Weirdness
pharyngula | April 2, 2009It's Cthulhu Day today! There's a list of activities you should do today, but I've got my own ideas, and prefer not to tell you what they are, instead leaving you with a sense of inchoate unfolding dread.
pharyngula | April 1, 2009I think we have the profane, bizarre answer right here.
(via Kevin Zelnio)
pharyngula | April 1, 2009You just can't trust anything posted to the web today. Take, for instance, this story about Howard Ahmanson. In case you don't know who he is, he is an extremely wealthy Californian who also happens to be one of those Christian Reconstructionists — a follower of R.J. Rushdoony, who thinks we ought to have a literal Christian theocracy — and is a major contributor to the Discovery Institute and other evangelical/fundamentalist causes. So I have to read this with a bit of skepticism.
WHY I REGISTERED DEMOCRAT>
By Howard Ahmanson
About six weeks ago, I, a known leader of the Religious Right…
pharyngula | March 30, 2009Administrators at Boston Latin prep school issued a notice that there were no — I repeat, no — vampires attending the school. Read the article, and apparently there was also a rumor of at least one werewolf running around.
They issued no disclaimer against the existence of decrepit old mummies or mindless zombies, however, which should be grounds for concern. They're probably among the staff.
pharyngula | March 29, 2009The city of Hakodate in Japan has been producing promotional videos for the tourism trade for their city. Instead of the usual shots of local restaurants and famous landmarks, though, Hakodate features giant robots battling invading space squid, with explosions and smashed buildings and cars being kicked into the air.
Alright, I'm sold. That's much better than Las Vegas.
pharyngula | March 24, 2009Everyone keeps sending me this photo from FAIL blog. I think it's mislabeled.
This is not a failure. This is something working for once. Every church ought to have "Danger!" signs slapped on it. It's a success when churches are clearly marked, exceeded only by those wonderful moments when they are demolished or repurposed for some useful community function.
pharyngula | March 16, 2009Pat Boone had a dream. He dreamed that he was president. It would be our nightmare; after going on and on about the usual far right anti-tax tripe and militaristic fantasies, he gets to education.
As a man who intended to be a teacher myself, I issued an ultimatum to the teachers' unions: They would return to basic math, including arithmetic, and basic English (the mandated official language), and basic science devoid of unproven theories like evolution, sticking instead to factual evidence and not discounting "intelligent design" as the more scientific basis for life and existence. All…
pharyngula | March 16, 2009In yet another instance in the chronicles of religious pareidolia, people are flocking to gaze in awe at the wrinkles and bumps in a seat cushion They say it looks like Jesus. Does that make Jesus a butthead?
Antoinette, an 82-year-old parishioner, said the face was a "divine phenomenon" as tears welled up her eyes.
"This church is a holy site," added Lise-May, another worshipper.
Ladies, you are going into rhapsodies of ecstasy over the dimples in a pillow produced by some old guy's bony ass. Get real.
pharyngula | March 13, 2009
The hyper Japanese narration somehow made me think of The Calamari Wrestler.
pharyngula | March 12, 2009The animals have had about enough of us, I guess. The latest weird story of animals attacking:
An Indonesian villager had to be rushed to hospital after a horse bit off one of his testicles during a freak attack.
The 35-year-old man was unloading sand from a horse-drawn cart at a construction site in Sulawesi earlier this week when the attack occurred, Indonesia's state-run news agency Antara reported.
A witness said the animal suddenly lunged at the man, sinking its teeth into his crotch.
Shocked bystanders loaded the man into a car to take him to hospital, before one noticed a piece…
pharyngula | March 12, 2009First it was Santino the chimpanzee flinging rocks at his captors, and now a monkey kills his slave-driving owner with a coconut. You all better be nice to your fellow primates, you hear, or you'll be up against the wall in the imminent revolution.
pharyngula | March 11, 2009There's a common joke that claiming to have knowledge of the existence of god is like claiming that you know you've got fairies living in your garden — both are equally ridiculous, and both require that the definition of the subject and of evidence for the subject be equally nebulous. The only difference is that billions are willing to accept the former, but no one is crazy enough to accept the latter…you'd think. Not so, though: there is actually something called the Icelandic Elf School where you can learn all about the classification and cultivation of various sorts of fairy-like entities…
pharyngula | March 10, 2009The Phelps gang is picketing in Chicago with their "god hates fags" sign. Hate meets hate: there was a counter-demonstration.
Which side to take? I'm a firm believer in Myers' Wager — who would you rather piss off, the little guy with the beard preaching peace and love, or the pitiless tentacled monstrosity from a space beyond space and a time beyond time? — so I'm going to side with this sign. Besides, she's much cuter than the cryptkeeper Fred Phelps.
pharyngula | February 26, 2009Now this is just getting silly. An Islamic theologian has declared that using ethanol as a fuel is sinful.
As if the debate around using ethanol to fuel cars weren't already complicated enough, now an Islamic scholar has suggested that driving or even riding in a vehicle fueled by ethanol could be considered a sin for observant Muslims.
The opinion comes from Sheikh Mohamed al-Najimi, of the Islamic Jurisprudence Academy in Saudi Arabia. It is based on the part of Islamic law derived from a statement by the prophet in which dealing with alcohol in any form--including purchase, sale,…
pharyngula | February 23, 2009Sometimes, they just want to help me out.
You must try this before you die. Why does this happen? Maybe you can figure it out?
I have Discovered that if you lay perfectly level on a firm mattress,with no pillow. Then relax and let gravity push you flat. Do this for 3 hours day/night. you can only do an hour then massage,because its painful.Take painkillers if you have to, in the beginning. But try and do 3 hours day/night or more. If you do that for seven weeks the crucifixion comes out in you. Electric shocks in your hands, wrist and feet.
Prevention of doing evil will occur. The Truth is…
pharyngula | February 23, 2009Normally, I leave the boring clouds of gas and emptiness to Phil, but this Hubble photo of the Carina Nebula actually has something cool.
Now I don't want to hear anything from any of you about pareidolia. If the loons get their Virgin Mary in burnt pancakes, I want my Cosmic Cephalopod in distant smears of hydrogen.
pharyngula | February 19, 2009Diagramming sentences — I remember that, and not at all fondly. I'm sure there's a sensible purpose to it, but the English language is such a tangle that it was easy to say something trivial that would take ages for me to dissect and diagram. Don't ask me to do it now, I've forgotten every bit of it.
It's still amusing, though, to see these articles that diagram sentences spoken by a couple of well known people. Examine one of Obama's sentences, and compare it to Sarah Palin's words. Obama is "professorial", always a good thing in my book, while Palin defies analysis.
I have to take their…
pharyngula | February 17, 2009I have been informed that I have survived a rather dreadful deadline. How is this for a prediction?
...Pharyngula, Panda's Thumb, EvC, RichardDawkins.net and Uncommon Descent will all have so completely degenerated as to become nothing but embarrassing footnotes in the history of internet communication. I also predict that P.Z. Myers and Richard Dawkins will have so embarrassed their home institutions that overt attempts will have been initiated to have their tenures revoked on the grounds of moral turpitude and seeking to overthrow the government... Fortunately for them, by that date,…