humor
pharyngula | August 30, 2008You can watch it here. She did as well as she could, but whoa…this is a perfect example of how Stephen Colbert will tromp all over an interview for comic effect.
oracknows | August 30, 2008Jack Chick is old. After many years of turning out the most hilariously over-the-top Christian fundamentalist cartoons, you may think he's lost his edge, but if anything he seems to be getting even loonier. For example, check out his latest tract First Bite:
Click panel for the tract in all its crazy glory!
Yes, it actually has vampires in it! But, wait. Didn't Chick in the past do multiple tracts about how Halloween was the tool of Satan? On the other hand, this hilariously unhinged tract from 1991 features Satan as a serial killer, complete with chainsaw. On second thought, Satan as a…
evolvingthoughts | August 28, 2008I was a graphic artist cum typesetter for 25 years. So I know that Times New Roman and Arial are not proper fonts, but abominations foisted upon the unsuspecting world by the Evil Empire. Nevertheless, this is a funny video:
See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.
Hat tip: Reconciliation Ecology
pharyngula | August 26, 2008Since Tom Willis wants to slap warning labels on all scientists, one of our commenters obliged by designing one you can get on a t-shirt.
It's probably not exactly what Willis intended, but it'll do.
pharyngula | August 26, 2008Someone must have been reading some of my comment threads attentively, because this looks familiar:
(Click for larger image)
grrlscientist | August 25, 2008A reader, inspired by my baby-carrot-caused food poisoning event, sent this image to me;
For those of you who are curious, I am feeling better, much better, but I am still not hungry and still very wary of food in general. I guess this is a good thing since I will not want to eat very much in London, where food poisoning will cost a lot more than here in NYC!
Suzanne Somers versus Christina Applegate in a bilateral prophylactic mastectomy fantasy cage match!
oracknows | August 25, 2008Earlier today, I did a rather extensive post about a particularly ghoulish attempt to exploit the story of a woman with cancer, in this case Christina Applegate. It turns out that Mike Adams isn't the only woo-meister looking to capitalize on Ms. Applegate's misfortune, You just knew it had to happen, but Thighmaster, Bioidentical Stem Cell Huckster Suzanne Somers has gotten in on the act. Apparently she's penned an open letter to Applegate that was published in People:
Dear Christina,
Cancer is scary, and lonely. You can't ask anyone to make decisions for you because it's just too heavy.…
pharyngula | August 25, 2008Any science journalists out there? You might not want to read this webcomic. The rest of you…sure, go have a laugh. It's rather accurate.
pharyngula | August 25, 2008An elementary school in Missouri has been allowing the Gideons to distribute bibles to students on their lunch hour. It's crazy stupid, a clear violation of the separation of church and state (not that fundie churches care about that anymore). Fortunately, Americans United is on the ball.
In its brief, AU asserts that the U.S. Supreme Court has held that school district promotion of religion puts pressure on nonbelievers or dissenters and is unconstitutional.
"In the cafeteria, students who choose to take Bibles and those who choose not to will be visible to much, if not all, of the student…
oracknows | August 24, 2008Those who are Battlestar Galactica fans, as I am, know that the disparaging slang humans in the Colonial fleet use for their dreaded enemies the Cylons is to call them "toasters."
The question then naturally follows: Sure, Cylons are toasters, but can they actually make toast?
It turns out that they can.
evolvingthoughts | August 24, 2008
Certain nations who shall remain nameless have been doing a fair bit of skiting about how well they've done. So I thought I'd do a bit of number crunching. Of course it isn't completed (or is it?) but using the Wikipedia population figures and the official medal tally, I plotted gold medals per million population and medals overall per million population... Look below the fold for the surprising results
Blue is Gold medals per million of population. Green is medals overall per million of population.
Download PDF version
The US was 32th, China was 47th. The outstanding Olympic nation is…
evolvingthoughts | August 22, 2008
A little while back I linked to Sahotra Sarkar's review of Steve Fuller's Science versus Religion. Now Fuller has put up a defence at the Intelligent Design website, Uncommon Descent, under the gerrymandered image of a bacterial flagellum (if you want to know what a real flagellum would look like at that scale, see this).
While I haven't yet read the book (I'll be reviewing it for Metascience), a couple of points that Fuller's post make clear:
1. He has a really casual dismissal of factual accuracy so long as the "spirit" is right
2. This explains why he's allied himself with ID.…