humor
pharyngula | January 5, 2008
Best line: "You can't be a rational person six days a week…and on one day of the week, go to a building, and think you're drinking the blood of a two thousand year old space god."
sb admin | January 4, 2008"A thrilling documentary covering the origins and troubles surrounding the severe disease, Brain Freeze [a.k.a. Iceberger's Syndrome]." Link.
evolvingthoughts | January 3, 2008
Microsoft Word’s “Track Changes” and Endnote are synthetic lethals.
From The Futile Cycle. "A synthetic pair of genes are two gene variants that alone are fine, but when combined into the same organism, cause it to die."
Why? When you have Endnoted a paper and send it to a friend or coauthor, and they make changes that are Tracked, and this includes reformatting the bibliography, all the bibliographic references become marked as changes (the workaround is to turn off Track Changes when you reformat, then turn it back on again. But this is a computer, folks, so why should you need to do…
pharyngula | January 2, 2008Does your local schoolboard look like this?
(I know — it's slandering the other primates to compare them to creationists.)
evolvingthoughts | January 2, 2008
For some time now I have told anyone who didn't get away fast enough that I am a Darwinian Gardener: any plant that survives my total lack of care deserves to be there until it gets in my way. After the fact, I justify it that I am letting native plants flourish, but really, I'm just lazy and don't care.
Now I find that someone else has hit on the same philosophy. And in Florida, no less. But it is mine, mine, I say!
grrlscientist | January 2, 2008tags: beer bottles, christmas tree, humor, holidaze, holidays, streaming video
This is an amusing idea for how to recycle all those empty beer bottles that you have laying around your dorm room, now that the holidays are ending [1:40]
oracknows | January 1, 2008It's a new year.
Overall, 2007 was a good year for Respectful Insolence. When I first started this whole blogging thing, I had no idea that I'd still be at it three years later. Moreover, I had no idea that I'd still be able to produce posts good enough that people still want to read them. Heck, I even produced a fair amount of work in 2007 that I'm proud of and that compares well with anything I've ever done.
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of a feature of this blog from the very beginning. Sadly, 2007 was not such a good year for this blog's mascot. It's not really his fault. It's…
mikethemadbiologist | December 31, 2007That would be William Kristol, their new op-ed writer. It's nice to see that stupid people are being mainstreamed into society. Of course, I never thought of them as a historically oppressed minority...
pharyngula | December 31, 2007I've been slacking off on Pharyngula lately — I've had a week to relax and get caught up on a few other things. Here, though, are a few links to ridiculous religiosity that have been piling up in the mailbox.
Cockroaches are God's wrath. And did you know Jesus had a roach problem?
Vera Ivie knows what GW Bush's problem is: we haven't been praying hard enough for him. Get on your knees now!
How to edit a webpage like Jesus.
You know what would help Christianity's image problem? If all the ministers were clowns. Oh, wait…they already are. Never mind.
Pope Ratzi has a chief exorcist (…
j7uy5 | December 31, 2007Bill O'Reilly has
href="http://mediamatters.org/items/200712050006">declared
victory in the secular humanist's War on Christmas.
"If I had not done the campaign, then the
forces of darkness would have won"
But O'Reilly did not do his homework. He did not know about
the secret weapon...
Start with gingerbread dough, put it through a pasta press, bake,
decorate, enjoy...
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src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/145/332425454_bcf44ae3e5_m.jpg"
alt="fsmcookies3" height="180" width="240">
href="…
pharyngula | December 30, 2007One of my Christmas presents was something just for fun: Superman: The Dailies 1939-1942(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll). It's a collection of the newspaper strips by Schuster and Siegel that were published in the earliest years of the superhero, and they're both funny and disturbing now.
First off, Superman was always a jerk. It's actually a bit off-putting: while he has this profound moral goal of helping the little guy, he's also constantly treating Lois Lane like dirt — he uses his superpowers to get the big scoops at the newspaper, and Lois is always getting demoted to the "advice for the…
oracknows | December 30, 2007If you think spending the holidays with your family is stressful, imagine what it might be like for the Doctor:
By the way, I've managed to check out the Doctor Who Christmas Special. By and large it's pretty good; maybe I'll post a review sometime in the next few days, while I'm taking it fairly easy for the holidays and not posting as much scientific and medical content as usual...
(Hat tip: Stupid Evil Bastard.)
pharyngula | December 28, 2007From Cectic:
Quote of the week: "Either the theory is wrong, or I'm just incredibly stupid." -Todd Friel on Evolution, from The Way of the Master Radio for 24 Dec. The first true utterance I've heard on that show since I started listening to the podcast.
pharyngula | December 28, 2007Next time I'm told by some "scientific" racist that he has evidence backing up his contention that certain races are inferior, I'm just going to tell him that there is one more experiment he has to do.
sb admin | December 28, 2007Brain Candy, a film by Toronto's sketch comedy troupe Kids in the Hall, is a satirical take on drug development. A scientist creates an antidepressant (Gleemonex) that evokes the happiest memory of the consumer, recreating that joy in the present. Gleemonex becomes a big success, until it all goes horribly wrong... a very funny film.
Here's a holiday-related clip in which the first test subject takes the drug. We see the capsule enter her system after she swallows it, then the drug reaches her brain and takes effect. Her happiest memory is a Christmas visit from her son and his family. "…
evolvingthoughts | December 27, 2007
Greg Laden is reporting that Rwanda is taxing companies that use gorillas in their advertising, in order to pay for their conservation. Unfortunately, or fortunately if you are an albino silverback in Australia, this only applies to Rwandan companies. Or maybe I would happily pay a tax to the Rwandan government for the use of my avatar if asked. It depends on whether I have enough money for beer that month.
oracknows | December 26, 2007While I'm recharging a bit from the Christmas festivities yesterday to the point where soon I'll be able to write a substantive post, full of the Respectful Insolence⢠and science or medicine that readers have come to expect, here's something to amuse (I hope).
On Sunday, I wrote a not-so-respectfully insolent takedown of a truly mendacious Huffington Post article by antivaccinationist and card-carrying member of the mercury militia, Deirdre Imus, wife of washed up shock jock Don Imus. In essence, while deconstructing her misinformation about the alleged dangers of vaccination, I also…