pharyngula

The University of Minnesota Morris has a special guest coming to town: Roger Nygard, the filmmaker best known for making the movie Trekkies, about the Star Trek culture. He's here as a guest of our philosophy department, though, because his latest movie is The Nature of Existence, in which he asks…

This must have been fun, I wish I'd been there.

I guess my Montreal talk is going to air in Ontario tomorrow…or as Larry Moran points out, it's also on the intertubularities.

I chuckled at Ritter, the creationist suing a Pennsylvania school district, but now I've actually seen formal legal complaint, and I'm not giggling anymore. It's more like the kind of roaring guffaw that would make Brian Blessed sound like a feeble titterer. I don't think he had any legal counsel…

Africa is suffering through the global AIDS pandemic — tens of millions are infected with HIV. It's good that wealthier nations are sending resources to the continent, but do they really need a quack homeopath and chiropractor to travel to Tanzania to treat AIDS with homeopathy? Wait…there are…

The Vatican claims to want to talk with atheists, so they're having a conference. How nice. The Vatican announced a new initiative aimed at promoting dialogue between theists and atheists to be launched with a two-day event this March in Paris. The Vatican's Pontifical Council for Culture will…

I had my own little prediction about what would happen in the recent split: I expected the HATE thread would start off with a surge and burn out early, while the LOVE thread would end up with the most comments by endurance. Boy, was I wrong. The two threads were neck-and-neck in commenting…

Looking for a nice demonstration of genetic algorithms? Here's a simulation that takes randomized connected collections of polygons and wheels and scores them for their ability to traverse a rugged 2D landscape. I tried it last night, and it gave me an assortment of very bad vehicles: for example,…

Sepia bandensis

I've tried to catch the news on broadcast and cable TV, off and on, lately, and it always ends up being far more off than on, despite certain dramatic events going on in the world. American news is dead, it seems. What I've done instead is tune in to Al Jazeera on the internet, which is doing a…

Governor Rick Perry has been talking about education. Well, there is a lot of fat to cut from our public schools, especially those in our biggest urban areas like Houston and Dallas. I am concerned that some the highly diverse Magnet public schools in this city are becoming hotbeds for liberalism…

A reader responded to my article where I said I found no solace in lies by sending me a poem by Edna St Vincent Millay. This could be part of the godless liturgy for coping with funerals; it's so true to the spirit of our thinking, and so antagonistic to Christian attitudes. So I'll share it with…

Every time I do this I get email from people who say they were startled to hear my voice on the radio, so I figure this time I'll warn you so I don't cause any traffic accidents. I'll be on Michael Slate's radio show on KPFK in Los Angeles this morning, and we're trying to do this on a monthly…

I am completely unsurprised by the recent report on the state of evolution in the American science classroom. It confirms entirely my impressions from years of freshman college students and from previous studies of the subject, and puts specific numbers and issues to the problem. The short summary…

Dara O'Briain and Brian Cox aggravated a great many astrologers when they announced on a UK television program that "astrology is rubbish" and "astrology is nonsense". The Astrological Association of Great Britain was so incensed that they created a petition demanding that the BBC commit to "making…

The everlasting community thread is getting fractious and ugly: the prolonged association is beginning to chafe, I think. So as an experiment I'm temporarily splitting the thread. This is the LOVE subthread. Be excellent to each other, and party on, dudes. No mellow-harshing talk allowed here; if…

The everlasting community thread is getting fractious and ugly: the prolonged association is beginning to chafe, I think. So as an experiment I'm temporarily splitting the thread. This is the HATE subthread. If there's something you want to get off your chest, if there's someone who has annoyed you…

What a stupid, ignorant woman. She's baffled by the phrase "Sputnik moment"; she reads it over and over; it makes her vaguely uncomfortable, with that Russian sound to it; and rather than asking someone or looking it up, she decides to invent her own totally wrong definition built on false premises…

Tom Ritter has a dream. It's a grand dream. Tom Ritter dreams of a day when people recognize that he's more than just a cranky high school teacher, and they realize that all the scientists in the world have been completely wrong, while Truth lives in the sweaty cranium of a harumphing gomer in…

Here's a great opportunity for a paid summer internship with the SCA. Apply! SCA Summer 2011 Internship Program The Secular Coalition for America (SCA) is pleased to offer one paid internship position for summer 2011. SCA is seeking a highly motivated undergraduate junior- or senior-level student…

He has sent me a response to my criticisms of his criticisms of the New Atheism. Look below the fold for what he sent me. A lot of online feedback is remarkably angry, hostile, and generally melodramatic. Every time I write an online piece I get an army of people calling me a "moron," or telling…

For many years now, Texas has been carrying out a great experiment: they've been pursuing Republican policies to a far greater degree than other states, and Texas is therefore a little glimpse into the American future, if we continue as we have. And that future seems prosperous, with a strong pro-…

Uganda is currently undergoing conflict over civil rights: a number of influential Christians in the country, under the influence of American evangelicals like Scott Lively and Rick Warren, have been pushing to have homosexuality condemned and people who love other people of the same sex arrested…

According to Ken Ham, he will be appearing on Anderson Cooper tonight (10pm (9 Central time) on CNN), along with Barry Lynn of Americans United. It sounds a little odd — the day after the state of the union address, they bring on a creationist kook? — and they don't say exactly what the topic is,…

At the end of February, I've mentioned that a flack from Answers in Genesis will be appearing in Morris. I guess the local hosts of that event are a little worried that I might breathe fire over their little church, so they just sent me a note. Professor Myers, I am the local coordinator for the…

At least they're going in the right direction: Taco Bell is being sued because their meat is mostly non-meat. The "seasoned ground beef" contains less than 35 percent beef - the other 65 percent of the meat-like mixture is: water, isolated oat product, salt, chili pepper, onion powder, tomato…

Another of those common, erroneous strategies used to criticize those danged Gnu Atheists is to first invent a definition for New Atheism that the Gnu Atheists themselves would find foreign, and then to jump all over it for a prolonged period of time until they've convinced themselves they've…

I didn't vote for her. I still feel embarrassed for the whole state of Minnesota that Michele Bachmann represents us in congress. This is a woman who worships the constitution but has no idea what's in it. I was just listening to the president's state of the union address, and getting very…

While the nattering thread natters on, Jewish comedians are busily designing the next generation of gods. (Current totals: 11,755 entries with 1,255,683 comments.)

I've heard back from a few people now who contacted Google about the issue of indexing creationist sites in Google Scholar; these are informal remarks from the team, not an official policy statement, but they're still interesting. And revealing. And useful. They'll change your perspective on Google…