humor
oracknows | April 7, 2007I don't recall how I came across this. Perhaps it was while looking for photos of our intrepid mascot that I don't already have, or perhaps it was to see if anyone else has anything to say about our cheery but strange mascot, the purpose of whose head you really don't want to think too much about. (On the other hand, I would compare EneMan to Casey Luskin, given how firmly Luskin likes to put his head up the behinds of various luminaries of the "intelligent design" movement, but that would be a profound insult to EneMan, who at least serves a highly useful purpose in preparing the rectum and…
pharyngula | April 7, 2007A feisty little old lady shows us all how to deal with missionaries:
(via Darkhorse Reviews)
pharyngula | April 5, 2007As soon as Richard Dawkins opens his mouth, I started laughing…and when Ted Haggard starts singing, well, I lost it. You must watch this video!
mikethemadbiologist | April 3, 2007You can't go wrong with the title "Residence time and food contact time effects on transfer of Salmonella
Typhimurium from tile, wood and carpet: testing the five-second rule." And it only gets better.
Here's the abstract:
Aims Three experiments were conducted to determine the survival and transfer of Salmonella Typhimurium from wood, tile or carpet to bologna (sausage) and bread.
Methods and Results: Experiment 1. After 28 days, 1·5 to 2·5 log10 CFU cm-2 remained on tile from and the more concentrated media facilitated the survival of S. Typhimurium compared with the more dilute solutions…
ksharpe | April 3, 2007Hello, and welcome to the Sweet Sixteen round of the Science Spring Showdown—ScienceBlogs' answer to March Madness. (Feeling confused? Catch yourself up on what this is all about, here). The phrase "Mad as a March Hatter" might be apposite. But be that as it may, Page 3.14 is nothing short of delighted to host the penultimate match in the Mortar and Pestle Division. The action happens right here, folks. You are basically sitting in courtside seats. The rivalry goes down on Friday. For now, sit back and enjoy the Pre-Game Hoopla!
This Friday, fans will return to Chemical Arena, where Fossil…
pharyngula | April 3, 2007It's good to see everyone standing up for the honor their profession. I'm sorry, though, engineers—you still aren't quite off the hook. James Kakalios has informed me of one of your fellows who has besmirched the reputation of the whole lot of you.
Yeah, I know, he's probably one of those creationist engineers, but that's still no excuse.
oracknows | April 3, 2007Given my post yesterday about how increased scanning finds more disease that may or may not ever cause problems (and, don't worry, the promised followup post is coming, either tomorrow or Thursday), I thought it was an opportune time to post this little gem that's been floating around medicine for a long time. I first got it back in the late 1990's, and there are several permutations of it around, all with the same basic message:
EVERYBODY MUST GET SCANNED
(Sung to the tune of Bob Dylan's "Everybody Must Get Stoned")
They scan you when you fall and bump your head
They scan you when they think…
vhughes | April 3, 2007
Attention all doodlers: The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) is now accepting entries for its second annual Science Idol editorial cartoon contest. The grand prize includes $500 and an all-expenses paid trip to Washington, D.C. to tour the UCS offices and meet with Tom Toles, editorial cartoonist for the Washington Post.
Here's the catch: You gotta make the distortion, manipulation, and suppression of science in the federal government, well, funny. An ambitious task, for sure, but the UCS does offer a couple of tips for creating that winning entry:
This year, we are especially…
oracknows | April 2, 2007...of this:
Horror film fans dressed up to look like an army of the undead have been stomping the streets of Brisbane, Australia, in an annual Zombie Walk.
Spattered with fake blood and their faces painted a deathly white, the "Zombies" staggered across the city to the botanical gardens.
The event originated in North America and is in its second year in Brisbane.
Its website explains that it is not an April Fool's joke "but serious, in a flippant sort of manner".
The Hitler Zombie is, however, disappointed that there was no brain-eating and no ridiculously overblown Holocaust analogies.
clock | April 2, 2007OK, admit, how many of you really got suckered? (in reference to yesterday)
Quite a lesson in credulity and perception for many...(yup, I was in on the joke from the very beginning/planning/execution stages)
oracknows | April 2, 2007Now that it's been admitted that the apparent Discovery Institute prank, in which Dr. Michael Egnor posed as a parody of the most ignorant creationists there are, spouting truly inane and long-debunked canards about evolution for a month and a half, all in an effort to snooker us evil Darwinists into attacking him and then gloat as he revealed to the world that it was all just a joke, has been revealed to be in reality a Panda's Thumb April Fool's Day prank, I have to admit that it's depressing to have to contemplate again the fact that Dr. Egnor actually believes all the pseudoscientific and…
grrlscientist | April 2, 2007If you think Bush is a bozo, seeing this collection of quotes will help to solidify your position. If you think Bush is not a bozo, this will change your mind. And, as Laura sez, "he's getting awfully windy."
grrlscientist | April 1, 2007Bush is an invade-aholic .. this streaming video shows a dramatic reenactment of the Bush intervention that recently took place in the White House.
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tags: Bush intervention, politics, humor, streaming video
terrasig | April 1, 2007Doug Farrago, MD, is a private practice doc in Maine who has been publishing the print medical satire journal, Placebo Journal, since 2001. Doug does it all, including spoofing drug company adverts, collecting humorous doc stories, and generally poking fun at drug reps, HMOs, and lawyers.
About two years ago, Doug started sending out e-mails of the Placebo Gazette, a rather bloggy and somewhat more serious newsletter of issues facing docs and medicine in general. Imagine my surprise in Placebo Gazette #81 where Dr Farrago threatened to start writing a blog:
The Detroit Free Press did an…
oracknows | April 1, 2007Given that my attempt last year to pull an April Fool's Day gag fooled no one and in essence went over like the proverbial lead balloon, I'm chastened enough not to try it again this year. Maybe by next year, I'll get up the nerve again.
In the meantime, this little gem came through a mailing list that I'm on, and I wanted to see what my readers thought of it:
Redondo Beach Surfer News. Where the sun shines most the time, and the feelin' is laid back.
Sunday Apr 1, 2007. 5:40am
Chiropractic treatment fights global warming
by Olga Re
With the specter of global warming on the horizon, many…
oracknows | April 1, 2007This Panda's Thumb entry makes me wonder if I was wasting my time with all those rebuttals of Dr. Michael Egnor's astoundingly ignorant attacks on "Darwinism." Could it be that Dr. Egnor really was just pulling our legs all along?
I have to admit that it seems plausible. After all, how could a man like Dr. Egnor make it through an undergraduate biochemistry degree program, then medical school, then the often brutal and--dare I say it?--Darwinian culling process of a neurosurgery residency program, only to go on to become a respected Professor of Neurosurgery at SUNY Stony Brook, and, with all…
pharyngula | April 1, 2007A world-class neurosurgeon couldn't possibly have been as stupid as Michael Egnor — the denial of even the most basic and medically relevant evidence of evolution in bacteria, the outright denial of the importance of the scientific literature, dismissing it as "chaff", the obtuse insistence on self-contradictory definitions of information — it should have told us long ago that our leg was being pulled. We put a lot of effort into debunking arguments that only a purblind ignorant creationist could have fallen for, and we should have noticed that Egnor was just a little too far over the top.
As…