humor
pharyngula | August 23, 2006Chris Mooney did send me a copy of the new paperback edition of The Republican War on Science, so it's official: he's now the man who tried to kill me twice.
At least I can testify that a Mooney attack is survivable. I toughened myself up since the first edition with a regimen of Coulter and Wells, and if anything, Mooney is understating the tactics of the Right.
pharyngula | August 23, 2006If you've heard the strange little anecdote about GW Bush that's going around, you will find Tild hilarious today. The illustration is perfect.
scientificactivist | August 23, 2006Lines were drawn in the sand, artillery stood armed and ready, and tensions ran high. Neither side was willing to budge, and despite the seemingly endless conflict having already tested the resolve of both sides, it looked like things were only just beginning to get rough. The whole scenario was regrettable--war always is--but it felt inevitable at the time.
Besides, how else was I going to get internet access in my house?
Wars are fought for a variety of reasons: for power or territory, for religions or ideologies, for oil, and so on. I had never counted the internet among those, but in…
evolvingthoughts | August 23, 2006There's been some debate over whether or not Pluto is a planet. But it turns out that the problem will soon resolve itself. A paper written by the father of Andrew Dessler, back in 1980, shows (using the same logic that creationists use to prove that the speed of light is decreasing) that Pluto is actually decreasing in mass and will shortly disappear. So that's all right then. Problem solved.
evolvingthoughts | August 22, 2006Paramount studios, that bastion of sensible and intelligent divertisements, has cut ties with Scientologist moron Tom Cruise, taking its lead from Nicole Kidman. Now, ordinarily what an idiot member of a stupid religion does or has done to him would be of no interest to this blog, but this is the guy who told everyone on Oprah that using drugs to deal with severe mental problems was wrong. Given that he knows stuff-all about medicine, neurology or how to shop for groceries, that's just dumb, of course, but for some unfathomable reason, the public seems to think that the ideas of someone who…
evolvingthoughts | August 21, 2006Mike Taylor on the Dinosaur list has this in his signature:
"Conclusion: is left to the reader (see Table 2).
Acknowledgements: I wrote this paper for money" -- A. A. Chastel,
A critical analysis of the explanation of red-shifts by a new field, A&A 53, 67 (1976)
While it was the 70s, this was in a prestigious journal. You can see the paper for yourself [2.2 Mb PDF].
Clearly not a philosopher. We pay other people to let us write papers...
evolvingthoughts | August 21, 2006In yet another demonstration that celebrity is no reliable guide to intelligence, Madonna and Guy Ritchie, her husband, have tried to lobby British government officials to use a magic Kabbalistic water to clean up radioactive waste. It was amusingly stymied by the British Civil Service playing "pass the parcel".
The Kabbalah is a mystical Jewish tradition that treats words and numbers (especially of the Torah) as having magical properties. It is basically a Hermetic religious tradition, which date back to Roman times, although the Kabbalah itself is probably a 12th century invention.
Even…
evolvingthoughts | August 20, 2006Acute readers may have noticed that I greatly resemble an albino gorilla (and that is only by those who have met me). But truth to tell, my picture at left is an avatar. I'm actually much grumpier.
Anyway, below the fold are some pictures I just found on Flickr of my much prettier doppelgänger...
[Credit Brett Arnett]
[Credit ucumari]
[Credit Lasagna Boy]
scientificactivist | August 20, 2006I don't make it to the movies too often in the UK. To start with, they're prohibitively expensive, and I'm often seeing them months after my friends back home. When you then consider the fact that the popcorn here tastes like salty styrofoam (it's called butter, people! Look into it!), there really isn't much of a draw.
However, after completing my transfer viva Thursday, I needed to kick back this weekend. Since you can only go to the pub so many times before people start to call you an alcoholic (people back home, at least), I joined some friends at the movies. On Friday we saw Nacho…
pharyngula | August 20, 2006The Inoculated Mind twists a Calvin and Hobbes comic to make a point about debates with creationists…I don't know if I should endorse that kind of tinkering with Holy Writ.
Oh, and while you're over there, Karl is also hosting Mendel's Garden #4.
j7uy5 | August 20, 2006
Found on
href="http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2006/08/15/big-time-youtube-blooper-fox-news-anchor-shep-smith/">Et Cetera: Publick
and Privat Curiosities.
(In case the embedded object does not work, the direct link to the
href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0snyiFIQok">YouTube
video is here.)
pharyngula | August 19, 2006I'm sure you all remember that "It Works, Bitches" comic—you can now get it on a t-shirt.
clock | August 19, 2006A kangaroo bounds round the Australian outback. Every now and then she stops and a little penguin climbs out of the kangaroo's pouch. It looks awfully sick and promptly vomits.
Thousands of miles away in Antarctica, a little kangaroo sits in the snow shivering, crying and mumbling to itself, "Damned #$%^&* student exchange program!"
mikethemadbiologist | August 19, 2006The best description of George Walker Bush ever penned (or at least for the next 48 hours which is forever in internet time):
Dubya is a white-knuckling, emotionally dead dry-drunk halfwit with the attention span of a massively over-caffeinated mayfly who believes in all the fun, flight-suit-related bits about being Preznit and leaves the hard thinky stuff to Dick.
There is no one better who skewers the modern conservative than driftglass.
pharyngula | August 19, 2006This poem from the EvC Forum, "Another Reply To Bishop Wilberforce," tickled my fancy, so here it is. All credit goes to the author, who goes by the name Dr Adequate.
Another Reply To Bishop Wilberforce
"I asserted — and I repeat — that a man has no reason to be ashamed of having an ape for his grandfather. If there were an ancestor whom I should feel shame in recalling it would rather be a man — a man of restless and versatile intellect — who, not content with an equivocal success in his own sphere of activity, plunges into scientific questions with which he has no real acquaintance, only…
pharyngula | August 19, 2006A couple of my colleagues here, the Goodnoughs, have notice my mild and entirely rational interest in a certain class of organisms, and passed along a little cartoon.
But cephalopods don't need shoes and hats, either!
evolvingthoughts | August 18, 2006Hell, everybody's doing it, so why not me.
The rules: "Go here and look through random quotes until you find 5 that you think reflect who you are or what you believe."
A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.
George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)
Shaw was a complete cynic, and hence admirable, apart from his love of Hitler.
The secret of being boring is to say everything.
Voltaire (1694 - 1778)
I include this because I tend to say everything. Oops. Sorry. You already knew that, didn't you?
The radical of one…