Actress & comedian Julia Sweeney gives a very funny account of when her eight year old daughter asked her about the facts of sexual reproduction.
Monthly Archives: July 2012
We wouldn’t want to be accused of viewpoint discrimination…
Chick-fil-A-hole News
Just ran across this headline on the blog of flamingly homophobic Rick Pearcey:
200,000-Plus Chick-Fil-A Fans Sign Up to Protect Marriage, “Eat Mor Chicken”
Eating “mor” Chick-fil-A-hole chicken will “protect marriage” just as much as much as same sex marriage threatens the institution of marriage…
Not at all.
Chick-fil-A-hole Nuggets, now with Santorum sauce!
Another Pharyngula podcast with yours truly
The first part was on intelligent design creationists latest attacks on some of the genetic evidence for human evolution. The second was a ostensibly on humanism but strayed into issues surrounding the internecine warfare going on in the skeptic/atheist community over issues of feminism (which I will not touch with a light-year long pole) and progressive politics. Being of a slightly libertarian bent, I bit my tongue and let the anti-libertarian jibs go by (I am used to being casually libeled and slandered by my liberal Democrat friends).
Goodbye Skip
From left to right, Glenn Branch, Skip Evans and myself at the offices of the NCSE (2003).
I just heard from my friend Ed Brayton that Skip Evans, former National Center for Science Education, Network Project Director (a job I applied for after he left) and veteran of the creation/evolution debate has died due to heart problems. My condolences go out to Skip’s close friends and family.
He will be missed.
For more information see:
A Death in the Family: Skip Evans by Wesley Elsberry.
Skip Evans dies by the NCSE
Creationist foists “fraudulent” embryo picture on his readers
I decided I am not going to bury the lead on this one. Brian Thomas of the Institute for Creation Research (ICR) just posted another in a long line of creationist screeds attacking the evidence for evolution from comparative embryology, which as usual claims that the evidence is based on fraud and pins much of the blame for it on 19th century biologist Ernst Haeckel.
I began writing a rebuttal straight away but then I happened to take a second look at the bright pink image of an embryo atop the article and it brought me to a sudden halt. So, having backed up, let me start again.
Thomas: German zoologist Ernst Haeckel is perhaps most famous for defending evolution with the argument that creatures replay their evolutionary past when developing in the womb. …In his zeal to promote evolution, Haeckel foisted faulty embryo sketches onto his readers, and the zeal of his followers has perpetuated those falsehoods for over a century. (Thomas 2012, emphasis mine)
Yeah, about that…
That’s right, yet another irony meter has been reduced to subatomic particles by a creationist.
Will blog for food
I am currently having some underemployment issues, due to having my hours drastically reduced at my job (as a small printing press operator), this has led, amongst other things, to a dispute with B of A (it seems they frown upon not getting mortgage payments, and foreclose on you when you don’t make them, who knew?).
So anyway, I want to take the opportunity of my lately increased traffic to bring attention to the side bar where a PayPal donation button can be found or a link to my online T-shirt store (Evo-T’s).
A mere 10 cents, less that the cost of a cup of coffee (20 years ago), attached to each daily blog view can make a real difference in a bloggers life…
Any help you can give in these difficult times would be much appreciated and go to a great cause, moi and my fight against the forces of endarkment. A direct PayPal donation is much more efficient but if you absolutely must have something more tangible than my continued writing about creationist silliness, then by all means buy a frelling shirt.
Thanks
[On the bright side, not working makes more time for blogging…]
Zebras: Nature’s Ultimate Prey
Fuzzy thinking about fuzzy dinosaurs
A visual approximation.
Casey Luskin, the Discoveryless Institute’s resident attack chihuahua, is on a roll. This time he’s gone off on a tangent about a recent find of yet another dinosaur fossil with evidence of protofeathers, Sciurumimus albersdoerferi and dinosaur evolution in general.
Luskin: The media that loyally serve Big Science are at it again, overstating the finds of a scientific paper to promote an evolutionary icon. This time, the icon is feathered dinosaurs, representing the purported ancestral relationship between dinos and birds. (Luskin 2012)
Ah, if only. If only Mr. Luskin’s conspiratorial fantasy were true and the media was that on the ball. The fact of the matter is that defenders of science education like me often cringe at the mischaracterizations and overstatements that come out of the popular media regarding evolution. I am constantly shaking my head and yelling at the TV or radio “no, that’s not what that means at all”, or words to that effect.
I wish I had a nickel (because being underemployed I could really use the money) for every time a silly reporter, while talking about some fossil discovery, described it as “overthrowing everything we thought we knew about the evolution of X”.
That is absolute bollocks, 99% of the time.
I’m on the Twitter…
I’ve broken down and opened a Twitter account. So now you can read some of my (short) jokes, quips, links or whatever, that I don’t deem worthy of blogging about!
Soooo exciting, I know…
Follow me, NOW! I command you!!!
Image source: BBC Nature website.
Playing Chess with Pigeons 