Weirdness
pharyngula | July 6, 2006The most amusing coverage of the Nature top science blogs article comes from The Technology Chronicles, which begins by calling scientists "sober, dispassionate, precise" and suggests that we've abandoned "Olympian impartiality" to compete with Cute Overload. I get the impression the author hasn't ever met a real scientist. Nick will love being called a "budding Matt Drudge."
We need more cute, huh? OK, I can do cute. I had to run my photo through a face transformer to do it, but here I am, rendered a bit more adorably than in real life.
Now I just sit back and wait for the fans to roll in…
pharyngula | July 5, 2006Reading some of my favorite blogs today, I can't help but feel the looming hand of fate preparing to destroy us all.
Jon Voisey is praising a director of the Oklahoma ACLU, Joanne Bell. You're in Kansas, Jon. It's not that far from Oklahoma. What happened to Bell could happen to you.
Ophelia Benson is saying harsh words about Mother Theresa. An uppity woman criticizing an icon of Christian charity? Someday, you could be in a hospital with a hatchet-faced nun looming over you, contemplating how best to chastise your body before your immortal soul meets the god who will fling you into the…
pharyngula | July 5, 2006It's been three years since I visited Washington state, and Kerry of Federal Way just had to make me homesick by sending photos from the West Coast Chainsaw Carving Competition. I've been there before! It's fun and noisy.
It's just as well I didn't go this year: I would not have been able to resist this.
I don't think it would have fit in an overhead storage bin, either.
pharyngula | July 4, 2006You can ignore the gushy science-groupie parts of this post (it just makes me blush, and wonder where all these girls were when I was single*), but the movie—which is on a completely different topic altogether—but the imbedded movie is hilarious.
*It was so long ago, they probably hadn't even been conceived yet, I know. It's OK, though, I found my science groupie, and I only really needed one.
pharyngula | July 1, 2006Gosh, I think I like it. Grrlscientist dug up this automatic Advertising Slogan Generator, and here's what it tells me my new website slogan should be.
Does She or Doesn't She? Only Her Pharyngula Knows for Sure.
Yes, ladies, it's true: I do know. Don't blush; it's OK, it's perfectly natural.
pharyngula | June 30, 2006I remember 1968, and I remember that I was into comic books at that age…but I sure don't remember that the patriarchy was this dominant, and clueless.
Remember, kids, be nice to your girlfriends so that they'll squelch any uppity feminists who threaten your dominance!
pharyngula | June 29, 2006I had my credit card out and everything—doesn't everyone want a Death Ray?
(via collision detection)
pharyngula | June 28, 2006I mentioned that cringe-inducing hemipenectomy that some spiders do…well, Stan Schwarz had to one-up me and sent a link to an image of an example of full genital splitting (if you click that link, you're probably safe; it's a very tiny thumbnail image. Click on that, though, and all bets are off). I have no idea why any human being would want to do that—it looks like a very creepy meat butterfly in the guy's crotch. If that description alone grosses you out, you definitely don't want to click on that link. Move along, move along.
pharyngula | June 27, 2006Quite a few people sent me a link to this Foxtrot comic with the remote-controlled squid.
They were all just trying to tease me cruelly, because they knew it would be my favorite summertime pool toy, and they don't exist. I looked everywhere, but the closest I could get was a remote-controlled robot shark, which is only almost as good.
Although, if we could mount laser beams on their heads…
pharyngula | June 26, 2006Here it is, the proof from breast ironing. Simple selectionist models can't explain why human beings would mutilate secondary sexual characteristics and genitalia, therefore god exists. We also know the Christian right is exactly correct: God really does obsess over people's sex lives, and he is a kind of sick pervert who likes to hurt children.
We can also suspect that he's probably male, since testicle flattening, penis knotting, and scrotum binding don't seem to come up often in his prescribed lists of genital abuses.
pharyngula | June 26, 2006If you were still wondering what kind of scientist Batman is, here's the roundup, along with the best Batman origin story ever.
pharyngula | June 23, 2006Feeling musical this morning? Stephanie Ching sent me links to some lyrics. An old User Friendly cartoon combines Cthulhu, zombies, and brains, and then there's the unspeakable: this guy has written a song for John Tesh. If anything is going to rouse the sleeping Old Ones that lie in lost R'Lyeh, it's got to be New Age caterwauling.
Quick! To scrub the thought of New Age Lite muzak out of your brain, Unfogged provides a cure: visualize your scrotum rupturing. Think about epididymitis and Fournier's gangrene. There, can't you feel the nightmare ebbing?
pharyngula | June 22, 2006This new strange question is sweeping the scienceblogs: "what kind of scientist is Batman?"
The answer is obvious.
He's a fictional scientist. He's a member of a long and distinguished lineage, from Tom Swift to Grissom of CSI, of imaginary scientists written by people who don't know any science, and who imbue their characters with cross-disciplinary super powers and give everyone a false impression of just how easy and unambiguous scientific research is.
Not all fictional scientists have to be so cartoonishly omniscient, though. I recommend Allegra Goodman's Intuition(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll)…
pharyngula | June 20, 2006
According to Boingboing, this is a sign warning people of peril. Why do I feel that this is a sign beckoning me to rush on and jump in the water?
pharyngula | June 19, 2006I have a DVD of The Horror Express, starring Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, and Telly Savalas. There's a short clip of a conversation I'd like to extract as an mpeg or quicktime movie—even extracting just the audio would be nice.
It's a classic. Christopher Lee is explaining his discovery of an ancient fossil to a beautiful woman:
Lee: That box of bones, madam, could have solved many of the riddles of science. If the theory of evolution is confirmed, if the science of biology is revolutionized, if the very origin of man is determined…
Beautiful woman: I have heard of evolution. It is immoral…
pharyngula | June 19, 2006I succumbed to the tempting link Corrente waved around, and clicked through to see Connie Chung's farewell to some cable show I never heard of before. I suffered horribly, so it's only fair that you share my pain.
pharyngula | June 17, 2006Perhaps Lindsay doesn't realize it, but she has data that pinpoint the date of the Singularity. Or the Rapture. Whatevs.
pharyngula | June 16, 2006
Do I have any readers in R'lyeh who can ship me a few gallons?
(via Blue Glow)
pharyngula | June 6, 2006
Today is 6/6/06, that ominous numerological signifier of the fundies, much beloved by conspiracy theorists, and full of interesting numerical properties (but is there ever such a thing as an uninteresting number?). It's also the date that Ann Coulter's new book, Godless, is being released.
Everyone is missing the most portentous aspect of the number, though…
It also happens to be Pharyngula's 3rd Anniversary. Yay! Happy blogday!
Yeah, now the secret's out. I am the anti-christ. Don't panic, though—the Tribulation doesn't start until the sitemeter count hits 6,666,666, and I'm over a half…
jlynch | June 5, 2006From Reuters:
A man shouting that God would keep him safe was mauled to death by a lioness in Kiev zoo after he crept into the animal's enclosure, a zoo official said on Monday.
"The man shouted 'God will save me, if he exists', lowered himself by a rope into the enclosure, took his shoes off and went up to the lions," the official said.
"A lioness went straight for him, knocked him down and severed his carotid artery."
Well, that takes care of that burning question.