Weirdness
pharyngula | February 16, 2010Hard to believe, but this medieval nonsense is still going on. Poland has more than 100 professional exorcists, and they recently met in a conference.
Congress participants argued that demonology lessons should be treated more seriously in seminaries and that ordinary people, too, would benefit from knowing more about exorcisms. During the congress, the priests discussed the main causes of possession by demons such as occult, esoteric beliefs like magic, eastern meditation and homeopathy.
Oooh, demonology lessons. Those should be good. Don't forget to take them seriously when some geezer…
pharyngula | February 15, 2010You all know that if you masturbate, you will become feeble, blind, and incontinent, right? Well, at least according to folk wisdom shouted at you by grandmas and grandpas (who, I will assure you, masturbated: it's a nearly universal practice.) As it turns out, a compendium of Islamic thought on masturbation agrees on all points, and adds a few other consequences of the practice I bet you never thought of.
Atta (Rahmatullahi alaihi) says: "Some people will be resurrected in such a condition that their hands will be pregnant, I think they are those who masturbate." (Tafsir Mazhari, vol 12, pg…
pharyngula | February 14, 2010I guess that giant platter of cheese called Megashark vs. Giant Octopus was not enough — now the SyFy Channel has commissioned a new project, Sharktopus. I don't want to know any more.
The worst part is…yes, I will watch it.
pharyngula | February 13, 2010Desiree Jennings was a young woman with some peculiar symptoms: after getting a seasonal flu shot, she was diagnosed with dystonia. Her speech was slurred, she couldn't walk without going into painful-looking spams…except that she was fine when she walked backwards or ran. It was very odd, and the blame was being placed on vaccinations.
Now, though, she's been caught by a camera crew, walking normally, driving, and just generally looking perfectly fine. Her only remaining symptom seems to be that she is afflicted* with an Australian accent. She claims to have been treated by some quack with…
pharyngula | February 13, 2010I'm still digging out from under the pile of neglected email that accumulated during my extended travels. I'm also still dealing with my disrupted physiology from all the zipping and the flying and the carousing and the glaven-hey, so cut me some slack, OK? Anyway, here are a few things that popped up that looked interesting, but that I'll have to just quickly announce to clear them from my to-do list. I'll let you sort through them.
The city council of Fresno is feeling some heat: the Central Valley Alliance of Atheists and Skeptics is trying to end the practice of prayer before meetings.…
pharyngula | January 31, 2010The things one learns on the internet — now I know the proper way to stimulate a bull elephant, in case the opportunity ever comes up. It looks strenuous and hazardous.
I'm also amazed at the way the elephant just stands there and accepts servicing by the team of creepy bipeds. If some small species of mammal tried to massage my prostate, I'd be on a rampage of squealing disgust trying to get the icky creatures out of my butt.
pharyngula | January 31, 2010Ben Goldacre found an exciting job ad. Unfortunately, he's completely unqualified for the position, which is probably why he mocks it. It's fear, yeah, that's the ticket, he laughs at it because he's afraid.
Hang on a minute…I don't qualify for the job, either! I haven't got the vaguest clue about how one goes about sub-molecular harmonic frequencies using ultimatonic field patterning instruments. I don't even meet the vegetarian requirement.
Oh, well, then…mock away, everyone!
pharyngula | January 28, 2010Gayle Haggard, wife of meth-snorting fan of gay prostitutes Ted Haggard has just had a press conference in which she announces that Ted Haggard is completely heterosexual…to which I can only reply with this song.
Mrs Haggard also says "Our sexuality is conditioned, and we can be conditioned in any number of ways," which I think is partly true, but I also think is a bit disturbing. It can't be a boost to Gayle Haggard's self-esteem to think that her husband needed the Clockwork Orange treatment in order to find her sexually attractive, and to stop his eye from wandering to the willowy young…
pharyngula | January 26, 2010There was another poll out there that I studiously ignored, because I was on it: Which miracle do you think Americans would most support? One of the possible answers was "PZ Myers publicly converts from atheism to follow the One True God."
I think it was a very poor choice, because one of the ways that could happen, which would require no miracle at all, is brain damage. Alas, I have won. Now I have to be a little concerned that devout Christians will be after me with a baseball bat.
So here's an important caveat: traumatic brain injury or organic deterioration do not count. You're going to…
pharyngula | January 26, 2010Because prisons ban Dungeons & Dragons.
Prison officials instigated the Dungeons & Dragons ban among concerns that playing the game promoted gang-related activity and was a threat to security.
Yeah, it might inspire them to carve a magic wand out of a bar of soap, and pew-pew prison guards with magic missiles.
Hey, can we get prisons to ban religion because it similarly promotes fantasy thinking and organizes people into groups, aka "gangs"? Bible study could be a gateway to organized crime, you know.
pharyngula | January 15, 2010You can buy communion wafers on Amazon, which is no surprise. Amazon will also tell you what other customers bought when they ordered their communion wafers.
I…I…don't understand! I get a brainlock when I try to put these things together, I'm afraid.
pharyngula | January 12, 2010I'm sexy.
Well, that was unexpected. I think my name was tossed in there for comic relief.
pharyngula | January 12, 2010Some of you may have noticed the lack of updates here yesterday. I must apologize; I was in a crisis and having a bit of a breakdown. You see, everyone was sending me the latest xkcd comic, which was kind of like the God Equation, except that I have a deep and abiding faith in Randall Munroe, praise be unto him, amen, and knew he wouldn't get the math wrong. At first I laughed, but then as the implications began to sink in, I realized I was in deep metaphysical trouble.
You see, the width of the English channel is variable: it's going to vary by small, chance amounts as waves shift grains of…
pharyngula | January 10, 2010I was just trying to get through the email I neglected yesterday, and then someone sent me a bomb through the web: a link that gave me sympathetic heart pains and some ghastly flashbacks.
Behold, the Bacon-Chicken-Narwhal!
I couldn't eat that. I have a cardiovascular system, and I need it to stay alive, unlike some people. That was the first cruelty, the provocation of delicious temptation. The second cruelty is the word "narwhal", which triggers this painful memory.
I've got 5 hours or so of driving on windswept empty roads through some of the flattest prairie around, and now I'm going to…
pharyngula | January 8, 2010
Oh, lord, I am convinced. Look at this fossil; it's a perfect human footprint, with a dinosaur track right on top of it! The people who found it promise that it's not a fake, they've actually done a CAT scan of the rock to show that it is genuine, somehow. This will revolutionize paleontology and shake up the entire field of evolution!
It's also available for the taking on ebay. Only $5, and more than 10 of them are in stock.
It's a bit pricey, but worth it for something that would get me an easy publication in Nature. I wonder…I've got a gross of nails from the True Cross here that I've…
pharyngula | January 6, 2010They've gone too far. It was bad enough that the creationists treat science with such contempt, but now…the fundy kooks hate science fiction, too!
Science fiction is intimately associated with Darwinian evolution. Sagan and Asimov, for example, were prominent evolutionary scientists. Sci-fi arose in the late 19th and early 20th century as a product of an evolutionary worldview that denies the Almighty Creator. In fact, evolution IS the pre-eminent science fiction. Beware!
Hey! Sagan was a physicist, and Asimov was a chemist; of the other evil science fiction authors listed, Heinlein, Clarke…
pharyngula | January 5, 2010This is weird: if you go to the Google page and start typing in search phrases, it helpfully tries to offer suggests…sometimes. There are some odd restrictions going on behind the scenes.
In the search field type "Christianity is" and you will see recommendations of "bullsh*t, not a religion, a lie, false, a cult, wrong, fake, dying, Jewish, and not a religion t-shirt."
In the search field type "Hinduism is" and you will see recommendations of "monotheistic, false, polytheistic, the majority religion of, the oldest religion, not a religion, fake, most commonly found, characterized by, and…
pharyngula | January 5, 2010Tragic news from Portugal: thousands of dead octopuses are washing up on the beaches. Not only is it sad news for the cephalopods, but it tells us that something unpleasant is going on out there in the sea. Unfortunately, no one knows what just yet.
pharyngula | December 31, 2009
Oooh, baby. That's a Nu-Life Communion Host Dispenser, equipped with a rapid reload system for fast wafer loading and quad-rotator technology that allows up to 400 wafers to be fired without reloading. If you need to shovel Jesus into people's mouths at a high rate of speed, this is the gadget for you. And you can get it in gold, silver, or white.
Or maybe you'd prefer the Communalabra Germ-Free Communion Host Dispensing System, which is only available in gold, but does have accessories: a Host Tube Quick-n-Easy Re-fill & Re-load System, and embroidered carrying cases and covers.
And…
pharyngula | December 29, 2009The Jews have been waiting for a messiah for a few thousand years. What's the hold-up? It seems that abortions have been causing a "delay [of] the messianic redemption". This sounds like a fine idea to me — thank you, ladies, for your efforts to scare away the boogeyman.