Weirdness
pharyngula | November 16, 2007It's the week before Thanksgiving. Have you done your Christmas shopping yet?
Deep Sea News recommends a lovely poster. It's one of those black light posters, so you can have the gaping jaws and needle-like teeth of abyssal predatory fish glowing at you.
Street Anatomy has a list of ten anatomy related gifts…and it's not the traditional bucket of offal under the tree. Anatomically correct chocolates, brains for cuff links, and the body bags and plush body parts are nice…but the $100 million diamond encrusted skull is a bit over the top. Leave off the superfluous diamonds and just give the…
pharyngula | November 15, 2007It's awfully hard to get into the spirit of the War on Christmas when Christians are so danged tacky. I mean, really…the Jesus loves you sucker is only one comma away from perfect honesty, while the Jesus Tree Topper with the silk gown, gold crown, nail prints in the hands, and built-in light is pure cheese. He really needs a complement, though: Naked Tormented Jesus with Stigmata Squirting Action. Then the kids could battle it out between ascetism and the prosperity gospel right there on the Christmas tree.
jlynch | November 13, 2007They "get drunk all the time. It is becoming really dangerous. We need to stop making alcohol available to them."
They, in this case, are not worthless socialites and Hollywood starlets, but elephants in northeastern India, and the speaker is none other than Paris Hilton, who went on to comment that "It is just so sad."
That sound you just heard? My irony meter exploding.
In any case, between the rampaging monkeys and the elephants, India sounds like a madhouse!
Update: Apparently not.
pharyngula | November 11, 2007I'm only linking to this horror because I'm a militant atheist and I want you to lose your faith in a beneficent god.
pharyngula | November 10, 2007You have to see the mascot for Orangina, some fruity drink, to believe it. She's kind of hot in a peculiarly cephalopod/tetrapod hybrid way, but then…the video. Oh. My. Non-existent. God. Sex and furries. She gives a lap-dance to a bear-man and squeezes orange juice out of her mammaries.
My brain is scarred. I don't think I could ever drink Orangina without thoughts of bestiality frolicking unbidden through my head.
(No thanks to Jim Lippard for contaminating my brain with this stuff.)
pharyngula | November 8, 2007How strange: Antony Flew was, and maybe is, a eugenics sympathizer. This is really going to mess up the great story of his conversion.
pharyngula | November 7, 2007The War on Christmas starts earlier every year. The first salvo: an advent calendar in Hanover, Germany includes a small, cartoonish portrayal of famous local son, Fritz Haarmann. He was a serial killer who lived over 80 years ago.
I think the wounds of the monster's actions are healed over and largely forgotten now, so while not entirely in good taste, I don't think Christianity should be too outraged at the inclusion of a wicked fellow who killed 24 people. There are other mostly forgotten characters who could be put on a Christmas calendar without causing this kind of misplaced outrage,…
pharyngula | November 6, 2007Ladies, there are people who want your menstrual blood. It contains stromal cells, which are a multipotent adult-stem-cell-like population that might be a useful source of fairly plastic, proliferative cells. This distant possibility has prompted one company, C'Elle, to offer to collect, test, purify, and store these cells for you. As they say, these cells "may potentially provide phenomenal life saving treatments and customized therapies in the future"…so you should stash away a supply in cryogenic storage, just in case someone comes up with a use.
There is some serious science here, and…
pharyngula | October 29, 2007Objects of strange affections: Sex doll → mannequin → bicycle → pavement.
No word on how many of them vote Republican.
pharyngula | October 28, 2007Not that I'm any fan of fast food anyway, but these photos of what the stuff really looks like has me cured. I may have to become a vegetarian, which wouldn't be too bad. Or at least swear off cheese.
(via Greg Laden)
pharyngula | October 27, 2007Tild uncovers a real treasure: a book from the heyday of patent medicines, full of advice specifically for women, and loaded with testimonials for Dr Pierce's ‘prescription’. When you find out what was in the concoction, you'll understand why all the accompanying photos show women looking both cheery and glazed.
The results were startling. Richardson’s Concentrated Sherry Wine Bitters had 47.5 percent alcohol; Hostetter’s Stomach Bitters, 44.3 percent; Boker’s Stomach Bitters, 42.6 percent; Parker’s Tonic, “purely vegetable,” 41.6 percent. Lydia Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound had relatively…
pharyngula | October 26, 2007The Bronze Dog got to be a "pirate chick with panache and a heart of gold", but my past life analysis isn't quite as interesting.
Your past life diagnosis:
I don't know how you feel about it, but you were male in your last earthly incarnation.You were born somewhere in the territory of modern South China around the year 1000. Your profession was that of a builder of roads, bridges and docks.
Your brief psychological profile in your past life:
Revolutionary type. You inspired changes in any sphere - politics, business, religion, housekeeping. You could have been a leader.
The lesson that…
pharyngula | October 25, 2007While the Weekly World News may be on the verge of extinction (although it still seems to be surviving online), at least Pravda labors on to deliver the truth…
Recent studies of Australian scientists indicate that Atlanteans, the people who lived on a legendary island first mentioned by Plato, may have been the ancestors of dolphins.
Huh. Like we're supposed to believe a bunch of Australians.
pharyngula | October 24, 2007A reader sent me this picture full of schadenfreude. Maybe this was the Gay Atheist Church of Malibu?
In case you are curious, here's Revelation Chapter 4.
1: After this I looked, and, behold, a door was opened in heaven: and the first voice which I heard was as it were of a trumpet talking with me; which said, Come up hither, and I will shew thee things which must be hereafter. 2: And immediately I was in the spirit: and, behold, a throne was set in heaven, and one sat on the throne. 3: And he that sat was to look upon like a jasper and a sardine stone: and there was a rainbow…
pharyngula | October 23, 2007Oh, no … we've almost missed it! Now we have to make a mad scrabble for birthday hats and noisemakers and cake and ice cream. It's the big 6010th birthday for planet earth, according to Ed Darrell and Phil Plait and these guys in Austin. Hmmm. Maybe we should at least make a quick trip to the Dairy Queen.
Oh, wait. I don't believe that crap. Neither do any of the people I linked to above. But some of the wacky people at World Net Daily do.
But the author of the book frequently described as the greatest history book ever written, said the world was created Oct. 23, 4004 B.C. - making it…
pharyngula | October 23, 2007Is it close to your dinnertime? Zooillogix is looking out for your health by helping you stick to your diet, with this tantalizing assortment of interesting foods. Escamoles, lutefisk, and baby mice wine don't look too bad to me, pacha is unappetizing to look at but I could probably choke it down, and I'll pass on balut, although I can see how it could be an acquired taste … but you'd have to hold a gun to my head to get me anywhere near casu marzu.
pharyngula | October 23, 2007It's not a real proposal, but someone has come up with a provocative new genre, Squidpunk.
Fiction that unlike New Weird, Steampunk, or Slipstream, is at its core not only about squid, but about the symbolism of squid as color-changing, highly-mobile, alien-looking, intelligent ocean-goers. As a powerful ecosystem indicator, the squid is a potent symbol for environmental rejuvenation. Squidpunk is almost exclusively set at sea and must contain some reference to either cephalopods or to anything that thematically relates to squid, in terms of world iconography and tropes. Squidpunk is never…
pharyngula | October 22, 2007At least it's an interesting and unusual way to expire: a man in India was killed by a horde of wild monkeys. Not many people get to have that written in their obituary.
Reading further, I see that some places in India have a real problem with monkeys overrunning them, but I was surprised at this one solution they're trying:
One approach has been to train bands of larger, more ferocious langur monkeys to go after the smaller groups of Rhesus macaques.
Uh, right. The little guys have just killed someone, so the obvious answer is to bring in bigger, meaner monkeys. Maybe the fate of death by…
pharyngula | October 19, 2007Now this is the kind of thing I'd like to have on my lawn…
…except, unfortunately, that I have to miss Halloween this year. Halloween is a Ray Bradbury-esque holiday best celebrated in the midwest, and I'm going to be spending that day in the sunny, cheery, less-than-autumnal climes of Southern California, dispelling ghosties, I hope.
pharyngula | October 18, 2007Prehistoric Pulp, my source for all pop culture with dinosaurs, reveals that there will be a new direct-to-video (not promising) animated (could be bad) movie of Turok, Son of Stone (awesome!) And it's not the stupid bastardized version that was corrupted for video games to include cyborg dinosaurs!
Yeah, yeah, it looks a bit cheesy and cheap and it's got cultural stereotypes run amuck, but it's personal. Back when I was a tiny young fella and my father was a blue-collar wage slave working long hours, when he got home he'd sometimes ask me to read to him, and there were two things we both…