Think about how you can make young people happy: give them a puppy. I can’t afford to hand out puppies, but today is the day the students will come into my lab and I hand out fruit flies. Swa…

Free Thought Blogs Pharyngula

22.01.2025

Either it was a Nazi salute, or he is very very stupid

I like James O’Brien’s take on the recent contretemps. I would also argue that if you’re claiming it was not a Nazi salute, then you are either a Nazi-sympathizer or so stupid you…

Free Thought Blogs Pharyngula

21.01.2025

It’s inauguration day

We are so totally screwed. If you’re curious to know what the future holds for us, here’s a demonstration by Candace Owens. She babbles about how the moon landing and dinosaurs were all…

Free Thought Blogs Pharyngula

21.01.2025

That wasn’t an accidental Hitlergruß

A scene from the inauguration: Some elections are important, some are not. But this one, this one really mattered and I just want to say thank you for making it happen… then a bold unmistakeable Na…

Free Thought Blogs Pharyngula

21.01.2025

I have got to turn off the news now

I have learned that the Asshole-in-chief has lined up a series of executive orders — he loves EOs, they allow him to bypass the pretense of democracy — to militarize the border. There w…

Free Thought Blogs Pharyngula

20.01.2025

An homage

I opened up You’re All Just Jealous of my Jetpack this morning, and this cartoon leapt out at me. I felt so smart, like a classically trained art historian, because I knew instantly that this…

Free Thought Blogs Pharyngula

20.01.2025

TikTok, ping-pong, yes-no, nothing really matters anymore

TikTok was banned. TikTok has been restored. It’s hard to really care anymore. No matter what he does, the MAGA fan base will praise it. I just don’t give a fuck anymore what these peop…

Free Thought Blogs Pharyngula

20.01.2025

Crime is legal now

Those Purge movies got it wrong. This is capitalism. We’re not going to legalize murder, but felonies, like theft and grift, are the crimes that will be indulged in, and it won’t help y…

Free Thought Blogs Pharyngula

19.01.2025

Why are fewer men going to college?

Every year in my genetics class we play a little game. The first lab is dedicated to learning some basic rules of probability and running through some simple statistical tests, and one of the exerc…

Free Thought Blogs Pharyngula

18.01.2025

Elon Musk is a fake everything

I’ve been saying this for a long time: Musk is a poseur. He’s not a great engineer; when he directly meddled in the process at Tesla, the result was the Cybertruck, or his fake robot. H…

Free Thought Blogs Pharyngula

18.01.2025

Surprise! We have a 28th amendment?

As Joe Biden was getting his coat and leaving the White House, he has announced that he has ratified the equal rights amendment! Just like that! He can do that? What took him so long? But legal exp…

Free Thought Blogs Pharyngula

18.01.2025

The Horrendous Space Kablooie

Horrendous, but spectacularly flamboyant: SpaceX’s “Starship” exploded over the Caribbean, producing an amazing fireworks show as tons of debris rained down over the ocean. Scott …

Free Thought Blogs Pharyngula

18.01.2025

Typical Scandinavian-American family, circa 1900

My niece is busily archiving a vast pile of family documents to ancestry.com, and I periodically get these announcements that something new about long-gone relatives has appeared. This is a family …

Free Thought Blogs Pharyngula

17.01.2025

The red lines are imaginary

Prior to the election, I think we were all aware that Joe Biden was an ineffectual waffler on Middle East issues. He would wag his finger and then do nothing but wobble along the status quo line. I…

Free Thought Blogs Pharyngula

17.01.2025

Rebecca Watson is on the case

Good. Because I agree with her position on Neil Gaiman 100%.

Free Thought Blogs Pharyngula

17.01.2025

Kent Hovind’s latest ‘wife’ says bye-bye

Kent Hovind must be a real asshole — he keeps driving women away. Here’s a brief history of his brief ‘marriages’: He was married to his first wife Jo Hovind from 1973 and t…

Free Thought Blogs Pharyngula

17.01.2025

If we say the obvious often enough, will people figure it out?

I know the community here doesn’t need to hear this, but… TRANS WOMEN ARE WOMEN My one reservation about the video is that he focuses on intersex conditions with known biological markers. Mos…

Free Thought Blogs Pharyngula

17.01.2025

An unfortunate retraction

I had previously announced that I was going to retire after 2025-2026. That statement is no longer operational. We looked at our finances, and we looked at the orange clown who is going to be runni…

Free Thought Blogs Pharyngula

16.01.2025

Neil Gaiman responds

He’s denying the worst of the claims, while admitting that he did have sexual relationships with his accusers. They were all consensual, he says. As I read through this latest collection of a…

Free Thought Blogs Pharyngula

16.01.2025

Oh boy, back to back classes today!

This semester is much better than Fall term (which was hellish), but I have one complaint. Wednesdays are my bad day: I’ve scheduled two different classes back to back with minimal time betwe…

Free Thought Blogs Pharyngula

16.01.2025

Need therapy?

If you just want to listen to something soothing because the world sucks so bad right now, I have news for you: 31 years of Bob Ross’ The Joy of Painting, 1983-1994, is now available in one p…

Free Thought Blogs Pharyngula

16.01.2025

I knew a few people at Bryn Mawr

It always seemed like a most excellent liberal arts college, and in particular I enjoyed visiting with the late Jane Oppenheimer, a developmental biologist and historian of science. I was doing a q…

Free Thought Blogs Pharyngula

16.01.2025

Plastic shall rule over all!

I wasted more time than you know pursuing that city park proposal which was less a proposal and more a fait accompli. I had prepared a brief statement which I did not present and would have been in…

Free Thought Blogs Pharyngula

15.01.2025

Another conference I won’t be attending

The Center for Inquiry has been ideologically captured by the wingnuts. We’ve known this for a long time, since it was basically bought out by the Richard Dawkins Foundation. CFI has announce…

Free Thought Blogs Pharyngula

15.01.2025

I did my civic duty

I spent the last several hours at the city council meeting for Morris, Minnesota, along with a huge mob of other Morris residents. The object of our political activism was a park, Morris’s Ea…

Free Thought Blogs Pharyngula

15.01.2025

What’s the opposite of chocolate and peanut butter?

You know, the old “two great tastes that taste great together” slogan, only the opposite of that — two awful things that become even more awful when combined? I tried imagining so…

Free Thought Blogs Pharyngula

15.01.2025

Cool — catching the crash of a space rock

A meteorite crashing into the ground was caught on a home security camera. Neat!

Free Thought Blogs Pharyngula

15.01.2025

The US is going to ban TikTok?

I’m sorry, I’m just now learning that congress has passed legislation to force the sale of TikTok. This is just weird…our uber-capitalist nation is trying to control an independent Chin…

Free Thought Blogs Pharyngula

14.01.2025

Believe in belief, says famous physicist

Marcelo Gleiser is a humble guy. The Templeton Foundation just awarded him $1.5 million for being humble, as we know because when asked, “which aspect of your work do you think is most releva…

Free Thought Blogs Pharyngula

14.01.2025

Australians don’t fool me

A new species of funnel web spider has been discovered in Australia — the largest of its kind, and possibly the most venomous, most deadly spider in the world. The news reports, though, aren&…

Free Thought Blogs Pharyngula

14.01.2025

I’ll never be able to read Neil Gaiman’s work again

The idea that we should be able to separate the artist and their art is an idealistic one, but I just read this exposé of Gaiman’s history of sexual abuse, and no, just no. Every gentle, thou…

Free Thought Blogs Pharyngula

13.01.2025

Maybe we should just cancel the whole semester?

Classes are scheduled to start tomorrow. I’m ready, I’ve got a couple of weeks of lectures in the can, swarms of flies at the starting gate, and a grand plan for lab work that’ll …

Free Thought Blogs Pharyngula

13.01.2025

It’s all Kilkenny Cats out there

The civil war sundering the Republican party continues. Steve Bannon minces no words in his hatred of Elon Musk. “I will have Elon Musk run out of here by Inauguration Day,” Bannon, a former Trump …

Free Thought Blogs Pharyngula

12.01.2025

The ghouls are rising in California

Ray Comfort is doing his thing, blaming the California wildfires on Hollywood blasphemy. I warn you, this video is a combination of the nauseating and the banal: Ray is trapped in his usual schtick…

Free Thought Blogs Pharyngula

11.01.2025

Once more unto the breach

I’m preparing to teach genetics again, and as usual, I’m trying to rework some of the lectures, because I don’t care to say the same thing every year. I had one odd thought that I…

Free Thought Blogs Pharyngula

11.01.2025

Man tracks!

Dan Olson has been soaking in the history of creationism, and has come out with an excellent YouTube documentary. It starts with the Paluxy dinosaur tracks, and leads to Clifford Burdick, The Genes…

Free Thought Blogs Pharyngula

10.01.2025

I, for one, will welcome our Canadian overlords

In 1921, the Canadians formulated a plan they called Defense Scheme #1 to invade the United States. This was not a serious plan to conquer North America, but was a contingency to be deployed in cas…

Free Thought Blogs Pharyngula

09.01.2025

Stunningly beautiful

These black widows always take my breath away with how gorgeous they are. Why doesn’t everyone keep these as pets?

Free Thought Blogs Pharyngula

09.01.2025

The 25th Amendment won’t save us now

Donald Trump held a press conference this week in which he once again threatened to invade and take over Greenland and Panama, and that Canada should be annexed as our 51st state. Trudeau replied t…

Free Thought Blogs Pharyngula

09.01.2025

Mano has posted the right take

Welcome to the fin de siècle, only a few years too late. According to Wikipedia: Without context, the term is typically used to refer to the end of the 19th century. This period was widely thought …

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Free Thought Blogs Pharyngula - Science

Busy day of making the younguns happy

Either it was a Nazi salute, or he is very very stupid

It’s inauguration day

That wasn’t an accidental Hitlergruß

I have got to turn off the news now

An homage

TikTok, ping-pong, yes-no, nothing really matters anymore

Crime is legal now

Why are fewer men going to college?

Elon Musk is a fake everything

Surprise! We have a 28th amendment?

The Horrendous Space Kablooie

Typical Scandinavian-American family, circa 1900

The red lines are imaginary

Rebecca Watson is on the case

Kent Hovind’s latest ‘wife’ says bye-bye

If we say the obvious often enough, will people figure it out?

An unfortunate retraction

Neil Gaiman responds

Oh boy, back to back classes today!

Need therapy?

I knew a few people at Bryn Mawr

Plastic shall rule over all!

Another conference I won’t be attending

I did my civic duty

What’s the opposite of chocolate and peanut butter?

Cool — catching the crash of a space rock

The US is going to ban TikTok?

Believe in belief, says famous physicist

Australians don’t fool me

I’ll never be able to read Neil Gaiman’s work again

Maybe we should just cancel the whole semester?

It’s all Kilkenny Cats out there

The ghouls are rising in California

Once more unto the breach

Man tracks!

I, for one, will welcome our Canadian overlords

Stunningly beautiful

The 25th Amendment won’t save us now

Mano has posted the right take

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