pharyngula

The miseducation committee of the Indiana legislature recently approved a bill to allow the teaching of creationism in the schools, and now the Indianapolis newspaper approves, with the usual tepid and illegitimate arguments. Much would depend on how teachers handle the origins of life in a biology…

The gang at Skepticon are running a poll to design the World's Most Innocuous Atheist Billboard, and they've settled on the message — "Baby Animals Are Cute" — and they've got some choices for you to pick from. I thought I'd help and offer my own suggestion: See? Far superior to the kittens and…

Lots of people have been sending me this paper by Erik Andrulis, and most of you have done so with eyebrows raised, pointing out that it's bizarre and unbelievable; some of you wrote asking whether it was believable, at which point my eyebrows went up. Come on people: when you see one grand cosmic…

Indiana is preparing to promote creationism in their science classrooms. A legislative committee has advanced a bill that endorses creationism and "alternative theories" to the vote of the full senate. So it's not a law yet, but it's advancing down the path. Here's the horrifying part: it was…

We're having a visit today from Shawn Lawrence Otto, a fellow who has been fighting against the un-American war on science on the web and in a book, Fool Me Twice: Fighting the Assault on Science in America. He's speaking on campus tonight at 7:30 Central, in the HFA Recital Hall — I urge local…

Tremble in fear, and behold this terrifying homicidal vegetable! The larger denizens of Brazil may be unaware of the carnage beneath their feet, but trust me — the far more numerous inhabitants of the country, roundworms and such, feel nothing but terror at encountering their roots. (via NatGeo) (…

Even in pre-school. Think what fury there would be if this teacher couldn't spell, or had poor grammar, or couldn't read Goodnight Moon fluently. But not knowing how a fundamental property of the universe works? Pffft. Not important. (Also on FtB)

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Mondays are my long, long days — this is the day I get to spend 3 hours talking to students in small groups about cancer (they're young and invincible, so so far it hasn't been as depressing as I feared.) And they teach me stuff! Among the things I learned today is that there was a Peanuts special…

Every time I mention the fact of global climate change, the denialists start sending me furious emails. (By the way, I know that AGW is "anthropogenic global warming"; what is CAGW?) I think we can safely say that AGW believers are clinically psychotic The psychosis of the CAGW cult is total.…

The requirements to be a TV weather presenter are fairly slack: an undergraduate degree with some training in meteorology is preferred, but not required, and the main skills seem to be looking presentable with nice hair, being able to dance with a green screen, and being glib and cheerful. So I…

Now that the door is opened to contemplating rotating cats, I think we should look at organisms that are even better at the spinning routine. (Also on FtB)

I'm going to be a contrarian here. I think the Kentucky legislature has made a perfectly sensible budget decision. Here's the deal: in the current budget, a couple of interesting decisions have been made. Funding for K-12 education: -$50 million Tax breaks for the Ark Park: +$43 million Highway…

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Here's an opportunity: you could work with Reed Cartwright at Arizona State University!

There wasn't much color photography in Darwin's day, so all the photos we have of him are in black and white (or sepia). Here's a site with some skillful retouching of old photos to add color…and a new version of a familiar image. (Also on FtB)

There is a shifting pattern of spam email that I get. A while back, it was practically non-stop gay porn; I commented on this a while back, and laughed it off, which apparently annoyed the people who'd been sending it to me. I think they expected me to be stressed and conflicted and angry at…

Given the content of my site, and the wingnutty pious predilections of the American public and government, and the enmity and known censorious habits of Christians and creationists, how long do you think this place would stay up if SOPA/PIPA went into effect?

It's easy. You're one of us if every time you hear the tune, "It's a long way to Tipperary", you hear the lyrics as, "It's a long way from…" Now you have to sing the rest of the chorus. (Also on FtB)

Along with SOPA and PIPA, our government is contemplating another acronym with deplorable consequences for the free dissemination of information: RWA, the Research Works Act. This is a bill to, it says, "ensure the continued publication and integrity of peer-reviewed research works by the private…

This just isn't right. The United Kingdom is this small little country way off in Europe, and the United States is this giant powerful country, and they managed to put creationists in their place while we debate about electing them to the presidency. It makes no sense. Leading scientists and…

Every year he asks people questions, and every year he compiles the answers. This year, the question is "What is your favorite deep, elegant, or beautiful explanation?", and he got 188 completely different answers back. Did he forget to ask you? Then you can leave your answer in the comments here…

First we had Steven Pinker writing about The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, with the thesis that we're getting more peaceful over time. Now John Horgan has declared the potential for The End of War — that we have the ability to stop fighting and cooperate. Horgan makes the…

Look at this: no originality at all. The wanna-bes and poseurs all have to dress up in their idol's fashions, even if it is cross-phylum dressing. (via NatGeo) (Also on FtB)

In a previous "I get email" post, I mocked this bizarre list of 50 "proofs" that god exists: they were all nonsense and non sequiturs and bizarre falsehoods. The author actually dragged out the Lady Hope story as evidence for a god! Take a look and you'll see how genuinely stupid the list was. But…

The Missouri is considering HB1227, a bill that would require public schools to teach intelligent design creationism. It's a descendant of a similar bill that was previously allowed to die, and it shares some of the same properties as the previous version: an amazing opacity and astonishingly…

Now and again, some well-meaning but clueless person gets it into their head that teaching creationism in the schools is a good idea — that the clash of ideas is a good pedagogical technique. There are cases where that would be true, but doing it in the public school classroom and hashing over a…

I don't know about where you are, but this has been a strange winter here in Minnesota. We've had two snow "storms" so far, that did little more than dust the place with snow that melted away in these bizarrely odd warm days we've had. It's cold, windy, and snowing lightly today, but otherwise,…

A while back, the Way of the Master (Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron) came out with a board game, Intelligent Design vs. Evolution. I imagine the Discovery Institute cringes in pain every time those two clowns associate themselves with their brand, which is good; but you know it has to be an awful,…

We've all had them, but none quite so annoying as the one that afflicted Dr Caitlin Zaloom of the NYU Department of Social and Cultural Analysis. Dr Zaloom gave a simple enough project to her students, to go down to the Occupy Wall Street protestors in Zucotti Park and write an ethnographic…