Weirdness
pharyngula | April 6, 2010
Does anybody else think he ought to be wearing a filter mask? That stuff has got to be incredibly toxic.
(via Effect Measure)
pharyngula | April 6, 2010People send me stuff via email, and I browse through it all in the early morning, before I go offline and get to work, and that means I often wake up to some of the most disgusting, revolting, horrible messages: death threats, angry letters, and all kinds of interesting insults. But sometimes the worst comes from people who are on my side, like this message that really ruined my breakfast. It's from a Catholic anti-choice site, full of prim certainties about gods and babies and your reproductive organs, and it has this…this…letter to a young girl, written by Alice von Hildebrand.
Be prepared…
pharyngula | April 5, 2010If I weren't planning to donate my body to science or be cremated or get dumped into the ocean for the hagfish to eat me, I'd want a funeral at the Ahlgrim Family Funeral Home in Palatine, Illinois. They have a miniature golf course in the basement! You can also play pinball and shuffleboard!
Absolutely brilliant. Unfortunately, the article mentions that they don't serve beer, which means that they are missing one of the essential sacraments of a good funeral.
pharyngula | April 5, 2010First, they had their church leaders focus their Easter sermons on how yucky those atheists are. Then one fanatical group decided to show how wonderful Christianity is by staging a crucifixion in public, complete with blood and nails and moaning dying hippie.
I find this hilarious.
Hamlyn Heights mother Louise Bridges slammed the performance, calling it an "absolutely disgusting stunt".
She said she was "fuming" at the public display and said it would "scare children away from religion".
But it's in the Bible, Mrs Bridges!
I'm a bit chagrined, though, that we didn't do anything as fun and…
pharyngula | April 4, 2010As I mentioned before, there is now a collection of happy bible standers on the web. I do have to mention, though, that the toes with my name on them are not mine! I did not submit a photo, I do not paint my nails, and I think my prehensile big toe would be more noticeable.
pharyngula | April 4, 2010This is a somewhat disturbing infographic. Some people are just a little too obsessed with their secretions.
pharyngula | March 31, 2010I've just learned that I'm scheduled to speak at a very big conference next year. It's going to be very exciting.
They're even using my choice of a theme song.
(But why did she have to mention it just before I hit the road for Rochester, NY?)
pharyngula | March 31, 2010Now that the LHC is online, The Editors have catalogued three ways it will destroy the world, using the Airwolf scale of awesomeness crossed by a goofiness scale. It looks like being sucked into a black hole is one of the more pedestrian scenarios.
I am relieved that they didn't consider the possibility that TeV collisions might be the last trump that summons the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Some things may be even too goofy for the Poor Man Institute.
pharyngula | March 29, 2010Apparently, someone is flying around in Federation space with a ship called the USS PZ Myers, NCC-92803. This is a dreadful mistake—everyone knows I would be piloting a Borg cube.
pharyngula | March 26, 2010
The regal figure to the right is Terrill Dalton. He had a vision that revealed that he, personally, was the Holy Ghost, Jesus Christ's dad. Who knew the Holy Ghost would look a bit like the Pillsbury Doughboy?
Anyway, the Holy Ghost has come down a bit in the world. He's now living in a collection of campers and vans on a 5 acre lot in Montana, leading a breakaway Mormon sect that was too crazy for Utah.
Members of the Church of the Firstborn and General Assembly of Heaven had fled to Idaho from Utah last year after their large home in a Salt Lake City suburb was raided by federal officials…
pharyngula | March 13, 2010I predict this cartoon will be appearing all over the place here today.
I quite like Bob O'Hara's equivalent portrait of Nature Network, too.
pharyngula | March 7, 2010It's a stunning reenactment of home life…with lolcats. I don't know that I like this invasion of my privacy.
pharyngula | March 5, 2010Uh-oh. People have often sent me strange photos like this; apparently, cephalopod porn can get you arrested in the UK.
The charge involving the sea creature states the image was of someone "performing an act of intercourse with a dead animal, namely an octopus/squid, which was grossly offensive, disgusting or otherwise of an obscene character".
Yeah, it is kind of disgusting to see poor cephalopods tormented with the weird, creepy anatomy of vertebrates. It's also offensive to see that the Swansea police can't tell the difference between squid and octopus.
But why should we have laws that…
pharyngula | March 2, 2010I've long held a gripe about science-fiction aliens: they're always far too unimaginative. I know it's because SF is rarely about real aliens but is always about ourselves (and is also usually but keeping the budget manageable, in the case of SF movies), but still…the model is always our species, and they can't even broaden their horizons enough to look at the diversity within the phylum Chordata, let alone examine some of the weirdness in other phyla. And, of course, any alien life form isn't even going to be at all related to us, so it should be even stranger. Avatar was just the worst…
pharyngula | March 2, 2010Have you heard about this strange new web service, Chatroulette? It makes webcam connections between random pairs of people with the idea that it'll spark interesting conversations. I like the idea, but I haven't tried it yet myself because a) I've heard that mainly what you get is pathetic exhibitionist men who aim the camera at their crotch, or b) people who want to chat about sex and flick past anyone who isn't pretty enough (I think I'd be subject to rather rapid dismissals), and c) I DON'T HAVE TIME TO CHAT RIGHT NOW. MUST WRITE.
However, here's an interesting use of the service: this…
pharyngula | February 26, 2010Because I am weirded out by this new fad of vajazzling, or the gluing of shiny little rhinestones to women's crotches. I think the problem is that I'm a biologist, so I find skin quite pleasant as it is; this must be something to appeal to geologists, who think it can't be sexy unless it is mineralized.
Jill mentions that it only seems to be an adornment for women, which does seem a little bit unfair. Or maybe it's a good thing — I grew up in the 1970s, and really, disco balls have no appeal at all for me.
There. Now your morning is wrecked with a horrifying mental image, too.
pharyngula | February 17, 2010Some of you may recall the Bigfoot footage I posted a while back — now the full, unedited, complete version without the blurry effects is available. Note that the language here may be NSFW, unless you're working as a longshoreman.