pharyngula

Admit it: if you were walking along and saw this on the trail, you'd stop and turn back, wondering if Shelob was sneaking up behind you. Bug girl has the explanation.

It'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…

The second part of the DI's interview with Ruloff, producer of the movie Expelled, is now available. He's claiming now that there will be no hacking and chopping of the interview footage, which is, of course, complete nonsense. I was interviewed for something close to two hours; we know that that…

She really hasn't changed a bit. Well, maybe a little. Skatje (since everyone asks how it's pronounced, I'll spell it out: scot-ya) is turning 17 today, and guess how she's going to celebrate? She's hosting the first ever meeting of the UMM Campus Atheists, Skeptics, and Humanists, with free pizza…

As I've mentioned before, Lucy is going to be in Houston at the end of this week for an extended stay. This is not entirely a joyous occasion in the scientific community: many people, including Richard Leakey, are not happy that such a precious specimen has been subjected to the risks of travel. I…

This is so sad. There is now a Richard Dawkins social networking site, and I have no friends. Not even among those dour, hateful, amoral atheists. You'd think we'd be so perfect together!

With subjects from simians to coelacanths and titles like "Heaven must be boring" and "Think for yourself", I may just have to pick up this George Hrab CD. Listen for yourself!

Over at the Sandwalk, Larry has a video of Berlinski pompously denouncing the idea that "cows evolved into whales". As everyone is pointing out, it's ludicrous because cows didn't evolve into whales — but what struck me is the supercilious arrogance of this mathematician as he plucked numbers out…

Ophelia makes note of a comment from Hitchens, about a revelation on his book tour: At the end of the event I discover something that I am going to keep on discovering: half the people attending had thought that they were the only atheists in town. I see that all the time, too. We atheists are a…

There is going to be a melee in Minneapolis, a testicle-twister in the Twin Cities, a bloody battle at the Bell — the framing debate is going LIVE, in an event sponsored by the Bell Museum in Minneapolis at the end of September. On one side, Mooney and Nisbet; on the other, Greg Laden and … uh, me…

Salon has a refreshingly hostile interview with Bjørn Lomborg, and they also have a strongly negative review of his new book, Cool It. This makes me very happy; I'm not a fan of the "contrarian" label for this guy — he's just another unqualified denialist, as far as I can see. I hope one of our…

Last night was the activities fair at UMM, where student groups try to catch the attention of the new students and persuade them to sign up. It was a mob scene with hundreds of milling people, and there in the middle of it … the brand new UMM chapter of the Campus Atheists, Skeptics, and Humanists…

What do you think? Can I use this video clip in my introductory biology course? It explains everything you need to know about DNA.

Hey, you know that $15 million lawsuit that was filed against me by Stuart Pivar? He's been getting hammered on the weblogs, the City Pages was preparing a story on it, the Seed lawyers were unflappable, and Peter Irons was constantly sending Pivar and his lawyer cutting dissections of their poor…

If you've ever tried Second Life, you will be astounded at the verisimilitude of this simulation. (via Cairns Blog)

I wrote to Mark Mathis about his movie, Expelled, which I was told was going to be called Crossroads. Here is the entirety of my message: Hey, I just learned today that the actual film is now called "Expelled", that it features Ben Stein, and that it's really a gung- ho pro-creationism/anti-science…

…that you have to take a sharp poke at the godless or godly to try and trigger a response, and now it's Chris's turn. He's arguing with the usual faith/empiricism continuum, and adds a third axis to the debate, as illustrated here. OK, it's an interesting try. I don't think it quite works, though…

Once we've defeated the creationists (hah!), we're going to have to manage the next problem: well-meaning but ill-informed animal rights activists. Nick describes a recent article that tries to claim we can reduce animal use in labs — and it even has a couple of respectable scientists signing on to…

Scott* has uncovered another slick media effort by creationists: the Seventh Day Adventists are putting on a four-part series called Out of Thin Air to trumpet their fundamentalist lunacy. What I want to know is … where are the slick media people willing to put together lovely dramatic stories of…

Since I highlighted a new creationist blog yesterday (by the way, the author is now saying it was all a joke), let's mention a new good guy today: Answers in Genesis BUSTED! The author is trying to expose the deceptions of various creationist claims. Good luck at that: they're excreting the…

This kind of silliness happens with tedious frequency. I get email notifications that I've been signed up to receive tripe from conservative or religious or creationist jerks. You are now signed up to receive Ann Coulter's weekly column, Newt Gingrich's Winning the Future newsletter, and Robert…

Want to see some real science? An article in the NY Times summarizes research in the evolution of glucocorticoid receptors. This is really cool stuff, where the investigators do step-by-step changes in the protein structure to determine the likely sequence of evolutionary changes — it really does…

And he's so getting spanked for this. He suggests that perhaps Texas isn't doomed after all, because a significant majority of the Texas Board of Education has come out saying that they don't want to remove evolution from the curriculum, and they don't want to include Intelligent Design.…

Look into this one, everyone: the Coalition on the Public Understanding of Science (COPUS), another attempt to coordinate efforts to improve public outreach and science education. They have some worthy goals: Building the COPUS network - Underpinning the COPUS effort is a growing network of…

Oh, gosh … this Expelled movie is going to be ghastly. Check out this interview with Walt Ruloff, the executive producer. Ruloff's credentials on this issue are that — get ready for it — he was a software engineer. We get a good feel for the tack the movie is going to take: biologists don't ask…

Hollywood is officially bankrupt. Free of all new ideas. Worthless recyclers without an imagination. Why? They're remaking The Day the Earth Stood Still, one of the best science fiction movies of all time. And just to make it that much worse, who is the star? Keanu F. Reeves. Fortunately, I still…

I knew the creationists were obtuse, but this is going a little far. Denyse O'Leary is twittering about all these paranoid suspicions that Richard Dawkins or I are planning to sue to block the release of that silly creationist movie, Expelled, in a post titled Darwinist threat to sue pro-ID…

It probably is: it has just the right amount of ingrown festering obsessiveness. We've all heard of old earth creationism (creationists who agree the Earth is billions of years old, and make arguments about the "days" of the bible representing long ages) and young earth creationism (the bible is…

Here, everyone, go have fun with this brand new creationist blog that has a grand total of one post so far … but that post is ripe with hilarious promise. This one is an atheist science denialist (someone was wondering if there were any atheist ID proponents a while back, so here's one). He's got…