pharyngula

New Kid on the Hallway tried to give up on blogging, but now she's back…with an interesting set of excuses for why she needed to resume. See, if you've been carrying on an internal dialog about you'd get so much more done if weblogs would disappear, it isn't true.

The Raw Story reveals that D. James Kennedy of Coral Ridge Ministries will be a hosting a program that blames Darwin for Hitler. Orac has going to have to resurrect an entire zombie Wehrmacht to handle this one: look at the unholy corps of creationists he has assembled to defend this outrageous…

I'm sure you all remember that "It Works, Bitches" comic—you can now get it on a t-shirt.

How can I be tagged with the Random Quotes meme? I've had this set of random quotes set up to appear on my site for years—it seems redundant to ask me to go through someone else's quote file and pull out five that I like. Since Janet did it, though, I'll go along…only I'm going to insist on using…

Hank Fox just dropped me a line mentioning an older article he'd found, as something I might want to blog about. Yes, it was—I wrote about it sometime ago, and here it is again. The article Hank found is also worth reading, with a strong conclusion: Despite all its fine words, religion has brought…

Surprise, surprise, surprise—private schools aren't better than public schools, and private schools run by conservative Christian organizations are the worst. The federal Education Department reported Friday that, in reading and math, children attending public schools generally do as well as or…

This poem from the EvC Forum, "Another Reply To Bishop Wilberforce," tickled my fancy, so here it is. All credit goes to the author, who goes by the name Dr Adequate. Another Reply To Bishop Wilberforce "I asserted — and I repeat — that a man has no reason to be ashamed of having an ape for his…

People like the Disgruntled Chemist see stuff like this, and they just think, "PZ!" Of course, it is breakfast time, and I'm thinking…man oh man, I could go for a big bowl of tasty Squid Chunks right now. Mmmm-mmmm. Piquant, and they slide down so smooth and easy. I could be their 'celebrity'…

A couple of my colleagues here, the Goodnoughs, have notice my mild and entirely rational interest in a certain class of organisms, and passed along a little cartoon. But cephalopods don't need shoes and hats, either!

I've been picking up some old movies on DVD lately to improve my education in the classics: specifically, an old favorite, the Hammer horror films. Yesterday, to take a break from class prep, I watched one I hadn't seen before, Curse of the Werewolf. It has an interesting plot, a bit more…

Well, there I am again, mentioned in an article in Nature (Nature Reviews Genetics, actually), but I have to agree with RPM: it's an awfully thin article that draws unwarranted and hasty conclusions from a tiny sample. It would have been better to actually talk to some of the people blogging about…

How would you like to see that coming out of the dark at you? Here's a dramatic account of divers meeting a school of Humboldt squid—the beasts are as big as a man, and aggressive. As I floated there transfixed, a large squid moved to within two feet and flashed again. Mesmerized by the strobe…

Dang, but I seem to be too late. A Seattle newsweekly describes a generous program from Focus on the Family—you could get on to their website store, order up to $100 worth of their enlightening merchandise, and then they only asked for a donation! Pay $0, get it all for free! Unfortunately, they…

This picture is just plain weird.

And I'm not talking about Lio.

I neglected to include the latest carnival of Animalcules in my last round up. In my defense, though, I will say that they are very, very tiny and easy to miss.

Schools teach people how to think. This abomination is about learning not to think. It's also an example of child abuse by smiling, cheerful parents, and a contemptible media outlet that blandly and merely reports the way religious fanatics poison kids' minds.

Look at this chart: it purports to show the percentage of 'born-again' Christians who abandon their faith after attending various categories of colleges. My first thought was, "Good, now how can we get those numbers higher?"; I'm sure that most fundies feel what the author of the chart intended,…

Octopus cyanea You may be wondering what they're doing. Here's a hint: that's a male below, and a female above. Here's another hint: that's his specialized third arm, the hectocotyl limb. Third hint: it's in her oviduct. If you can't figure it out yet, look below the fold for an illustration.…

The latest in Pharyngula-approved carnivals: The Friday Ark #100 (Woo-hoo! Nice round 3 digit number!) Carnival of the Liberals #19 I and the Bird #30 Skeptics' Circle #41 Now, open that thread and sing!

Remember that ranking of countries by their accommodation to the reality of evolution? Take a look at an economist's take on the problem: he gets it right. It turns out that the United States had the second-highest percentage of adults who said the statement was false — and the second-lowest…

Truth is something unearthed gradually, and we have to be prepared to revise our interpretation of it based on the evidence. Several readers have informed me of recent developments that will require us to radically re-evaluate our perspective on the universe. Geocentrism can make a comeback! Since…

He's planning to debate Jonathan Wells…on Fox radio. I guess we can only hope the host, Alan Colmes, is a little less passive than Flatow was in the Mooney/Bethell debate, but we can guarantee that Wells is as ignorant and foolish as Bethell. I am going to have to turn my attention soon to Wells'…

First, the Minnesota zombies invaded the lakes. Then there was some unpleasantness from the police when they took over the mall. Now there's going to be a zombie pub crawl in Minneapolis on Saturday, September 9. But wait! There's also going to be a pirate pub crawl on the same day! What to do,…

Palaeos is gone! There is a brief note about being unable to support it any longer, and then poof, it's offline. Martin Brazeau has a comment on it's value; you can still see fragments of this great resource in google's cache, but even that will fade too soon. This is troubling, and it's one of the…

I get the impression that Sam Harris didn't like Francis Collins' book: If one wonders how beguiled, self-deceived and carefree in the service of fallacy a scientist can be in the United States in the 21st century, "The Language of God" provides the answer. The only thing that mitigates the harm…

Next time you're cutting up a fresh bird, try looking for the lungs. They're about where you'd expect them to be, but they're nestled up dorsally against the ribs and vertebrae, and they're surprisingly small. If you think about it, the the thorax of a bird is a fairly rigid box, with that large…

Somebody has way too much time on their hands: they've modeled a Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster…in Legos. I'm afraid, though, that I'm such an atheist that if such a building existed in reality, I'd still spurn it as superstitious nonsense.

I've been a bit sex-obsessed lately. No, no, not that way—it's all innocent, and the objects of my obsessions are all fish. A little background explanation: one of my current research projects is on the genetics of behavior. This is a difficult area, because behavior is incredibly complex with…