Paul Z. Meyers
pharyngula
Posts by this author
November 11, 2011
Somebody thought they could stump the squid by giving it a background it could never imitate — but look! It wins the unwinnable scenario by going transparent!
There's more on cephalopod camouflage at the BBC.
(Also on FtB)
November 11, 2011
Or is it? I've just been introduced to the work of Tim Wise, and it's fabulous stuff: all about how we view race through the distorting lenses of denial and privilege and class. He's a terrific speaker, I guarantee you that it's worth your time to take an hour and listen to this lecture.
Oh,…
November 9, 2011
It's his birthday. If you were hoping to celebrate by making an apple pie from scratch, as is customary, I hope you remembered to start your universe preheating well ahead of time. It takes over 13 billion years, you know.
If you forgot, that's OK. Watch him on youtube or read one of his books,…
November 8, 2011
I'm afraid it's mostly over: the trees around me are mostly skeletal, and we've just got boring piles of dead brown leaves on our lawn. But you can browse through photographic travelogue of Autumn in the US, at least, and pretend you got out to see the fall colors.
(Also on FtB)
November 8, 2011
Kitties experience pain and suffering, which turns out to be a theological problem. If a god introduced pain and death into the world because wicked ol' Eve was disobedient, why is god punishing innocent animals? It seems like a bit of a rotten move to afflict the obedient along with the…
November 7, 2011
It's another update on the bloggin' students in my Neuroscience course, and what they've been thinking about.
dorsal neural tube and mirror neurons
ESP
Asymmetry and genes and coffee
Mind reading software
MS and aneurysms
Cell migration and the amygdala
Delamination and more…
November 7, 2011
See? Sometimes cute things can cheer me up.
Oooh, and I wanna give you all the souls you want, you adorable little slime-beast.
(Also on FtB)
November 5, 2011
There is actually a cat in this video. Notice, though, that it only appears briefly in the beginning, looks bored, and apathetically wanders off screen. Why? Because the rest of the video features something far more exciting and bizarre than a mere cat: it's all about zombie fish, their brains…
November 4, 2011
(Also on FtB)
November 4, 2011
I don't have a link for this, but it was created by Kara Treibergs and Laurel Hiebert for the Oregon Institute of Marine Biology. And it is so true!
(Also on FtB)
November 4, 2011
There's something really notable about this image. Most cartoons feature the octopus as the villain; this one has the cephalopod representing the good guys, the 99%, strangling the villainous mammal. It breaks the stereotype!
Is it weird that I identified with the mollusc and felt a little happy…
November 3, 2011
Hey, I know the Elwha river! I think we stopped there on my honeymoon. Lovely place, the Olympic Peninsula. And getting even lovelier if they are ripping out unneeded dams and restoring the rivers. There's something so satisfying about a timelapse of a dam being demolished.
Next, restore the…
November 3, 2011
Did someone rattle the monkey cage recently? I have been getting a sudden wave of email from defenders of Kent Hovind, which is not good. Of all the creationists, Hovind spawns the most illiterate, incomprehensible mess; I think you have to be of very low intelligence to find anything at all…
November 2, 2011
Holy crap. A Dutch social scientist's career has just crashed flamingly. He apparently had a tremendous reputation.
"Somebody used the word 'wunderkind'," says Miles Hewstone, a social psychologist at the University of Oxford, UK. "He was one of the bright thrusting young stars of Dutch social…
November 2, 2011
Keith Ward sounds just like Ken Ham. It's remarkable. You see, Ken Ham has this schtick in which he basically denies all of history: you weren't there (the only valid evidence is eyewitness evidence captured through your biological senses), and because history isn't repeatable, its study isn't a…
November 1, 2011
I cringed reading this woman's lament that evolutionary biology is responsible for the oppression of women, starting with Darwin. It's one long colossal failure of logic.
The argument has some genuinely true facts embedded in it, which then get spun out into a series of false conclusions. It is…
October 29, 2011
This is a level of disgusting a cat can only dream of achieving. hagfish defend themselves and hunt with slime. How do they do that? They wrap themselves around their prey and strangle them in clouds of goo. Awesome!
(Also on FtB)
October 28, 2011
(Also on FtB)
October 27, 2011
If you tuned in to that local debate on Christian radio, you know that one of the points the Christian fool trotted out was the tired old claim that the Nazis were no true Christians — no True Christian™ would ever commit such horrible acts. It's an annoyingly feeble and unsupportable argument, but…
October 27, 2011
You must watch this episode of the Daily Show — it's all about science. Lisa Randall is on it plugging her new book, Knocking on Heaven's Door (she actually doesn't get to say much about it, but I've ordered it for my iPad anyway — I know what I'll be reading on the plane to New Orleans tomorrow),…
October 27, 2011
Watch the cuttlefish stalking shrimp, cautiously advancing by walking on a couple of arms — it almost looks like a tetrapod for a few moments. And then, finally, the lightning-fast strike. Oh, man, I wish I had a retractable spear built into my face. There are so many occasions when that would come…
October 26, 2011
This is an article about cephalopods and eye evolution, but I have to confess at the beginning that the paper it describes isn't all that interesting. I don't want you to have excessive expectations! I wanted to say a few words about it, though, because it addresses a basic question I get all the…
October 25, 2011
There aren't enough children's books telling the story of evolution — every doctor's office seems to be stocked with some ludicrous children's book promoting that nonsensical Noah's ark story, but clean, simple, and true stories about where we came from are scarce. Here's one, a new children's book…
October 25, 2011
The BBC is running an interview with Dame Jocelyn Bell-Burnell, and it's very good. Bell-Burnell is the woman who discovered pulsars, and until I heard this interview, I hadn't realized how it was done.
Yeah, there weren't computers available so the reams of data came out on strip chart - paper…