Weirdness
pharyngula | September 18, 2007First it was me, now it's God. God is being sued by State Senator Ernie Chambers of Nebraska.
Chambers lawsuit, which was filed on Friday in Douglas County Court, seeks a permanent injunction ordering God to cease certain harmful activities and the making of terroristic threats.
The lawsuit admits God goes by all sorts of alias, names, titles and designations and it also recognizes the fact that the defendant is "Omnipresent".
In the lawsuit Chambers says he's tried to contact God numerous times, "Plaintiff, despite reasonable efforts to effectuate personal service upon Defendant ("Come out,…
pharyngula | September 16, 2007Saint Gasoline speculates about a common idea: using a time machine to travel far in the future to reap the benefits of compound interest. It won't work!
Lots of bank accounts get abandoned — forgotten, the owner dies, etc., but you don't have a lot of bankers sitting around fretting, "Uh-oh, Marcus Junius Glabrius deposited 15 denarii in 61 BC, and never closed his account. I sure hope he doesn't come strolling in tomorrow, or we'll have to give him Switzerland, France, and a couple of small African nations to cover the interest." No. That's because the bankers sit around watching their…
pharyngula | September 14, 2007Carl is planning to start a series called Science Tattoo Friday, and Street Anatomy has an article on a professional medical illustrator and tattoo artist. I call synergy!
Carl and I need to take a road trip to Dallas to get some anatomically correct tattoos of our own, I think. She does a fine botfly, which ought to tempt him.
pharyngula | September 13, 2007I have a daughter of marriageable age, and here is a useful service:
Marry Our Daughter is an introduction service assisting those following the Biblical tradition of arranging marriages for their daughters.
Those who wish to list their Daughters with our site should click on SIGN UP OUR DAUGHTER on our main page for a form to fill out.
Those who wish to propose to a specific Daughter should click on the PROPOSE button on the Daughter's INFO CARD.
Each entry has a single snapshot, a short one-paragraph blurb, a link to let someone propose, and a bride price (it's biblically justified!),…
pharyngula | September 12, 2007Would you believe the Urban Dictionary has an entry for PZ? It's lousy—I can't believe anyone uses the term that way, and I can't imagine how they pronounce it. And pzizzle isn't any better.
Myers, at least, has some punch to it: "Last name of any various white masked knife weilding bad muther *uckers." I still think most of these entries are jokes sent in by people, especially when the spelling and grammar are atrocious, and that they don't really have any common usage.
pharyngula | September 12, 2007Continuing with our red theme this morning,
El PaleoFreak has some radical imagery. The bourgeois Darwin would have freaked.
Look — you can get them on a t-shirt! (Errm, wait — isn't combining Darwin, Che, and the rampant capitalism of CafePress an example of head-exploding irony?)
pharyngula | September 12, 2007The heroic Mario fights for the people. It's inspiring.
(via One Good Thing. And to answer Flea's questions, yes, yes, late teens, they had no problem, of course they are—but we threw every terrifying thing we could find at the kids, it wasn't very scary, it was for kids, and you have to be the judge of whether you're overprotective.)
pharyngula | September 11, 2007I'm soon to run off to a class in which we're going to discuss 16th-17th century science (Vesalius, Bacon, Harvey, Hooke, etc.), and there's an amusing passage in J.A. Moore's book that I have to share. It's a description of a bestiary by Edward Topsell that explains the importance and usefulness of various animals, including mice. Mice seemed to do everything.
A mouse can be skinned, cut in two, and placed over an arrow wound to help the healing process; if a mouse is beaten into pieces and mixed with old wine, the concoction will cause hair to grow on the eyelids; if skinned, steeped in oil…
pharyngula | September 9, 2007Shelley had her weird cake article, but it failed to include this bizarre masterpiece.
I can't quite imagine why a cephalopod would want to do that, when there are so many attractive molluscs in the sea.
pharyngula | September 7, 2007LA has the most interesting restaurants — it's too bad I don't get out that way very often.
pharyngula | September 5, 2007This is a photo of a Mr Potatohead stuffed with fish, and an octopus gnawing the tasty treat out of its head.
I just want to know who has been leaking our training and conditioning procedures from the submarine labs. Do we have a mole in the organization?
pharyngula | September 4, 2007Perhaps you thought the Poor Man Institute was making up the stereotype, but here it is made manifest: a man living in his parents' basement attacks father with a bag of Cheetos. One nice touch in the police report is that his shirt was covered with orange Cheeto dust.
What's missing? No word if the guy has a blog yet.
pharyngula | August 30, 2007It's not just me! Other people get strange messages, like the one forwarded to me below. Have fun with it.
The author, Don Pribor, is a member of the biology faculty at the University of Toledo. You really must read his research statement.
Many Scientific Thinkers Reject Evolution (not published)
By
Don Pribor
There has been much public discussion of fundamentalist, literal
interpretations of Christianity that deny evolution. I have not seen any
public discussion of how many scientific thinkers believe in a literal…
pharyngula | August 28, 2007If you've ever tried Second Life, you will be astounded at the verisimilitude of this simulation.
(via Cairns Blog)
pharyngula | August 26, 2007 Doesn't this just ruin your day? A cephalopod is featured on Cute Overload. The comments will give you hyperglycemia.
jlynch | August 23, 2007First we were "slime-snake-monkey-people". Now we’re "mutant randomites," and Johnson accuses us of name-calling! Mr Mote, meet Mr Eye.
This just keeps getting better and better.