pharyngula

I am impressed with the discipline imposed by the traditional madrassas: students are expected to memorize the Koran, word for word, which requires that they spend day after day reading and reciting. I don't deny that it's hard work and is a kind of achievement, but it's not education — it doesn't…

That seems to be the idea behind forming a council of key policy advisors, whose qualifications seem to be the fervency of their obeisance to an invisible man in the sky. The move has been criticised by secularists who warned that it represented a worrying development. However, Mr Denham argued…

Good acting.

An interesting twist: this poll is trying to skew the Catholic church's decision to withhold social services if Washington D.C. supports same sex marriage into a moral issue…with the church taking the high ground! The D.C. Council is considering a law forbidding discrimination against those in gay…

My little laptop is functional again, so at least I'll be able to blog these Sunday morning IGERT sessions in real-time. I still have to transcribe my notes from yesterday; I'll plan on getting that done on the plane this afternoon. Kristi Montooth: Mitochondrial-nuclear epistasis for metabolic…

Just recently, Stephen Fry achieved the landmark of one million followers on twitter (I have less than 1% of that). Apparently, that's the threshold for achieving a personal singularity.

Have no fear! I shall rescue you all from the endless temptations of the cursed undead heart of the vengeful bride of the son of the thread that will not die! This thread will be safe.

John Wesley, the Methodist theologian, also advocated 'natural' cures for illness, so he was kind of a quack. However, this account of Wesley's recommendations for treating the sick has one prescription I really like. No, not the one about holding a warm puppy against your tummy for stomach-ache (…

I was going to blog along with the talks today, but my note-taking computer, a little netpc, decided to turn up dead on arrival when I sat down to start listening — I had to take notes on paper. It felt medieval. There were a bunch of good talks and I'll transcribe them later when I get a chance.…

Jen has the full account, complete with a video, of my talk. I was a rude boy. Right now, I'm in Bloomington, at the "Current Frontiers in Evolution, Development and Genomics" conference. I gave the keynote last night — which means I am now free to sit back and simply enjoy the meeting without…

I'd never realized what a useful tool the Bible is in infallibly resolving difficult moral problems until I read this detailed dissection of a difficult situation on Answers in Genesis. Here's the hypothetical situation: you know the whereabouts of a family of Jews hiding from the Nazis. A Nazi…

Plans are afoot to build a creation "science" education center in Henning, Minnesota — about two hours north of Morris. They plan to push the simple-minded literalist creationist claim that the earth is 6,000 years old and peddle the same BS that the Creation "Museum" does — it's stark raving mad.…

Clearly modeling his strategy after the anti-vaccination campaigns, Stephen explains how to cobble up your own homemade controversy on just about any subject. All you have to do is ignore all the evidence and invent a non-existent danger, and people will believe anything you say.

A sensible federal judge has struck down South Carolina's plan to proselytize with license plates, pointing out that it violates the separation of church and state for the state to not only endorse religion, but a specific religious sect. Good work, except that it would have been such a useful…

(via TONMO)

About 2½ years ago, I highlighted the environmental threats to the Australian lungfish, in particular the planned construction of a dam that would destroy their habitat. To my surprise, Australian environmentalists won this battle! The proposed $1.8 billion Traveston Dam in Queensland has been…

This is not too surprising: Cincinnati fanatics and kooks were so threatened by a billboard that said, "Don't believe in god? You are not alone" that they made violent threats that led to the billboard being taken down and relocated. Cincinnati is Ken Ham country; you don't see atheists sending in…

The man who slaughtered 13 unarmed people in Fort Hood, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, was clearly mentally ill, and should have been treated and cared for before he snapped and went on a rampage. Unfortunately, there's another factor that seems to be getting minimized in the press accounts: he was also…

Wow. I thought our local vets were petty when they threatened to yank scholarships if they weren't allowed to lead prayers in public schools, but now someone has topped them. Who, you may wonder? As if you couldn't guess, the Catholic Church leads the way in small-minded extortion. The Catholic…

Sometimes I find it hard to believe how callous these conservative politicians can be. The governor of Rhode Island has just vetoed a bill that would have allowed a same-sex partner to make funeral arrangements for a dead partner. So imagine this: someone wracked with grief at the loss of someone…

No, I don't think I could do that. I'd rather my meals weren't conscious while I masticate.

This is a charming local story for Veteran's day. The American Legion post in Bloomington has been doing a little ceremony at the public schools for 40 years, and has also been giving scholarships to students. Last year, they surprised the school by adding a public prayer to their ritual; this…

Why is it always 10 questions? Couldn't they just ask one really good question? I'd prefer that to these flibbertigibbet deluges of piddling pointlessnesses that the creationists want to fling at us. I think it's because they want to make sure no one spends too much time showing how silly each…

Apparently still smarting from the trouncing Catholics received from Hitchens and Fry, a site called Catholic Truth Scotland is trying to recoup some dignity…by running an online poll? We could tell them that that won't work. The Catholic Church is a force for good in the world True [70.6%] False […

It can't be that bad a job, can it?

I had my doubts about this; I got an offer from ASPEX corporation to let people get free scanning electron micrographs of just about anything. They make a desktop SEM, and all you have to do is fill out a form and mail it in with your sample of a dead bug or a microchip or bacon, and presto, within…

That's my recipe for dealing with crackpots; feel free to use it, it's easy. You all may remember Vincent Fleury, the French fellow who ascribes developmental processes to swirls of cellular movement in development, who wrote a peculiar paper in a European journal of applied physics (which I mocked…

Larry Moran reminds us that today is an infamous day in the upper midwest.

The sentencing of a convicted murder, Khristian Oliver, should be an embarrassment to the state of Texas; the jurors consulted the Old Testament to see what should be done with him, found a bible verse they liked — "And if he smite him with an instrument of iron, so that he die, he is a murderer:…

The mild nausea I mentioned earlier? Gone now, it seems to have vanished as soon as I disposed of the wretched rag Answers in Genesis sent me. It's a good thing, too, because I have a frantic weekend ahead of me. Today and tomorrow, I'm pounding the keyboard to prepare a couple of talks. At least…