December 2007
Silly scurrilousness against the sanctimonious →
I’ve been slacking off on Pharyngula lately — I’ve had a week to relax and get caught up on a few other things. Here, though, are a few links to ridiculous religiosity that have been piling up in the mailbox. Cockroaches are God’s wrath. And did you know Jesus had a roach problem? Vera Ivie knows what GW Bush’s problem is: we haven’t been praying hard enough for...
Happy New Year! →
In case neither Heather or myself get the chance before tomorrow (GMT of course), this is just a quick Happy New Year to all our readers - even those whose calendars don’t change over at midnight . We will try to get back into the swing of lots of ranting about idiocy as soon as the holiday season allows us.
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How a man's penis got so big →
No, no, it wasn’t caused by any of the modern marvels to counter erectile dysfunction, it was biological evolution ensuring good sex and the consequences thereof, says Dr Bowman. A report at Press Esc:
“As the diameter of the bony pelvis increased over time to permit passage of an infant with a larger cranium, the size of the vaginal canal necessarily also became larger, potentially...
'07-'08 →
“No time for love Dr. Jones.” - Randal (clerks) I don’t have any time so I just want to say happy new years to everyone out there on the internets. Lets try to make it a good one. Peace!
Monday Madness: It’s the dumb, stupid. →
Steven Milloy. Science. Two things that are immiscible. One of his latest essays on Fox News.com, It’s the Sun, Stupid. It’s time for some Monday Madness.
When the international global warming alarm-ocracy gathers for its annual convention on the balmy island of Bali next week, is there any chance that the delegates will look up at the big yellow ball in the sky and ask, “Could it be the Sun,...
Anybody who'd hate an octopus is warped →
I must confess: I’ve always identified with Gomez. Read the comments on this post…
All chance, no purpose →
That friend to the Discovery Institute and creationist advisor to the Vatican, Cardinal Schönborn, has a new book out, titled Chance or Purpose?. I haven’t read it, but Michael Behe has, and Zeno finds a particularly delicious Behe blurb: Science cannot speak of ultimate purpose, and scientists who do so are outside of their authority. In Chance or Purpose? Cardinal Schöborn shows that the...
Getting published →
Great post at Neil Gaiman’s journal on getting an agent (via reddit). Covers much more ground than just agents. Read up. I liked these best:
There is no substitute for writing a book that people want to buy and read. If you can do that, you can get published. If you can’t, no clever workaround will help, because we can’t force people to buy and read books they don’t like....
So what have you been up to since we shared a... →
Astonishing story at Beebs.
They share an easy intimacy that belies the fact that identical twins Elyse Schein and Paula Bernstein spent their first 35 years in total ignorance of the other’s existence. They were given up for adoption to separate families as part of an experiment in the US to discover how identical twins would react to being raised in different family backgrounds. Neither...
Snark chops... →
Defending Real World Harms for Imaginary Reasons →
The “The Friendly Atheist,” contains a post today that presents the atheist writers of Richard Dawkins, Dan Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hutchins as militant and ignorant opponents of Christianity. The video follows the pattern of refusing to even consider the substance of the objections that these authors have raised, and instead condemns them on the basis of their tone. The charge of...
Poor baby →
Elle Jacobson is a high school student who is skipping school because she’s afraid of atheists. Some parents are joing in the fear, all because of one little incident:
“This boy got up and his visual aid was a Bible and a book. And he got up and started his speech by saying ‘Now, this piece of crap’ and pointed to the Bible.”
Jacobson said that she quickly felt...
An Appeal to Skeptics... →
Sunday Weird Fact #41 →
The largest snow crystal ever recorded was 15 inches across. It was found in Fort Keogh, Montana.
Happy New Year and How to Photograph Fireworks →
It’s New Years Eve here in Australia and so I thought I’d break my little vacation from blogging to stop by and wish all DPS readers all the best wishes for their New Year’s Eve celebrations. As can be seen a couple of posts back - it looks like 2007 was a big year of learning […]
Super-evolution →
One of my Christmas presents was something just for fun: Superman: The Dailies 1939-1942(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll). It’s a collection of the newspaper strips by Schuster and Siegel that were published in the earliest years of the superhero, and they’re both funny and disturbing now. First off, Superman was always a jerk. It’s actually a bit off-putting: while he has this profound...
E2.0: Donald Rutherford: Other Worldly Happiness →
This is the fifth post in a series discussing the ideas presented at Beyond Belief 2: Enlightenment 2.0. A complete list of posts relevant to this series can be found at the post E2.0: Beyond Belief Enlightenment: Introduction Donald Rutherford from the Philosophy Department at the University of California San Diego, was the fourth speaker at the Beyond Belief 2 conference. His speech had two...
Close-up: Bird being sucked into an engine →
The video below shows jet engines being stress tested by firing poultry into them to simulate a bird strike.
Christian con artists fleece their flock with the... →
[Faith healer Head basher Benny Hinn]
Somehow, I am finding it really hard to feel any sympathy for this self-deceiving believer who was conned by ‘prosperity’ preachers. When you’re so fucking gullible and ready to be a sheep for your religion, what else did you expect to happen? The message flickered into Cindy Fleenor’s living room each night: Be faithful in how you...
Why is Ron Paul so popular? →
OK, ‘fess up — some of you know that I thoroughly detest libertarianism, that reactionary political movement that seeks to elevate greed and selfishness as a ruling principle, and I suspect one of you got me a subscription to Reason magazine a few months ago, just to taunt me. If your goal was to persuade me to come over to the side of unbridled anti-social self-centeredness, you failed. The...
CrAzY CrEaTiOnIsT NeWs: ThE WoRsT of 2007 →
Ethical Torture →
Sorry this is a long rant, but it is a subject I get het up about. Thank you for your patience.
Over on Pharyngula there is a bit of a debate going on as to can torture be considered ethical. Not as simply put as is generally torturing others ethical but, to quote the main commenter who supports the idea:
I can’t imagine how it’s possible to believe that torture is alway unethical. I, for one,...
This Week in the Digital Photography School Forums →
I hope that everyone had a wonderful Christmas with the people closest to you, and now you’re busy playing with all those new toys that you received under the tree. Now, let’s see what the forums have been up to over the holidays.
Weekly Assignment
We finished an assignment that hopefully warmed up some of our readers […]
Dispatch from Nerdtopia →
Torture — what's it good for? →
One little post about waterboarding seems to have stirred up the mob, but at least the majority seem to agree that it is torture. How could it not be? It’s a process for causing pain and suffering, nothing more. At least the commenters here, even the ones I disagree with most strongly, are more honest than our politicians, many of whom seem to be in a state of denial. But then the argument...
According to a new study, modern beetles predate... →
[Image source]
Previously, modern beetles were thought to have appeared in the fossil record 140 million years ago. Now, a new study published in the journal Science pushes their appearance back to 300 million years ago. This study shows that modern beetles apparently predate the dinosaurs by about 70 million years. While the dinosaurs soon became extinct, beetles survived because of their...
E2.0: Discussion 1: Necessary False Beliefs →
This is the fourth post in a series discussing the ideas presented at Beyond Belief 2: Enlightenment 2.0. A complete list of posts relevant to this series can be found at “Enlightenment 2.0”. After Edward Slingerland’s presentation, which I wrote about last week, , the host of the Beyond Belief 2 conference, Roger Bingham, opened the session up to comments from the audience. Those comments...
The Sadomasochism of “Hard As Nails” →
There’s only one word for what unordained Catholic minister Justin Fatica does, and that’s sadomasochism. Not in a sexual sense, of course, but in the sense of causing acute humiliation, physical sensation, or hypnotic focus to affect a quick conversion. Generally, this follows along the well-worn path of religion as based on submission to a dominant and all-pervasive God. The fundamental...
So that's what waterboarding is like… →
Someone was willing to try waterboarding on himself — he was in complete control, but he still found it a terrifying experience. Now we just need to get all our representatives who claim it is not torture to try it themselves. Read the comments on this post…
The year in Bad Science - 2007 →
Ben Goldacre
The Guardian,
Saturday December 29 2007
Nobody listens to a word I say: I’ve been saying it for so long now that I think I’d be sorry if they did. Scaremongering season kicked off with the Panorama WiFi special. Among its many crimes against sense, this program featured “independent testing” by - oh, hang on - […]
Friday Cephalopod: Best buddies →
It’s still Friday, isn’t it? Some of you have noticed there was some screw-up in post scheduling, which has been fixed now…and here at last is the Friday Cephalopod.
Sepia sp.
Figure from Cephalopods: A World Guide (amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Mark Norman. Read the comments on this post…
An honest creationist, at last →
From Cectic: Quote of the week: “Either the theory is wrong, or I’m just incredibly stupid.” -Todd Friel on Evolution, from The Way of the Master Radio for 24 Dec. The first true utterance I’ve heard on that show since I started listening to the podcast. Read the comments on this post…
What Have You Learned about Digital Photography in... →
Everyone loves a good before and after shot. So today when i stumbled upon this thread over in our forums where forum member kunaldaswani posted a shot from before he found DPS and one from after being involved here for 9 months. A great improvement in technique. Which got me to thinking - I wonder what others […]
Converging in ignorance →
Denyse O’Leary is a very silly person, but you all knew that. One of her latest entries on her silly Design of Life blog, which purports to be promoting Dembski’s silly book of the same name, is treading old ground. She’s claiming that convergence is common, and that marsupial lions and wolves and squirrels are evidence of some kind of natural destiny. She’s getting all of...
Parasites preaching prosperity →
When I read this tale of woe, I have to admit I had a hard time feeling much sympathy for the victim.
The message flickered into Cindy Fleenor’s living room each night: Be faithful in how you live and how you give, the television preachers said, and God will shower you with material riches.
And so the 53-year-old accountant from the Tampa, Florida, area pledged $500 a year to Joyce Meyer,...
Swiftian round-up →
Jon Swift asked for various blogs to submit a “best of” post for his end-of-year list, and it’s a clever way to get an idea of a blog’s content and introduce yourself to some interesting blogs. My entry is a science post, but even that one consigns me to an eternity in hell. Read the comments on this post…
Any volunteers? →
Next time I’m told by some “scientific” racist that he has evidence backing up his contention that certain races are inferior, I’m just going to tell him that there is one more experiment he has to do. Read the comments on this post…
Measuring the World by Daniel Kehlmann: Reader's... →
Measuring the world is a novel by the young Austrian writer Daniel Kehlmann who has been hailed as one of the most promising new generation of writers. This novel is the first to be translated into english (by Carol Brown Janeway) and has become a international sensation. The novel examines the themes of Genius and Freedom through the extraordinary lives of two great Enlightenment era...
This is the story of my life *sob* →
From here. This is totally true, and I speak from personal experience.
Does Religion Make One a Better Ruler? →
I missed an opportunity to take part in a BBC broadcast yesterday regarding the question, “… whether religion helps make better politicians.” My answer to that question would have been generally no, it does not. Put quite simply, religions are collections of false beliefs, and false beliefs generally provide a poor foundation for policy. We see this in the mundane cases of false beliefs...
Coulter fan flaunts foolishness →
Scarcely do I mention Ann Coulter and my challenge to her fans, than one such fan shows up in the comments. You will not be surprised that this person didn’t even try to meet the challenge, which is to cite some specific paragraph in Coulter’s drecky book, Godless, that they considered to be making a solid scientific point. Here’s all he could cough up. For all of you that buy...
Time going backwards →
Some old photographs on the BBC’s website show the young Benazir Bhutto. She wore standard international 1970s clothes - a vaguely “ethnic” dress in one picture and a silk blouse in another. She didn’t just lack an all-covering tent/veil - she wasn’t even wearing a headscarf. She looked wealthy and confident. Hardly surprising, given that she was the Pakistani Prime Minister’s daughter. You...
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Hope Extinguished →
Benazir Bhutto, 1953-2007. There are no words. The world has not known a braver woman.
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Happy Birthday to me! →
I’m going to miss being a square, but at least I’m not a cube, yet. That’s right, today I turned 26 years old - the last time my mathematician-sister tells me, I’ll be between a square and a cube (25 and 27 of course). 2 times my lucky* number, 26 is looking to be one of my most interesting years yet. I’m chugging along in my research, going back for my second semester of grad school, and getting...
Somebody must have spiked the eggnog →
A 2 year old girl picks up a screwdriver, runs around, falls, and… She’s fine now, fortunately — it somehow missed her brain. The father calls this event a “Christmas miracle.” That God fella. He’s such a card, poking little girls in the head with screwdrivers. Read the comments on this post…
Progress on ScienceDebate2008 →
Well, they’ve got one Republican and one Democratic congressman to agree to co-chair a presidential debate on science, which is good news. The framework for the debate is coming together…now all they need is some debaters. Read the comments on this post…
Benazir Bhutto assassinated →
This is no way to run a country. Read the comments on this post…
Religion, Atheism, and the Reason for Good Deeds →
A couple of days ago I asked about the appropriateness of religious symbols in public buildings. I used the example of the ancient Roman goddess Justitia. She is represented in public buildings and on public documents as a blindfolded woman holding scales and asword. Her image stands without protest because her image has come to symbolize a value – justice – that is worthy of a position in public...