humor
pharyngula | March 21, 2009The John Kwok saga is getting very serious. He threatened to decimate my facebook friends, and has now gloated that the number of mutual friends of Kwok and Myers has now diminished by…3 (out of my current total of 4,793, which is actually a net gain of about 350 since yesterday).
You can imagine my shock and dismay. No, you don't have to imagine — I had the computer record my reaction on hearing the news.
The pain I will feel when he publishes his book that features me as an Irish terrorist who murders people will be incomprehensible. I shall have to practice shouting "KWOOOOOK!" with an…
oracknows | March 21, 2009This is about as geeky as it gets, but since a couple of the genes I study are homeobox genes, one of which is a HOX gene, one of which is not, I found this hilarious:
There you go: All you need to know about homeobox genes if you're not an expert in them.
Hat tip to Bioephemera.
sb admin | March 20, 2009Funny!
From Jimmy Fallon:
Last night, Michael Showalter (from Stella, Wet Hot American Summer, The State, your dreams) made a cameo on the show. He and our head writer, A.D. Miles, played a couple of Columbia grad students on spring break. Things got pretty scandalous!
Really funny... but totally off base. It's more like Girls Gone Wild... I promise!
-via everyday scientist-
omnibrain | March 20, 2009Funny!
From Jimmy Fallon:
Last night, Michael Showalter (from Stella, Wet Hot American Summer, The State, your dreams) made a cameo on the show. He and our head writer, A.D. Miles, played a couple of Columbia grad students on spring break. Things got pretty scandalous!
Really funny... but totally off base. It's more like Girls Gone Wild... I promise!
-via everyday scientist-
sb admin | March 20, 2009
Straight from XKCD...
I had this exact same reaction.
Now that we're on the topic. I don't like federal money going to pay bonuses but seriously... this money was promised long ago and it's already been given out. Using the tax code to take it back? Wow this is seriously a real cluster @#$!
skookumchick | March 19, 2009I know this clip is a few days old, but that's how far behind I am in watching the Daily Show (does Tucker Carlson really call Jon Stewart "Jon Daily?"). Hat tip to my colleague who sent me the link.
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The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c
Stem Sell
Daily Show Full EpisodesImportant Things w/ Demetri Martin
Political HumorJim Cramer
evolvingthoughts | March 19, 2009Ian Musgrave has a brilliant post showing that Dembski's revisiting of the old creationist canard that Dawkins' 1984 Weasel program, designed to show that random variation and selective retention can "evolve" a target phrase, in this case Shakespeare's "Methinks it is a weasel" (oops; I nearly had my own mutation there - I typed "methings"), is a load of old cobbler's. Of course we expect nothing less from Ian*, and nothing better from Dembksi.
* But my title is better than his.
evolvingthoughts | March 18, 2009Most bloggers know that it is hard to write interesting entries (curse PZ Mnhyrs!), but just occasionally, one writes itself.
In one day we get three items about taxonomy: one about real taxonomic disagreement, over whether whales are more closely related to hippos (the whippo hypothesis) than either are to other groups; one about a self-publishing snake [oil] researcher who is meeting the criteria of the ICZN for published species names, although his work is highly suspect, and one on how the UK government has banned Councils from using a bunch of obfuscatory terms, including "systematics"…
evolvingthoughts | March 17, 2009Homer: "Oh, I just love it here! So many things, and so many things of each thing!"
From here (go look!) via here.
oracknows | March 17, 2009Yet another reason why I love The Onion:
Because giant, highly intelligent, acid-spitting crabs pose no danger to society.
Of course, certain antivaccine advocates seem to think that this parody has something to do with vaccines, which just goes to show how far down the rabbit hole they've gone when they think that a parody like this speaks to the truth of their cause. It also reveals a bit of their mentality in that they so easily liken life-saving vaccines to giant, acid-spitting, highly intelligent crabs.
pharyngula | March 17, 2009
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The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c
Stem Sell
Daily Show Full EpisodesImportant Things w/ Demetri Martin
Political HumorJim Cramer
terrasig | March 14, 2009Even though it's Saturday morning, drinking coffee while getting ready to take the PharmKid to ballet class, I'm not usually one to throw up YouTube videos as blog posts without any context.
However, my dear friend, frequent commenter, and devoted traffic-driver, anjou, passed this along to me.
I've never really gotten into the whole spoken-word / poetry slam movement but maybe it's because I haven't been paying attention. We also don't have HBO so I've never seen Def Poetry, where these Vanessa Hidary performances aired.
Even if you aren't Jewish or a woman, these two are worth every…
pharyngula | March 13, 2009I am sometimes accused of having a sense of humor. This base canard is completely unfounded; I merely have great material sent to me. For example, this is an actual abstract for a paper given at the 2004 Baramin Study Group conference. Just try to read it without laughing out loud.
The Origins of Natural Evil Gordon Wilson New St. Andrews College
In a cursory survey of life it is obvious that a vast number of species spanning most kingdoms and phyla have features that are teleologically designed to deal out disease and/or death. Many pathogens, parasites, and predators have sophisticated…
hrynyshyn | March 12, 2009"Neuroscientists fear brain drain" (Globe and Mail, March 12, 2009)
It's about research funding drying up in Canada, while Obama pours more into U.S. labs.