humor
pharyngula | February 4, 2008I'm going to the DFL caucus tomorrow night, and after seeing this video I'm thinking I ought to throw my vote to Mike Huckabee.
Maybe I can convince a few others to join me if I dress sexy enough.
evolvingthoughts | February 3, 2008
NASA is broadcasting "Across the Universe" from Let It Be to the North Star, Polaris. All well and good until the aliens arrive and we find out they're Stones fans...
oracknows | February 3, 2008It's Superbowl Sunday. Even someone who's not much of a football fan and who doesn't really care much one way or the other about either team can't help but get caught up in the hype a little bit. In any case, there seems little point to doing any serious blog posts today, given that (1) it's a weekend and traffic plummets on the weekend and (2) it's Superbowl Sunday, which leads me to expect that traffic will be even lower than a typical Sunday. Oh, and also because I just learned that Hitler was a Cowboys fan:
I've posted a parody of this particular scene from the German movie Downfall…
oracknows | February 2, 2008It's been a while since I've posted any fan mail, but I did get one a few days ago that amused me. It came from someone with a 'nym of "Baxtour". I post it because it represents a common flavor of antivaccinationist response to my blog:
You are a fucking moron, which I'm sure you already know, but if there is one thing you know absolutely nothing about it's thimerosal! You shouldn't even talk about it because you are so fucking clueless!!!
Sincerely,
Someone that actually has a brain
Truly, against such intellectual firepower, even Orac has a hard time standing. My first thought was that it…
grrlscientist | February 1, 2008tags: meet your meat, activism, animal welfare, meat industry, streaming video
I am not an animal rights activist, but I am deeply concerned about animal welfare, and I rarely eat meat, for many reasons, both ethical and economical. But if you are a rabid carnivore, this is the video that has created quite a stir all across the internet these past few days. "Meet Your Meat" describes the astonishing, heartbreaking cruelty that is commonplace when raising domestic animals for meat. Narrated by Alec Baldwin. [12:28]
I wonder about the ethics of a society that ignores such blatant and horrible…
omnibrain | February 1, 2008Here's a wonderful spoof of .. well... I'm not really sure what. Perhaps an old Documentary focusing on the diseases of the mind? In any case it's terribly entertaining.
tsmith | January 31, 2008You're probably familiar with the Seinfeld episode where George commits yet another social faux pas, getting caught "double-dipping" a tortilla chip. Just in time for your Superbowl festivities, turns out a soon-to-be-published manuscript (described in the New York Times) examined just how many bacteria are actually transferred by "double-dipping." I have more at Correlations, and the Seinfeld clip is after the jump.
[Edited to add: Steve uploaded the poster describing the research here.]
pharyngula | January 30, 2008British educational programs are astounding. I caught my daughter self-educating herself with this remarkable series of videos. The one below is on the brain — I learned stuff I'd never known before, and I have a Ph.D. from an Institute of Neuroscience!
evolvingthoughts | January 30, 2008
Anyone else read this and immediately think of Eric Burdon singing "sky pilot"?
pharyngula | January 29, 2008On Tuesdays, I have back-to-back labs from noon until six…in genetics. I've been juggling flies since early December, prepping stocks for our crosses, so when I saw this cartoon I was surprised. Does Darby Conley have a background in fly genetics? It's perfect!
oracknows | January 29, 2008In nondescript dressing room in a nondescript studio in a nondescript office building in in a nondescript industrial park, a short, pudgy 63-year-old man with the stereotypical demeanor of a particularly boring economist was trying to squeeze into a pair of shorts.
"Why oh why did I agree to do this?" he muttered in a whining drone.
He continued to struggle to get into the black shorts, virtually identical to the ones worn by English schoolboys and still worn by Angus Young of AC/DC on stage. Even though Young is over 50, somehow he managed to get into them, and so will I, thought the man.…
oracknows | January 27, 2008With all the woo infiltrating hospitals these days, as I've lamented about in constructing my Academic Woo Aggregator, it was only a matter of time until these ways of thinking started to infiltrate other lines of work.
Why not "alternative janitorial services" as well? After reading about it, I wonder how long before it spreads any further. How about "alternative" auto repair? Or even "alternative" plumbing? The possibilities are endless.
evolvingthoughts | January 27, 2008
Given that the antievotees often declare evolution a religion (because after all, their view is purely based on wishful thinking and so they want to claim that everybody's views are), I got to thinking. What would the books of the Evolution Bible be called? Here's what I have so far:
Genes
Exothermy
Levo-dextrous
Statistics
Deuteromycota
Lederberg, Joshua
Judge Jones
Struth
I Phylogeny
II Phylogeny
...
The Gospels according to:
Ronald
Theodosius
Ernst
and the somewhat different
Steve.
The last book is
The Book of Evolutions
Any others?
pharyngula | January 26, 2008It's getting to be about that time: science fair season. I'll remind you all that we have an infamous local event, the Twin Cities Creation Science Fair, in which real live homeschooled creationist kids will present their experiments at the Har Mar Mall, on 16-17 February. I'm hoping to make it this year, but I've got a lot of other traveling to do that week, so I'm not sure that I'll be able to make it…if I do, though, I'll let you know.
Because I have to deal with this all the time, I'll also remind everyone that the Objective: Ministries Creation Sciende Fair page is a satire, OK?
This,…
pharyngula | January 25, 2008This is a painting Our President loves; it's called "A Charge to Keep," and GW Bush even used that as the title for his autobiography.
Here's what Bush himself says about the picture.
I thought I would share with you a recent bit of Texas history which epitomizes our mission. When you come into my office, please take a look at the beautiful painting of a horseman determinedly charging up what appears to be a steep and rough trail. This is us. What adds complete life to the painting for me is the message of Charles Wesley that we serve One greater than ourselves.
Bush got it wrong. The…
oracknows | January 25, 2008
One of the favorite failings in logic and science among the woo-friendly crowd is the ever-famous one of confusing correlation with causation, also known as non causa pro causa, which means "non-cause for the cause." Examples of this are rampant, and include the antivaccinationists who confuse correlation with vaccination and the age at which autism is usually first recognized with vaccines causing autism, taking a homeopathic remedy shortly before having their symptoms resolve spontaneously and mistaking this for the efficacy of the homeopathic remedy, chelating children with autism and…
pharyngula | January 24, 2008It's a lot cheaper than making a movie and trying to persuade all those scientists to shut up.
Let's be fair — somebody used a little photoshop on me, too. But really, my head isn't that small, I'm not quite that chunky, and I'd never use a gun.
pharyngula | January 24, 2008Both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland are making a reduction in the legal blood alcohol driving limit from 0.08 to 0.05%. This is facing opposition from an unexpected quarter: Catholic priests are concerned about driving home after Mass. Well, now, how terrible for them.
"Perhaps it could be enough for you to fail a drink-driving test," the Rev. Brian D'Arcy, a priest from Enniskillen, told the Irish Times. "I don't like to use the word wine, as it is Christ's blood in the Eucharist -- but it still has all the characteristics of wine when in the blood stream."
So it's OK to drive…