pharyngula

Read Ophelia's take on the Israeli 'modesty buses'. Would you believe certain buses in Jerusalem are set aside to make special accommodation for orthodox Jews? Women are compelled to sit in the back of the bus. In the back of the bus. I think they need a Jewish Rosa Parks. The most disingenuous…

There's an interesting idea floating around at a few other godless sites: the Parking Lot Challenge, which proposes that atheists take up the task of putting together positive statements about reason and rationality and materialism and naturalism, a little active proselytizing for godlessness.…

Brian Flemming reveals that the godless debaters who will engage the two idiots on 5 May are Brian Sapient and Kelly of the Rational Response Squad. He also mentions that Ray Comfort is planning to bring a banana to the debate. Oh, man, I hope so. If the debate rolls around to atheist morality (…

This interview with a Rabbi Sacks is rather hard for me to wrap my brain around. The first part is about something Sacks is very concerned about: Jewish continuity. He seems strangely concerned about Jewish young people marrying outside their group, and has run ad campaigns to convince young Jews…

You'll need to scroll from side to side to appreciate this scientifically inaccurate but very cool act of vandalism.

Randy Olson is putting together the DVD extras for the release of Flock of Dodos, and he's gathering photos of showings of the movie. Did anyone out there take photos at the February screening at the Bell Museum? Let me know, or just mail them to me. Uh-oh — we're under some time pressure. The…

How confusing: remember the story about the convert to Judaism who was trying to compel his adolescent son to be circumcised? I was persuaded by others that the story was almost certainly an urban legend, but now it turns out that there really is a pending court case that fits the particulars. The…

We've finally found something crazy enough to make a Utah Republican to back away. One of their district chairmen, Don Larsen, has proposed an interesting resolution. "In order for Satan to establish his 'New World Order' and destroy the freedom of all people as predicted in the Scriptures, he must…

I greatly admire their perseverance…it seems a shame to chop them up this way. But life will find a way to eat just about anything.

Larry Moran thinks we need more rigorous admission requirements, and Donald Kennedy is not very happy with the state of creationist textbooks. Kennedy is currently serving as an expert witness for the University of California Regents, who are being sued by a group of Christian schools, students and…

Amphitretus pelagicus There are many more photos of adorable creatures of the deep sea at this site.

Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron are two of the very dumbest creationists you will find — and they were upset at the Blasphemy Challenge, so they demanded a chance to debate. And of course, since they are the dumbest, most inane, silliest creationists around, television executives jumped at the chance…

My little trip distracted me with the perfect timing to miss the amazing fair-use flare-up — I'm back just in time to catch the happy resolution. I guess I'll say something anyway, but I'll be brief. The general question is whether blogs should be restrained from using figures and data published in…

Hey, I'm home again! To Boston and back again in 30 hours is a bit much, I'm afraid—I need a nap, but work awaits me. We did have a brief gathering of science blog fans at Darwin's this morning: Mark (whose last name I didn't get…he can 'fess up in a comment), Revere (why isn't everyone reading his…

We have some musical talent among our readers. I was sent lyrics and a link to … BRAINY PRIMATE BLUES words and music by Bruce Woollatt Sometimes I wonder why we ever left Olduvai. It's a mystery to me why we didn't stay in the trees. Well a million years ago we should have thought the whole…

The Wellcome Trust has published a short pamphlet to inform young students about evolution. I haven't had a chance to look at it carefully yet, but it looks like an interesting combination of a fairly wordy presentation and lots of color and flash. You can download a pdf of Evolution: The Big…

OK, I've decided: I'm going to be at Darwin's on Thursday morning, around 8ish. If you're in the area, stop on by — no obligation, though, if you're all busy I'll just check my mail and guzzle some coffee before heading off to the airport. There were lots of good suggestions, but really … how could…

This is too absurd to be true. As you know, Daylight Saving Time started almost a month early this year. You would think that members of Congress would have considered the warming effect that an extra hour of daylight would have on our climate. Or did they? Perhaps this is another plot by a…

Time is running an online poll to discover "the most influential people of the year" — I'd urge you all to vote for Dawkins, except that when you browse the list you discover it's a collection of pop stars, models, sports figures, and the sparse sprinkling of a few politicians and random others. It…

This is cool: Simon Conway Morris gave a talk at Baylor, and Cody was there. Conway Morris is a smart fellow who does some very interesting work, and now I learn that he's also a charming speaker — even though I completely disagree with his conclusions, I wish he'd come a little farther north so I…

I'm on my way to Boston for a day. A few people have written wondering if there'd be any free time to get together, and I'm afraid today is booked solid. The one possibility is tomorrow morning (Thursday), my plane leaves at 11:20, and I'll probably just hang about in the coffeeshop nearest my…

I just finished watching a copy of a three-part program that was broadcast in England three years ago — A Brief History of Disbelief, narrated by Jonathan Miller. All I can say is … wow. It's less an advocacy of atheism than a kind of post-atheism, a historical and philosophical review of this…

The latest edition of the Tangled Bank is at About Archaeology. Read!

The most important battle in the history of mankind! A bit more than a week ago, I mentioned this interview I did for a site called One Blog A Day. The comment thread on the interview has grown in a peculiar way — John A. Davison and his pet sycophantic monkey, VMartin, are babbling away in a most…

Phil Plait has the stats: it's 1.5 earth diameters, 5 times the mass, 2¼ Gs, and probably has a surface temperature between 0°C and 40°C. It's big, it could be wet, and it's only 20 light years away. You know what I'm thinking? It could be the Planet of the Squid. Somebody get cracking on that…

Did you also attend this Intelligent Design quackery talk by John Marshall? Report in, please, and let us know how stupid it was (there is no doubt that it was stupid, we're just interested in measuring the degree.) Marshall is yet another M.D. who became a creationist because he looked…

Bwahahahaha! At least … we have a source for Kryptonite! Researchers from mining group Rio Tinto discovered the unusual mineral and enlisted the help of Dr Stanley when they could not match it with anything known previously to science. Once the London expert had unravelled the mineral's chemical…

Atrios has links and videos of the Tillman hearings on misinformation from the battlefield; Tillman, you may recall, was the soldier who was killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan a few years ago. Jessica Lynch also gives an accurate account of her story. The common theme is that our government…

Did you know that if you left Minneapolis right now, you could be in Morris in time for the last Café Scientifique Morris of the 2006-2007 academic year? Tracey Anderson will be telling us all about aquatic insects, as well as just about anything you might want to ask about arthropods. If you can't…

Even if you personally feel that you could never support abortion, here's a powerful personal argument for abortion rights — it's pretty much today's essential read. (via Majikthise)