Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
The Secular Policy Institute has now flexed its mighty muscles and done something. You might be wondering “who?”, so I’ll remind you: this is the vaporous think tank that used to be called the Global Secular Council, or Secular Global Institute, but then underwent a few confusing rearrangements of the chairs on the poop deck to reorganize under this new name. Their specialty seems to be attempting to strong-arm feminists into supporting them, listing celebrity atheists on the masthead, getting together for photo-ops, and otherwise…doing nothing at all. They’ve lately discovered a latent ability to wag their fingers, though, so they’re going to try to do that with this announcement.
Sergio Canavero wants to transplant a head, and he has a volunteer. Canavero thinks he can carry out this operation, although he has no successes in preliminary animal testing, and just wants to jump right in with a human with a debilitating disease.
There’s usually no point to complaining when some odious business announces that they are “sponsoring” soft drinks or whatever — it’s meaningless. My university has Coca-Cola machines downstairs, which doesn’t imply sponsorship either way. It means we have a contract with the local distributor to service and supply the machines. So when I heard that Pepsi and the Creation “Museum” were teaming up, I shrugged. So what? They’ve got an overpriced cafe, they need to supply it with food and beverage, they’ve got a deal with a local company. Just as gay people have a right to demand equal service from their local bakery, creationists can’t be prohibited from accessing necessary services.
(Sorry, gay readers, if that sounds like I’m comparing you to creationists. I’m not, you’re much better than that.)
However, this image crosses the line.
The Sad Puppies are what the gomers who undermined the Hugo nominations are calling themselves. I’m interested in seeing how they defend themselves…or was, until I read their arguments. And all I can conclude is that these are really pathetic, brainless people.
For example, this guy Brad R. Torgersen. He tries to explain their cause by first setting up an analogy.
Ed Yong describes a fascinating case of an infectious cancer in clams, which is weirdly cool (if not so good for the clams). To the rogues’ gallery of Canine Transmissible Venereal Tumors and Devil Facial Tumor Disease, we can now add this newly discovered immortalized clam blood cell that is spreading through populations.
An excerpt from Johann Hari’s book, Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs
I’m reading a strange paper with an interesting title: The Nature of Inhabited Planets and their Inhabitants. I’m disappointed to say it doesn’t say anything believable about inhabited planets or aliens, but is more of an essay on statistical distributions that uses planets and aliens as a sample exercise. Here’s the abstract:
I can’t stand it. I’ve banned a fair number of people for being vile scumbags, and they keep coming back and shitting out their crap in the comments…even when they know they’ll be blocked. In the thread, The Charleston shooting: the prequel, a long-ago banned slymepitter (you know, that simple little place that specializes in exposing plagiarism, just like gamergate is about ethics in journalism) named bovarchist (some of you may remember him) decided to plop this in the comments:
