Kooks
pharyngula | December 15, 2009I am often chided by morons.
Consistent
Dear Mr. Myers,
To be wrong is always acceptable, because we are human. But, to be consistently wrong, especially when you call yourself a Professor, is going way beyond the bounds of good sense. Anyone who even gives ear to people such as Dawkins and Kitchens is no less than a fool. There is nothing wrong with being a fool, but teaching others to be one is unacceptable and irresponsible, at the very least. Furthermore, to have a degree or degrees in biology and to still believe in Darwinian theory, shows ignorance in the worst degree. Macro…
pharyngula | December 14, 2009Keep that recent xkcd in mind when you read this one. This is from a creationist who is convinced all those biologists have it completely wrong, because Clovis points are beautiful artifacts.
Im digging in Ancient mans kitchen
Why is it that the deeper I Dig , the more brilliant the artifacts become… Isn't that opposite of the Darwin view? Clovis, First view, Plainview,… these guys were far advanced when it came to the quality of life.. I always was taught the older man was the dumber he was.. That's not accurate in my pea brain view of what I am personally researching… My digging buds…
pharyngula | December 11, 2009Kooks are like stray cats: give them a little bit of attention, and they end up following you everywhere, making annoying squalling noises and clawing at your door. A perfect example is David Mabus aka Dennis Markuze aka That Insane Prat, who, now that registration is a barrier to posting his little kook-droppings here, has taken to trying to flood my mailbox. Ha ha, the laugh is on him, my mailbox is already flooded! Also, I've got filters up the wazoo there, anyway.
There a whole lot of skeptics (and the entire faculty of the University of Minnesota Morris, too, who have marveled and…
pharyngula | December 10, 2009Once again, the repetitively wrong rapture rummy is predicting the imminent end of the world.
I don't care anymore. The guy has just shown over and over again that he's an incompetent prophet; his skills in that department seem to be about on a par with his abilities as a web designer.
pharyngula | December 8, 2009That sure didn't take long. Bruce G. Charlton has chastised me.
It strikes me a sleazy and sloppy bit of journalism, unworthy of a scientist, falsely to accuse me in print of corrupt self-publishing.
All of my articles published in Medical Hypotheses since I became editor are editorials. Editor publishing editorials - you know the kind of thing?
If it had been me, I would be ashamed of myself, and would want to make a public apology.
But then you are not me! - so I expect nothing of the sort.
No reply is required or expected.
Prof. Bruce G Charlton MD
Editor in Chief - Medical…
pharyngula | December 7, 2009The journal Medical Hypotheses is a weird creature: it has no peer review and publishes, to put it generously, 'speculative' papers. At least it's entertaining in an "OMG they say what?" sort of way. A fun blog called NCBI ROFL, which highlights some of the weirdness that pops up in scientific abstracts, has made this Bruce G Charlton week — Charlton is not only the editor of Medical Hypotheses, he's a frequent contributor (which makes one wonder…since the journal has no peer review, and the only gatekeeper is the editor, Bruce G Charlton, has Dr Charlton ever received a rejection from the…
pharyngula | December 6, 2009I laughed at the God Equation. The author writes to assure me it is very scientific. I laugh some more.
Dear Dr. Myers,
I didn't believe the equation either. I am a skeptic and a great fan of people like Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, etc. so please don't tar this with the pseudoscience brush because it's not appropriate in this case.
I'd ask you to consider the following. In the equation, pi divided by 0.0123456789 equals the 21 cm wavelength for the hydrogen fine transition.
So the equation is frequency of hydrogen fine transition times wavelength of hydrogen fine transition equals…
pharyngula | December 4, 2009We atheists are done for now. Behold, the God Equation, which I received in email and proves that a deity created us all:
Scientists working in the UK have discovered robust evidence that the creation of the earth and moon was a deliberate act. The researchers found that the earth, moon, and beyond were engineered according to a specific equation. They have dubbed it the God Equation. The equation, which looks like this:
shows a constant, unchanging relationship between the speed of light, the ratio between the circumference and diameter of a circle, and the radio frequency of hydrogen in…
pharyngula | December 2, 2009One of the weirdest elements of the Biblical chronology of Genesis is that God waits until Day 4 to create the sun, moon, and stars. I know, it makes no sense at all, but as it turns out,God had a reason for that. Just ask a creationist!
Why did God wait till Day 4 before He made the sun, moon and stars?
Answer: Perhaps because God knew that some people would worship the sun, moon and stars, and He wanted to show us that they are not so important after all. The sun did not form the earth, and the stars do not control what happens on Earth.God wants us to worship Him, not anything that He has…
pharyngula | November 30, 2009Several people have notified me of this amusing editorial by the editor of the Colorado Springs Gazette, which compares me to a diseased pig and insists on addressing me as "Little Paul" throughout. It's poorly written and mostly pointless (well, other than its demand that we censor youtube), and I think there is only one virtue to it. It gives Bryan Appleyard an example to follow in his ongoing efforts to improve his writing.
pharyngula | November 30, 2009I am deeply, horribly ashamed. On the principle that one's reputation is known by the quality of one's enemies…I have the pathetic Bryan Appleyard acting as if he is my nemesis. You know a post is worthless when it begins with "Please note that at the end of this post P.Z.Myers will still be a jerk and I still won't be," and then goes downhill from there. But then, Andrew Sullivan thinks there's some substance to Appleyard's bilious nonsense, so I tried hard to see if there was some reasonable argument somewhere in his pouty whine. There isn't; it's mostly excuses for why his science writing…
pharyngula | November 29, 2009There's no getting around it. I often hear creationists protest "Oh, we love science!", but then the weird process they describe after that looks nothing like science, and resembles something more like church with lab coats. At least Michael Egnor of the Discovery Institute doesn't hide his loathing in a rant that has to be read to be believed. Prompted by the hacking of an email server that revealed that climate scientists tend to be rude and crude in their private communications (a fact that does not diminish the science of climate change at all), Egnor goes on a tear, cussing out…
pharyngula | November 29, 2009Powerful stuff, that porn. The Indonesian Minister of Communication and Information (who must be very smart to have a title like that) has determined that recent natural disasters in his country are a consequence of the ubiquity of pornographic DVDs. His logic is something like this: 1) it is a fact that one can easily buy porn in local markets, and 2) it is a fact that the Padang earthquake killed over a thousand people and that the Aceh tsunami devastated an entire region, therefore 3) it is a fact that the two are causally related. Well, point 3 is a little shaky, but 1 and 2 are so strong…
pharyngula | November 26, 2009By way of the endless thread, I have discovered this marvelous quote from Andy Schlafly.
There's a broader point here. Why the big push for black holes by liberals, and big protests against any objection to them? If it turned out empirically that promoting black holes tends to cause people to read the Bible less, would you still push this so much?
Forget that math and physics stuff; the universe is actually a giant propaganda piece for liberalism, and the only reason scientists huff and puff about what's actually out there is to get you to stop reading your Bibles.
pharyngula | November 18, 2009Operation Save America has begun. Some of the fundagelicals are hoping to get militant, and I don't mean in that same sense that some atheists are called "militant", which generally means "atheists who say something". No, they are organizing and training kids to get out there and fight spiritual warfare. If you're wondering what they could be fighting for, we have som choice quotes from Rev. Rusty Lee Thomas, who wrote the manual for young Jesus warriors.
A patriarch is a family ruler. He is the man in charge. Biblical manhood demands men … defend and shield or cover women from injury, evil…
pharyngula | November 17, 2009Bill Maher struck precisely the wrong tone in his recent plea for 'forgiveness' for his anti-vax stand — it wasn't an admission that he had been wrong, it was a rather smarmy, self-righteous claim that he has been the open-minded one who just wants to ask the hard questions . It reminded me of nothing other than the sniffy, sanctimonious tone creationists take when they try to claim they're just interested in the free exchange of information on both sides of their issue. It's just another attempt to put crank pseudoscience on a par with real science.
Orac is scathing in his assessment. Maher…
pharyngula | November 17, 2009Well.
It was a strange event. Kittywhumpus and Greg Laden have good detailed breakdowns of the debate, so you can always read those for the audience perspective. As for me, I've learned that you can never prepare for a debate.
I tried. I had a focus — the topic, chosen by Bergman, was "Should Intelligent Design be taught in the schools" — and what I prepared for my side was a set of arguments on that point. I used my own experience teaching biology to lay down a few principles: to teach a subject as science, you need an explanatory mechanism or theory that provides a conceptual framework for…
pharyngula | November 17, 2009Our problem is that we men don't stand up when we pee. Obama probably sits down when he should pisseth against the wall.
This isn't a joke. It's what this guy seriously believes, and he's very angry about it.
Somehow, I get the idea that Steven L. Anderson, the flaming anti-gay pastor, has these dreams in which he stands shoulder to shoulder with a long line of men, and they all unzip and flip out their penises and spray a mighty stream forth, together, with pride and joy…and he feels good about these dreams. Glory!
pharyngula | November 10, 2009That's my recipe for dealing with crackpots; feel free to use it, it's easy.
You all may remember Vincent Fleury, the French fellow who ascribes developmental processes to swirls of cellular movement in development, who wrote a peculiar paper in a European journal of applied physics (which I mocked mercilessly), and who then went crying to fringe journalist Suzan Mazur, and then demanded withdrawal of my review and an apology. He's done it again. I just received a copy of a letter from France, which was also sent to the vice chancellor of academic affairs of my university, demanding that I…
pharyngula | November 8, 2009I'm sorry to have to mention this again, but there's a chance the world will end on Wednesday. The same guy with the website that was designed to make you vomit from your eye sockets, who has been predicting the imminent end of the world over and over again, is predicting the apocalypse again.
Ho hum.
Anyway, I think he's been stung by his repeated failures, and this time he's imbedded his prediction in a conditional. Smart move. Expect further sliding deadlines for the apocalypse, all coupled to improbable pre-conditions. For instance, if a yeti starts nesting in my armpit hair, you should…