Open Thread
pharyngula | March 23, 2010For some reason, the Trophy Wife™ said I needed to share this video today. Since the enormous thread has grown again, I figure this is as good a place as any.
It's not often you hear about testes weighing a ton and pumping out gallons of sperm from David Attenborough.
pharyngula | March 20, 2010Oh, save me. I'm trying to escape Australia, but apparently a nation of convicts knows how to keep a fella locked up. I'm sitting in an airport in Melbourne, waiting and waiting and waiting for my flight, so that I can sit trapped in a can for hours and hours, with the prospect of a 6 hour layover in the most wretched airport in America, LAX.
I may not emerge from this sane.
Anyway, here's a terrifying video of me, speaking to a bunch of students at the Freethought University Alliance earlier this week. It may be my last words, since after this trip I may just be reduced to speaking in…
laelaps | March 19, 2010
Earlier this week David Williams (Stories in Stone), Michael Welland (Sand), and I started a blog series about the details of publishing a popular science book (Parts 1, 2, and 3), but I have been a bit underwhelmed by the response. I had been hoping for some input from other published authors, questions or comments from aspiring book writers, and for the series to take the form of a conversation. Instead I feel like I am talking to myself. Is there anything anyone would like to know about the process of writing a pop-sci book? Or would you all prefer that I just get back to the science…
pharyngula | March 17, 2010The undying thread needs a rejuvenation. Here's a pornographic video to get you excited.
As I mentioned, I'm away from my wife during our 30th anniversary, but she doesn't have to worry — after seeing Australian courtship rituals, I cannot be tempted at all.
pharyngula | March 14, 2010OK, gang, my travels are greatly disrupting my ability to keep up with the thread everlasting, and you're taking advantage of my frequent absences to run up the comment count. Well, here's something to reassure the American audience that we aren't alone in dealing with idiots in power — I've been hearing a lot about Richard Dawkins' appearance in an Australian show called Q&A. Dawkins is fabulous, despite being "outspoken" and "strident", but check out the rest of the panelists.
(Parts 2 3 4 5 6)
The rest of the panel wobbles between fuzzy sophists and apologists and creationist nutbags…
pharyngula | March 12, 2010I am remiss in my duties. The last episode of the endless thread has expanded to excessive size while I was off frolicking in the antipodes. In my defense, I have been distracted by the remarkable habits of Australians: every time my hands were empty, they would put a beer in it. I once made the mistake of having both hands briefly unoccupied, and received two beers for my trouble.
The Pharyngufest with Chloe here in Melbourne has been captured on video, right here. Unfortunately, I don't remember my performance at all—infinite beers, remember.
pharyngula | March 8, 2010I could have continued the last edition of the unstoppable thread with the hot topic of the moment — race — but thought maybe promoting another controversial subject would fill up the thread far too quickly. So the other subject people were talking about is my birthday.
Gee, people, I'm not that old. IT ISN'T MY BIRTHDAY TODAY. Do I look 53 or something?
My birthday is tomorrow. I'm celebrating it by folding myself up into a narrow little airplane seat and sitting there for 19 hours. And then spending a week and a half in Australia with spasms.
This is how we spend all our birthdays after…
pharyngula | March 6, 2010It had to happen. The last instantiation of the immortal thread started with underwear, so of course it had to progress to what was under that underwear, and relationships, and other such intimacies.
The only place to go now is anthropomorphized penises.
I'm a little concerned about what Episode XXXVII will be about.
tlambert | March 5, 2010You cannot hope
to bribe or twist,
thank God! the
British journalist.
But, seeing what
the man will do
unbribed, there's
no occasion to.
-- Humbert Wolfe
pharyngula | March 4, 2010It seems the latest topic in the immortal thread is underwear, so here you go, more underwear. The ladies and the gay men may enjoy this video, the rest of us…well, smile and buck up over your temporary objectification.
pharyngula | March 3, 2010The last open thread had some discussion of what other people don't want you to say on the internet — George Carlin had a few things to say about that censorious attitude (NSFW; you know what he's going to say.)
With special bonus rudeness below the fold!
pharyngula | February 28, 2010When we last left the never-ending thread, the subject was cooking. Eat this!
One thing that annoys me in these shows is the completely uncritical acceptance of a culture's primitive beliefs in sympathetic magic. It's meat, people. It's got no powers other than the basic, material ones of providing nutrients.
pharyngula | February 24, 2010The endless thread apparently turns one year old today. What the heck have you people been talking about?
Anyway, you know the drill. Comments on the old post closed, commenting resumes here. Are you planning to keep it up for another year?
May your conversations continue to blossom.
pharyngula | February 22, 2010We're going from John Waters to William Shatner — we've got style.
William Shatner SNL skit Get A Life 1986-12-20Uploaded by efly2020. – Click for more funny videos.
pharyngula | February 20, 2010Somehow, listening to John Waters reading the liner notes to an album he's putting out sounds an awful lot like the never-ending thread. I think he'd feel right at home here, someone invite him over for a date.
pharyngula | February 18, 2010The infinite thread keeps growing, and its spores populate yet another post.
The end of that video is a little disturbing. Is that our fate? Once you've done here, Pharyngula will collapse into rotting mulch for maggots, and the spores will move on to colonize other blogs?