pharyngula

I never sign up for these things, but apparently many people think it's hilarious to give crazy right wing sites my email address, so part of my daily flood of email is crap from places like WorldNetDaily. Most of it just gets a filter entry and I never see it again, but I have a soft spot for WND…

Yesterday, I tore into a reeking pile of creationist bogosity by Peter Heck. This morning, he sends me email. Dr. Myers, Someone sent me a nasty email that included a link to your blog. I found it a pretty thorough shallacking! Not that I'm opposed to that. If I put arguments out in front of…

On July 2-5, right nearby in Minneapolis, we're having a SF con, CONvergence. One of the great things all the cool cons are doing nowadays is having a skeptics' track, and this one is no exception. We've got skepchicks (they're everywhere!) and me on various panels, so you locals ought to show up.…

People asked for this, so here it is. Eric Schulze caught my little performance at USC on video — you can watch it on youtube, or you can catch it in the embedded video below. Oh, and here's me and Eric. I'm not short, he's very, very tall.

This is not for the squeamish: watch what parasitic wasps do to a caterpillar. Body Invaders - Watch more videos The Aliens movies missed some potential for creepiness, I think.

I'm slamming the door shut on yet another thread that will not die, which was in turn the progeny of another enduring thread — as you might guess, this one was fueled by a thickheaded creationist's refusal to acknowledge the evidence. Alan Clarke, if you start regurgitating creationist BS here…

I've been reading a new book by Jack Horner and James Gorman, How to Build a Dinosaur: Extinction Doesn't Have to Be Forever(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), and I was pleasantly surprised. It's a book that gives a taste of the joys of geology and paleontology, talks at some length about a recent scientific…

Eugenie Scott has been named to the Scientific American 10, the top 10 people in the past year who have demonstrated exceptional leadership and accomplishment in guaranteeing that future technologies will be applied to the benefit of humanity". Everyone applaud now!

I'm sure this happens all the time. A 2cm long fish apparently found it's way into the penis of a 14-year-old boy from India in a bizarre medical case. The patient was admitted to hospital with complaints of pain, dribbling urine and acute urinary retention spanning a 24-hour period. According to…

We have a new blog around these parts, and it's by a science librarian. Be quiet and respectful of the other patrons when you visit, and don't get any fines — he will hunt you down.

And deserved it is, in this remarkably ignorant article by a creationist named Peter Heck. It starts out very, very badly. It never ceases to amaze me how intellectually condescending evolutionary naturalists can be. Keep in mind, these are folks who believe that an indescribably tiny wad of…

Perfect: cobble together an obscenely irrational hybrid of religion and science in the vain attempt to appease everyone at once, and what do you get? Something to annoy everyone at once.

Oh, no. I spent a long day traveling, getting my daughter to the airport in Minneapolis so she could fly off to Phoenix for 10 weeks of research (she has arrived, and seems a bit shocked to be in a desert), and then I drove all the way back. I sit down to see what has happened in the world, and…

President George W. Bush was a god-fearing child given control of our military apparatus…or perhaps he was a child manipulated by a military that found religion a convenient hook. Frank Rich describes the internal propaganda used during the war. What I find shocking is that Bush received regular…

Sunday's episode of Atheists Talk radio may just annoy me — they're going to be talking about a local joint Bible study between atheists and a Methodist church. There are some atheists who like to dig into the Bible, but I'm not one of them — been there, done that, found it to be worthless drivel.…

This is a nice little interview, with the curious restriction that it was specifically limited to only 5 minutes. Abby will be pleased that when the interviewer brings up his reputation as "Darwin's Rottweiler", he points out that Rottweilers are quite nice dogs…which is also a good metaphor for…

I was sent a petition to call for conscious evolution. I have no idea what this means. I don't think the creators of this petition have the slightest idea, either. I don't even understand the point of pledging to "elevate consciousness". I do know that these loons seem to like the word "evolution"…

Baroness Susan Greenfield has been spouting off some bad neuroscience, I'm afraid. She's on an anti-social-networking-software, anti-computer-games, anti-computer crusade that sounds a bit familiar — it's just like the anti-TV tirades I've heard for 40-some years — and a little bit new — computers…

Warren Ellis set his readers to a task: to draw an old pulp comic book character, the Octopus. The Octopus had a stunning description. One of the more outré of the pulp characters-and given the genre, that's quite saying something, believe me-the Octopus was actually the villain of the piece in…

Daniel Hauser, the 13 year old Minnesota boy with the dual affliction of Hodgkin lymphoma and idiots for parents, has been told that he can't refuse effective medical treatments. In a 58-page ruling Friday, Brown County District Judge John Rodenberg found that Daniel Hauser has been "medically…

A nice, specific request: name a gene that shows no signs of an evolutionary origin. The argument has long been highly asymmetric. Scientist find a gene, and what do they do? Figure out what it does, and dig into the databases to find its relatives within that organism or in other species.…

The persecution complex runs deep. Here's another another example of laughable letter to the editor, complaining about a story that referred to "wafers and wine": …the Roman Catholic Church doesn't now, nor has it ever offered a wafer and wine as Communion. We do offer the body and blood of Jesus…

Ommastrephes bartramii Via tolweb: Ommastrephid squids are among the strongest swimmers in the Cephalopoda. Some are commonly known as "flying squid" due to their ability to glide over the ocean surface…

I've been waiting for this for a long time. James Dobson gives up. I want to tell you up front that we're not going to ask you to do anything, to make a phone call or to write a letter or anything. There is nothing you can do at this time about what is taking place because there is simply no…

She's beautiful and German. She's also naked, with very large breasts, and she isn't wearing any underwear — in fact, she's posing almost obscenely, and has rather prominent labia in view. She's also 35,000 years old and has no head. A few other interesting details: she doesn't seem to be…

Oh. Nice shirt.

In a bizarre conversation, Murphy-O'Connor demonstrates a Catholic version of open-mindedness: human beings must have a sense of the transcendent, and must search for god. And those atheists? "Not fully human". It's not that unusual a sentiment, and I've heard it often. Usually it's not said as…

It's been a very long and busy day here in Los Angeles — I've had a tour of USC, I ate a King Torta, I sat around for a long time in very warm black robes, I had a wonderful dinner with some of the faculty here, and oh, yeah, I gave a commencement speech. These events are always fun…I'm not a big…

I can hardly believe that Bill O'Reilly wants our opinion, but there it is, he's asking, we should deliver. The O'Reilly Factor wants to know what you think the WORST Entertainment TV show series of all time is. No news shows or specific episodes should be given as answers. The winning show may be…