having all three kids come back to our house for the weekend. We'd just gotten rid of them all, and here they were, hangin' about, being normal people, having a quiet couple of days together. It's a good thing none of the kids…