Weirdness
pharyngula | May 18, 2011The city of Lake Forest, California has given a talented young boy scout the job of designing the city's logo. The presentation of his Eagle Scout project to the city council must have been dramatic: he displayed his carefully crafted graphic arts project to them, and they voted 3 to 2 in favor of giving him the project. His design must have exhibited great style, panache, and technical expertise to dazzle them so. And here it is!
Why, he must have worked for weeks on that. It's bold, original, and wonderfully crafted.
Well, errm, actually…it looks like he whipped it out 2 minutes before the…
pharyngula | May 17, 2011You can't get riper nerd schadenfreude from anywhere but a bad powerpoint competition.
There are some real horrors at that link, but they unfortunately miss a trick: the greatest suffering is not inflicted by the single slide, but by the endless flood of one bad slide after another.
I have suffered through a presentation by Kent Hovind: 3 hours nonstop, and over 700 slides. My brain yet bears the awful scars.
pharyngula | May 17, 2011It's a trap! Someone is trying to make Richard Dawkins' head explode!
Harper's Magazine (June 2011, last page), or so I have just been informed, reports that "Existential anxiety was found to make people dislike Richard Dawkins."
Should I feel flattered, hurt, or existentially anxious? If the latter, will I get caught in an escalating positive feedback loop?
That's dirty pool, trying to off Dawkins with a Logic Bomb.
pharyngula | May 16, 2011Since there is so much noise about the predicted Rapture, everyone seems to be planning to riff on it this weekend. Wichita State University is have a Rapture Day, just for the shenanigans.
Ah, another opportunity to laugh at religion. As if there's a shortage of such opportunities.
pharyngula | May 14, 2011I'm about to head off to that wretched hive of scum and villainy, the Philadelphia airport, to make the Morris run (we'll do it in less than 12 parsecs!) I just wish TSA would lighten up now that that horrible terrorist is dead.
pharyngula | May 13, 2011Awww, my presence in Philadelphia today is acknowledged in Faye Flam's blog with a poll. I'm sure you'll all be able to give the correct answer to this one.
What is a pharyngula?
The structure in the back of your throat that hangs between your tonsils.
A retractable "penis bone" that supports erections in cats, dogs, hedgehogs and chimpanzees but not humans.
The language spoken by the aliens that Scientologists believe started life on Earth.
An advanced Kama Sutra position that requires partners to put both feet behind their heads.
A tiny parasitic catfish that lives in the Amazon and…
pharyngula | May 11, 2011The Florida legislature has just banned sex.
An act relating to sexual activities involving animals; creating s. 828.126, F.S.; providing definitions; prohibiting knowing sexual conduct or sexual contact with an animal; prohibiting specified related activities; providing penalties; providing that the act does not apply to certain husbandry, conformation judging, and veterinary practices; providing an effective date.
At least there are a few loopholes. "It's alright, officer, she's judging my conformation and I'm studying for the NAVLE!"
Also, Disneyworld won't care. They suck the sex right…
pharyngula | May 11, 2011I don't need people posting stuff their students have submitted. I'm in the middle of grading, so I've got my own, thank you very much.
pharyngula | May 10, 2011Salon has a tidy summary of the end-of-the-world claims of Harold Camping.
On May 21, "starting in the Pacific Rim at around the 6 p.m. local time hour, in each time zone, there will be a great earthquake, such as has never been in the history of the Earth," he says. The true Christian believers -- he hopes he's one of them -- will be "raptured": They'll fly upward to heaven. And for the rest?
"It's just the horror of horror stories," he says, "and on top of all that, there's no more salvation at that point. And then the Bible says it will be 153 days later that the entire universe and…
pharyngula | May 6, 2011There's this strange website run out of Morris, Minnesota: it's called Giraffes Drawn By People Who Shouldn't Be Drawing Giraffes, and what it is is a collection of sketches of giraffes drawn by random people Josh Preston collars (perhaps he will ask you for a giraffe someday). He managed to get a giraffe badly drawn by me, which just goes to show that the title of the site is pretty darned accurate, and he's also got one by Jen who apparently was born to draw giraffes.
Anyway, read them for the stories about getting the pictures, not for the pictures. Although don't read mine — he reveals…
pharyngula | May 2, 2011It's the meta-argument that's especially hilarious: here's a facebook argument over who would win in a fight, Batman or Jesus. The Christians are taking it quite seriously, insisting that Jesus would win. The magic moment is when one declares, "And you're neglecting the fact that bruce wayne is FICTIONAL!!!"
Yes? And?
Besides, everyone knows the Batman would so kick Jesus' ass.
pharyngula | May 1, 2011…except for the reminder of all of the surveillance cameras my parents used to keep me out of trouble.
pharyngula | April 24, 2011
It's either that, or some strange mob of fanatics carrying out some bizarre rite. It's hard to tell the difference sometimes.
pharyngula | April 21, 2011Y'all remember what many of our neightors are commemorating this weekend: the first Zombie Uprising of 33AD.
51 At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rocks split 52 and the tombs broke open. The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. 53 They came out of the tombs after Jesus' resurrection and went into the holy city and appeared to many people.
It's funny how this amazing awesome story didn't make it into any other historical accounts. Somebody ought to turn it into a novel — you'll have both the evangelical…
pharyngula | April 16, 2011The Digital Cuttlefish remarks on a certain expulsion…with a poem, of course.
I hate to carp at actually having the saga commemorated, but shouldn't it have a more martial beat and an alliterative clang to it? And where's the swordfight? The naked damsel? The villain's bloody demise? Man, I guess it's really hard to turn hanging out in the Apple store at the mall into an epic event.
pharyngula | April 15, 2011I can tell. It's coming. A royal heir has gotten engaged to some young woman, and there will be one of those royal weddings, and the sentimental argle-bargle in the British media will soar to new heights of fatuousness. I'll miss most of it, fortunately, but I pity everyone in the United Kingdom who's going to have to suffer with the royal romanticism for a while.
At least this time the Telegraph has set the bar for stupidity abysmally low, and I have no idea how anyone else willl sink lower (the fun will be in the trying, I'm sure). Someone has found a jelly bean that looks like Kate…
pharyngula | April 13, 2011This is the Geek Zodiac, a spoof of the Chinese zodiac (the image at the link is larger and easier to read). It's horrible and wrong.
I skimmed over that diagram and thought that all the choices were cool and geeky, except…well, this is just me, and you can feel differently…I thought the one I liked least and that was most boring was astronaut. And guess what, I was born in 1957, and therefore I fall under the sign of the Astronaut. Boo! Astrology is bunk! I was most hoping for Undead Alien Pirate, which would have required my mother to be pregnant for 5 years, and then stretch out labor…
pharyngula | April 12, 2011OK, I'm used to the idea of batrachian horrors and creatures tentacled and squamous, and part of the appeal of HP Lovecraft is that he is so quaint. But I was unprepared for the chilling simplicity of Chicks With Steve Buscemeyes.