Weirdness
pharyngula | May 28, 2010I was told all the time as a kid that you mustn't swallow chewing gum, because it just piles up in your guts and clogs up all the works and you will die. They lied to me — it just passes through the gut like anything else. So please stop sticking your unpleasant wads under desktops or spitting them out onto the sidewalk, OK?
Of course, this isn't a problem for me because of my sole superpower.
pharyngula | May 26, 2010Some of you may know that I have a Wikipedia page. Others may know that I also have a page on Conservapædia, which helpfully links to this site with a warning, "Non-family-friendly content warning" (it must be effective, I get almost no traffic from it). Now, though, I have discovered a page that tells the real-live genuine bonafide truth about me: I'm on Uncyclopedia. You shall be horrified at what I have done, as was I.
I am reminded that I should not forget Rational Wiki!
pharyngula | May 25, 2010A Florida teacher was assaulted by two fellow teachers…who splashed her with holy water because she is an atheist. This is a serious concern — they're on to us. What am I going to do if someone flings holy water onto me? I might start smoking and my flesh will melt and then I'll disintegrate with an unholy wail as Satan drags me down.
Or I might start giggling. One or the other.
Gotta make sure the Christians don't find out about this. Stakes through the heart and silver bullets…completely harmless to atheists. Holy water, though, and garlic terrify us. Especially if it's a garlic with butter…
pharyngula | May 25, 2010Just go to the linen closet and get a towel right now, and everything will be OK.
pharyngula | May 21, 2010Quick! Check out today's Google logo!
Give it a moment to load. Use the arrow keys to play.
pharyngula | May 20, 2010Them folk are not like us folk. I really had to twist my brain to read this article from Touchstone on "contradeception", because I'm finding it hard to imagine how screwed up in the head you have to be to think that way.
It's an article against contraception. When these quiverful zealots argue that they love kids, I can sympathize; when they say they are trying to outbreed non-Christians, I can sort of understand the logic, even though I think they're wrong; but this story…children are like an afterthought. The reason you shouldn't use contraception is because getting pregnant is public…
pharyngula | May 11, 2010It's a bit late for Mother's Day, but here are some biological truths about maternal and paternal inheritance. Warning: this is major nerd overload. Wear goggles.
The goggles! They do nothing!
pharyngula | May 7, 2010I think Stephen Baldwin is a washed up loser, but I could get behind the campaign to restore Joss Whedon.
pharyngula | May 7, 2010A study has found that your choice of fonts influences your perception of the message. That's not too surprising. Unfortunately, they only compared Times New Roman and Arial, when what we're really interested in is the effect of Comic Sans.
pharyngula | May 6, 2010Uh-oh. Gregory Paul has analyzed the proportions of the image on the Shroud of Turin, and come to some troubling conclusions.
This note is intended to describe why, from an artistic and anatomical perspective, the shroud image is an embarrassingly obvious fraud committed by a Gothic artist following the standard conventions of his time. The artistic errors are so severe that it is impossible for the shroud to record the image of an actual human body--unless it was a very seriously pathological person with a brain the size of a Homo erectus.
So Jesus was a hypocephalic cretin? You know, this…
pharyngula | May 6, 2010That in future speaking engagements, unauthorized photography should be prohibited.
pharyngula | May 5, 2010I don't know if I should even mention this. It's a cowhide vest up for bids on ebay. It's a pedestrian bit of trash, except…it's made by Ray Comfort, and is even signed by him. That makes it freakish and weird, and kind of a trophy to wear.
It's for a woman, size 6-8. I suppose you could get it for your Mom for Mother's Day, or maybe you would just want to wear it for yourself. It could be a conversation starter, if nothing else. Most of the money from the auction goes to the Foundation Beyond Belief, so it's also in a good cause.
It's just weird.
pharyngula | May 4, 2010Stephen Wolfram has mastered the art of being intellectually provocative and extremely annoying at the same time. He's talking about very cool stuff here, but I'm put off by the excessive hype — apparently he wants to model the fundamental properties of the entire universe in some code in the computer, and while I sympathize with the idea that maybe the theory of everything really will lead to something both fundamental and simple, I'm not convinced that it will just pop out of a program that is sufficiently synthetic.
Perhaps it would be more persuasive if he said something more specific…
pharyngula | May 1, 2010
That's the official state seal of Virginia. A few people don't like it, for the expected prudish reasons, including the Attorney General for the state of Virginia.
Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli apparently isn't fond of wardrobe malfunctions, even when Virginia's state seal is involved.
The seal depicts the Roman goddess Virtus, or virtue, wearing a blue tunic draped over one shoulder, her left breast exposed. But on the new lapel pins Cuccinelli recently handed out to his staff, Virtus' bosom is covered by an armored breastplate.
When the new design came up at a staff meeting, workers…
pharyngula | April 29, 2010I really hate Poe's Law. I can't tell if Restore Stephen Baldwin, a web site dedicated to raising money for the evangelical Christian actor, is sincere or not. It's just too crazy — it's comparing Baldwin to Job, and shilling for donations so Baldwin can continue to preach about Jesus, despite the fact that he's a hack actor whose sole affliction is that no one wants to hire him.
What makes me most suspicious is that the guy pushing it doesn't seem to have read Job, or he wouldn't be making the comparison. Job lost everything he owned, had all of his children exterminated, and was afflicted…
pharyngula | April 27, 2010In the Department of Unfortunate Analogies, here's a Christian minister giving advice on one's marital obligations:
As I said, sometimes sex is just sex; it's what you do when you are married. Just like cleaning the toilet is what you do to keep your house clean...and I bet you don't have this great desire or huge emotional connection to scrubbing the porcelain! You do it because it needs to be done and that's the way it is with married sex... it does need to be done! It's the glue that God gave us to bond us to one another. The bible is very clear that it is your responsibility as a spouse…
pharyngula | April 27, 2010
The results are in, and I'm sorry to say that women dressing provocatively caused no significant statistical difference in the frequency or magnitude of earthquakes. Geology is simply unimpressed by small localized fat concentrations on the short-lived bodies of mammals.
I'm afraid, though, that the experiment didn't test the alternative hypothesis: that there is a lecherous god using reverse psychology on us. That's the problem with the whole god idea — it's a shifting target.
pharyngula | April 26, 2010It's the day of the Boobquake.
It's amazing how much press this event is getting. I was going to say that if we do get a flurry of earthquakes today, the women are going to be insufferable…but even if it's an ordinary day geologically, they'll have managed to create a small mediaquake.
pharyngula | April 25, 2010Archy is speculating about Gould's idea that if you rewound the tape of life and replayed it, you might get some very different results…and he suggests that in a different world, molluscs could have replaced vertebrates as the dominant large metazoan. This is perfectly reasonable, but he chose to illustrate the concept, and my SIWOTI syndrome kicked in.
Noooo! He's got an arrow for a "large brain" pointing to an enlarged fleshy flap above the eyes. That's not where the cephalopod brain is located! They have a ventral nerve cord — the central brain would be deep, between the eyes and behind…