humor
sporte | August 16, 2007Thanks to Steven Colbert you can hear about DNA directly from Dr. Spencer Wells from the National Genographic Project.
I read about this video in the GenomeWeb Daily Scan and had to check it out.
Who would have thought scientists could be so funny?
Watch it quick! There was a note at the Comedy Central site saying the video expires on Sept. 15th 2007.
or you can go here and find out whether DNA could happen to you, too!
pharyngula | August 15, 2007OK, nice reference to both Darwin and cephalopods, but doesn't it bother anyone that the viscosity of the medium would make baseball impossible to play, and that wooden bats would cause a serious buoyancy problem for the animals?
(Via Zeno, who has frightened the creationists out of his state)
clock | August 14, 2007That must be this one:
Rove quitting to spend more time with his iPhone:
Rove is considered one of the nation's foremost experts on e-mail deletion, although he - like the rest of us -- is relatively new to making things disappear from the iPhone. Rove has long been an innovator in leveraging the phone for "competitive advantage" in the often rough-and-tumble world of national politics.
Paul adds:
The funniest "Rove resigns" entry may be the most factual. I do hope he figures out how to do mass email deletions on the iPhone and that he shares that info with the rest of us.
pharyngula | August 14, 2007
Some outfit called the Christian Outdoorsman is selling bibles with camouflaged covers, which seems so appropriate — after all, when you're sneaking up on the Christ you wouldn't want to alarm him.
And why, you might ask, should we sneak up on the Messiah? The clue is in the company's logo. You want to line him up in your sights. This is brilliant — we don't do crucifixions anymore, but if we take out Jesus II with a sniper rifle, the Vatican won't have to change the monograms on their towels.
(via SEB)
oracknows | August 13, 2007Since I'm still immersed in grant writing, to start the afternoon off, here's one that I saw a week ago but never got around to answering. It's a question from this week's host of the Skeptics' Circle, Bronze Dog, over at (appropriately enough) The Bronze Blog, who asks:
You've been captured by Daleks. You're their legendary foe who always comes up with some clever way of thwarting their plans for universal domination. They're equipped with a death ray, nigh-impenetrable armor, and a plunger that somehow works as a multitool.
Why don't they just shoot you?
I can answer that one! Although many…
evolvingthoughts | August 12, 2007
I had to. They made me do it.
Yes, I'm smoking again, but I'll give up soon, I promise. The grumpy expression is because I'm teaching...
pharyngula | August 10, 2007I'm being prayed for.
A prayer for the soul of PZ Meyers
Dear God of Enduring Love, The atheist evilutionist and liberal elite college professor PZ Meyers has lost The Way and says some of the MOST hateful things about Your Work on this Earth and Republic that it is easy to understand why good Christians would pray for the Absolute Damnation of his soul to an eternity in the Hellfire of the Beast. The darkness of his Soul must cause you at least as much pain as do the souls of Muslims and Jews. Dear God, please find in Your great Heart warmth to share in the heart of PZ Meyers, or…
omnibrain | August 10, 2007Is there any surprise that I'd post something like this? hehe.. yup probably not.
Via Everyday Scientist
mikethemadbiologist | August 9, 2007At least according to an internet quiz:
You Are 95% Feminist
You are a total feminist. This doesn't mean you're a man hater (in fact, you may be a man).
You just think that men and women should be treated equally. It's a simple idea but somehow complicated for the world to put into action.
Are You a Feminist?
Of course, the internets tell me that I'm also 55% Irish:
You're 55% Irish
You're very Irish, and most likely from Ireland.
(And if you're not, you should be!)
How Irish Are You?
That might have something to do with my having had Guinness for breakfast....
sporte | August 9, 2007I found that one of the most challenging things in moving from an academic institution to a software company was getting used to the difference between software engineers and biologists.
Now at last, we biologists can start to understand the mysterious ways of software engineers with this helpful reference from Silicon Glen.
Although, maybe we biologists do have something in common with the software engineers after all. I agree about on the talking frog. It would be pretty cool!
sporte | August 8, 2007Biologist 1: How many physicists does it take to write a research paper?
Biologist 2 (looks at the citation above): "all of them?"
I wrote about the challenges that biologists and computer scientists have in deciding who's on first. But after finding some physics papers in PubMed by mistake, I've decided that it must be much harder for the physicists.
How do the physicists decide which author goes where?
Do they all have to write out their individual contributions?
mikethemadbiologist | August 8, 2007I don't mean to make this into an anti-Ignatieff blog, but there are two more great posts about his idiocy: one by ScienceBlogling and "embarrased" Canadian James Hrynyshyn, the other by David Rees.
ScienceBlogling James writes:
There real reason why so many academics, from the hard sciences and the social field, opposed the war is it was a stupid idea, one that could only serve to strengthen the enemies of democracy and reason. It's the same thing when it comes to scientific issues like climate change, or evolution or stem cells, or abstinence-only sex education. The Bush administration isn'…
pharyngula | August 8, 2007Chris Clarke has won the blogwars by being the first to deploy an auto blog-bot with an aggressive attitude. We are doomed.
I wonder if I can steal a copy and put it to work writing my blog entries?
oracknows | August 8, 2007&uotI've been on call and grant writing, both of which have put a major crimp in my blogging time, preventing my usual daily magnum opus and leaving me reposts and pithy link-and-comment posts, at least for today. Since having become a little irritated by comparisons to Nazis by a certain opponent of bans on indoor smoking, I thought now would be a great time to show you something that I've been meaning to show since the time that I moved the old Blogspot blog over to ScienceBlogs. Yes, I'm talking about the origin of the Hitler Zombie. This post, which appeared on June 2, 2005, is in…
omnibrain | August 7, 2007You've played the game.... now see the movie - Minesweeper!
Funny stuff....
Thanks Davemeister Rozovskiramadamadingdong!
j7uy5 | August 7, 2007The
US Army Crops of Engineers accidentally dumped hundreds of unexploded
pieces of ordnance on the beach at Surf City.
Now, they want the city to help pay for the cleanup.
"If
they're talking about getting any money out of Surf City to pay for
their mistakes, they can forget about it," Mayor Leonard T. Connors
told The Philadelphia Inquirer.
Apparently they conducted a 71 million dollar reconstruction of the
beaches, unknowingly using sand from a World War I dump site.
(
href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070806/ap_on_fe_st/odd_beach_ordnance_found;_ylt=ApKG5AWHHB5FyhKu.…
oracknows | August 5, 2007Now I remember why breakdancing got on my nerves in the 1980s:
(Via Attuworld.)
Thus endeth the silliness for this rainy Sunday.
pharyngula | August 5, 2007This is the most perfect description of me on the interwebs.
Pharyngula is a blog run by a science professor named P.Z Myers. Not only does Mr Myers believe in the fantasy of evilution, but every year he milks thousands and thousands of dollars out of the education system to indoctrinate children into his hateful cult. Like most liberal educators at America's secular colleges, Myers lives a life of luxury at taxpayers' expense—taking long vacations with his trophy wife, driving expensive foreign cars, dressing his children in exclusive fashions—all the while promoting his vengeful and…