Weblogs
pharyngula | February 21, 2009It's an interesting edition of Bloggingheads: the always pleasant Carl Zimmer in a dialog with hyper-enthusiastic Phil Plait. If I ever do one of these things with Phil, I'm going to have to send him a horse tranquilizer to swallow first, just so I can keep up.
pharyngula | February 9, 2009Read all about it: he's featured in the Toronto Star, and there's even a nice picture of him.
In case you are unsure, I think he's the one on the left.
pharyngula | February 6, 2009I know! It's hard to believe! Why, any of the riff-raff can just charge in and start a blog anymore. You write a book or a few, do some internationally recognized research in evolution, and suddenly you get cocky and think you have the talent to write a blog. Back in the day when I started in this, I had to struggle with none of that. And I liked it!
Despite his awesome handicaps, it is a pretty good blog.
I especially like this image from his book, Why Evolution is True(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll):
©Kalliopi Monoyios
So…no transitional forms, huh? Look at that australopithecine between modern…
pharyngula | February 4, 2009Way back in early January, I suggested that we vote for one of the Countess's horror stories in an online contest. You will be pleased to hear that she won "Best Short Horror Story"!
You may recall that I also suggested that she reward Pharyngula's participation with a little story of our own, so now her horror story begins — she'll need to write something for the vicious, bloodthirsty, brutally critical audience here. There's no hurry, of course, but I'll let you all know when she comes through for us. Maybe it will be something with a beautiful princess, and a pony, and cephalopods, and…
pharyngula | January 31, 2009…that today is GrrlScientist's birthday. You should go over there with a cake and some presents, or at least some good wishes.
pharyngula | January 23, 2009…to our new colleague, Science Punk. I was a bit disappointed at the dearth of piercings and snarling and tattoos over there, but he's new, give him time to shred the shiny new joint.
pharyngula | January 16, 2009We're losing Evolgen now, so say farewell. It looks like a combination of general burnout and the fact that he's a young guy on a career track, and this is a time of transition, when he's leaving his post-doc and looking for a real position. And as you all know, this isn't the best of times to be trying to secure a job, so as he mentioned in a private communication*, he has to keep his options open in case the only openings are at Biola, Liberty, and the Discovery Institute.
*Those of you who have met RPM know that his real expertise is in sarcasm. Oh, and drunk karaoke.
pharyngula | January 13, 2009The talkorigins domain has been inaccessible for some time now…but no more. All the problems have been resolved and you can now find all the content back online at talkorigins.org.
pharyngula | January 12, 2009One of our Seed blogs, Chaotic Utopia, is experiencing one of the normal stages in the life cycle of a blog: she is closing it down and moving on to other projects. Stop by and wish her the best.
Maybe one of the new projects will get mentioned here sometime in the future, too — keep in touch, Karmen!
pharyngula | January 12, 2009I don't know. People keep telling me to turn out the vote for the 2008 Weblog Awards, but given that it's a race between me and two truly awful pseudoscientific denialist blogs, it's hard to work up much enthusiasm. It was much more fun when it was a competition between me and Phil Plait, where at least I felt like it was legitimate contest, and any winner would have brought some credit to the award.
So go ahead and punch a button if you feel like it. But I will remind you: no cheating of any kind. The people who run this award have some weird rules, but they aren't dummies, and they do…
pharyngula | January 6, 2009You know you're looking at a right-leaning site when the consistently awful comic strip, Day By Day, is doing well. But the Best Comic Strip category in the 2008 Weblog Awards does have two great entries: Jesus and Mo, and xkcd. If there is any justice in the universe, one of those two must win!
pharyngula | January 5, 2009
Deja vu — I'm up for one of those Weblog Awards again, and once again, there's Phil Plait, and once again, there's the awful faux science blog, Climate Audit. I think we've been here before.
One strange thing: in the list of nominees, all of them are listed by the blog name alone, except mine: it's "Pharyngula (PZ Myers)", but not Bad Astronomy (Phil Plait) or Neurologica (Steven Novella) or Greg Laden (Greg Laden). What's with that? Is there some other Pharyngula blog out there, run by someone with a different name, so they wanted to dispel the confusion?
Voting begins at midnight, and…
pharyngula | January 4, 2009We had a new addition recently: check out Culture Dish. It's a biology blog! We need more of those around here.
pharyngula | December 17, 2008Here's an interesting new blog, Moneduloides, that seems to have an emphasis on human evolution, if you're into that sort of thing, and it currently has a short list of good texts for Christmas presents. <moan> I've done absolutely no Christmas shopping at all this year, so if the economy tanks and my family hates me, it is all my fault. I just have to get out from under this stack of grading first.
pharyngula | December 16, 2008Everyone is wondering what happened to the TalkOrigins Archive — it's currently inaccessible. Don't panic! The commercial host juggled servers around a little bit, it got its IP address changed, and those who run the show are are scrambling to update the IP with the domain name registrar. It shall return soon. You can use a backup domain at toarchive.org until everything is realigned.
pharyngula | December 8, 2008If you haven't been following the New Humanist advent podcast, where each day someone picks a scientist/philosopher they'd like to see honored for the holidays, you've missed Robin Ince (he likes Carl Sagan), Christina Martin (a Russian father of soil science, or several others), Alexei Sayle (Albert Ellis), Dave Gorman (Paul Erdos), and Natalie Hynes (Seneca). You'd better go catch up.
pharyngula | December 8, 2008Well…3D Science News recently ran an article on Harun Yahya and the Turkish censorship of Richard Dawkins' site, and what happens? Turkish hackers wipe out the news site (turn your speakers down if you visit — they've got it playing some obnoxious music now).
pharyngula | November 25, 2008There is a site promoting some Canadian blog awards, which says they are "celebrating the best in the Canadian blogosphere." Good premise, especially since they have a sci/tech section — maybe I can find some more worthy Canadian science blogs. What do I find? No Sandwalk. No Recursivity. No Genomicron. The best Canadian science blogs that I read are unrepresented there, and instead, they've got Climate Audit, a climate change denialist blog, and three blogs from Denyse O'Leary's link farm.
I don't think these guys have a clue about good science. Don't bother to vote on this one.
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