pharyngula

I wouldn't let one of those quacks get near my neck, let alone any other body part, but apparently Connecticut chiropractors are fighting hard to suppress the information about risk of serious injury from cervical manipulation. And it's poll time! Chiropractic Warning: Should chiropractors be…

Iris Robinson is an MP in Northern Ireland who has been, umm, frolicking. She was 58; she had been having an adulterous affair with a 19 year old. Eh, that's a private matter between her and her husband, you're thinking, and we shouldn't care about it, as long as it doesn't affect her performance…

The last edition of the Never-Ending Thread has once again grown beyond reason, with no end in sight. At the same time, a thread that began with a sneer at creationists and grew to such proportions that it needed to expand to another thread has also bloated up to the point where it needs trimming.…

Allonautilus scrobiculatus Figure from Cephalopods: A World Guide (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Mark Norman.

In addition to my grueling tour of more northerly parts of the state, I'll be speaking in Orange County on 8 May. To warm you all up for that, I've got an interview with Carrie Poppy in the Examiner. And if that's not enough for you, I'll be on KPFK 90.7 FM out of Los Angeles at 10:20 California…

I was one of those weird kids growing up: nose always in a book, bored by sports, happy to go to school. This was a bit strange because my father had been a broken-nosed lineman on the varsity high school football team, was always playing hooky to go fishing, and once he graduated, went off to a…

His class was going to go on a field trip to a museum; his parents denied the trip and scrawled their reasons why on the note. Note: Just to let you it is not that we don't believe in things like that, it is just misleading when you talk about it being billions of years old, when we all know that…

One of those lunatic religious right sites compiled a list of the top ten "anti-christian attacks" of 2009…and the pathetic thing about it is how feeble and largely imaginary the attacks are. They range from a rantin' anti-choice pastor getting arrested for harassing women at a clinic to the…

Some stunning fossil trackways have been discovered in Poland. The remarkable thing about them is that they're very old, about 395 million years old, and they are clearly the tracks of tetrapods. Just to put that in perspective, Tiktaalik, probably the most famous specimen illustrating an early…

Some people seem to react to the autotuned stuff with a kind of automatic detestation. So how about this? The unaltered words of Carl Sagan wrapped in a musical accompaniment.

New Jersey lawmakers are waffling over a bill to allow gay marriage. The story is depressing: lots of reps busily weaseling and straining to find an excuse to vote it down. There is also a poll at the site: I trust readers here to be a little more decisive. Do you support the gay-marriage bill up…

The National Library of Medicine has released scans of classic science texts from the 15th-16th century — they're beautiful. And the amazing thing is, they're still better science than anything you'll find from a creationist!

More autotuned science lectures: I've been reading Meyer's awful Signature in the Cell lately, and I have to say — there's no poetry in creationism.

They'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…

I told you all to not vote for me in that poll looking for the most influential female atheist of 2009, but you just had to go and disobey me. The photo at that link is photoshopped, I swear; I'm sure I'd be more bosomy. However, one good thing has come out of it. Jen has compiled a good (but still…

Travel season begins again for me. I've already mentioned that I'm off to Winnipeg this weekend; the weekend after that is the Science Online conference. And then the whirlwind begins: I'm invading California, singlehandedly. Here's my schedule: W, 1/20: UC Santa Barbara Th, 1/21: UC Davis F, 1/22…

Carl Wieland, the creationist clown from Australia, wrote a bitter article denouncing atheists and scientists for refusing to give him a platform to yodel nonsense on, and one of the things he did was link to my my public refusal to debate him. Unfortunately, what that meant is that all of his Too…

This 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…

One of the big problems with YouTube is that science channels that criticize creationists are often shut down — they are targeted by votebots that lower their ratings, and there are plenty of people who file frivolous notifications of DMCA violations that lead to whole channels being shut down…

Tragic 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.

An annoying but intrinsic property of atheists is that we are all horribly fractured — this is a disparate group with no central leadership, and that's the way we like it — but it also means our presence is fragmented and easier to ignore. We have all these different godless organizations with…

Perhaps you thought Texas' malign influence was confined to corrupting science teaching in their own state. It's far, far worse than that. Until recently, Texas's influence was balanced to some degree by the more-liberal pull of California, the nation's largest textbook market. But its economy is…

I tend to think that most religious people are not interested in flying planes into buildings or making themselves a belt out of dynamite, but that doesn't excuse them: they still make irrational decisions with evil consequences, they are simply a bit more remote and indirect. The same people who…

It's a bit disappointing. This video would be so much cooler if it were arboreal goats on fire.

Why? Because you must explain how mitosis works…using Krispy Kremes. Make sure they understand the chemistry of fats and carbohydrates first!

It's true! The Trophy Wife™ and I never got our temple recommends, weren't sealed, and didn't go through the temple ceremony (which sounds like so much fun), so when the Mormons get their way, our marriage will be invalidated, and I'll be reduced to bragging about my Trophy Concubine™.

Won Chong Boyd, the wife of Mark Boyd, president of the Central Valley Alliance of Atheists and Skeptics, has died suddenly while on a trip to Korea. This is a deep personal shock for him, of course, but it's also a serious financial hardship. If any of you can help out, go to the link.

Like the writers at Political Animal, I have regarded the sordid celebrity nonsense surrounding Tiger Woods with complete indifference. He's rich, he has behaved stupidly, that's the end of the story, despite all those lurid magazine covers in front of my face at the supermarket checkout line. But…

Don't be bitter, Hemant! Who is the most godless atheist of 2009? PZ Myers 61% (361 votes) Everyone else in the universe combined 39% (226 votes)

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