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Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
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I was just drinking some “vitamin water,” and noticed on the label that it says it is “naturally sweetened.”
I suddenly have a craving for something that is unnaturally sweetened. Can anyone tell me where to score some?
Can I also get that without any chemicals in it?
If ever you accidentally put your underwear on backwards, you’ll discover how precisely it is tailored to human anatomy, and acquire a new appreciation for the garment industry.
I am saddened by the news: Victor Stenger was a hardcore physicist with the sensibilities of a liberal arts professor. His books and essays are excellent — he always presented the physics without compromise, but he also explained how we came to understand what we know. I like my science leavened with that historical perspective, and he always delivered.
God and the Atom, for example, starts with ancient Greek philosophy and works its way forward…and convincingly argues that our earliest views of physical science were godless, and that only later did the mystery religions creep in and taint productive avenues of thinking. His very latest, God and the Multiverse, is sitting on my desk right now. I’m very much looking forward to reading it.
I got to meet Vic many times — somehow, we seemed to end up as the sciencey pair, one physicist and one biologist, at a lot of atheist conferences. He was also a genuinely nice guy, friendly and fun to talk to, and I was always pleased to see we’d both be at an event. I’m missing him already.
Here’s Vic at Skepticon 3. I have to mention that there are plenty of essays and discussions available at the link to his home page up top.
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This is the lounge. You can discuss anything you want, but you will do it kindly.
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We’re wrapping up our weekend at Lake Itasca, and I’m about to head south for the beginning of fall semester at UMM, so I’ll just leave you with some miscellaneous writing by other people.
I am the woman you laughed at on the internet: it turns out that fat jokes have victims.
GoFundMe campaign for Ferguson shooter drowns under racist commentary: almost a quarter million dollars was raised for Darren Wilson, and the comments…oy, fucking racists.
What I’ve Learned from Two Years Collecting Data on Police Killings: would you believe that data on shootings by police officers is incredibly hard to come by? I wonder why.
#FreeWarMachine: A hashtag for the worst people on planet earth: Try it yourself at #FreeWarMachine. It’s being invaded by anti-trolls now, so it’s a little better, but yesterday…all hope for humanity was lost. I found this one person who was so vile that I was instantly motivated to try and report him for abuse, the first time I’ve done that, and discovered how impossibly tedious Twitter’s abuse reporting mechanism is.
More than 60 years later, a love note from a familiar stranger: all right, a sweet story for dessert.
Rebecca Watson is having a moving sale, and that means everything in the Pharyngula store is half off with the promo code “hellyeah50”.
I feel so cheap, suddenly.
This is the lounge. You can discuss anything you want, but you will do it kindly.
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A few of our organizers had collisions with their schedule, so we’re putting off FtBCon for a few months. I’m partly at fault, so blame me — I just got back from the UK, had a week to get everything together, and then looked at my calendar and saw that the date was scheduled right on top of our field experience for incoming biology students. Yeah, I was going to somehow manage an online conference requiring a couple of days of connectivity while shepherding a horde of first year college students around Lake Itasca.
A few others had similar problems with the timing — the end of August turns out to be very awkward for many of us, with academics and students facing other transitions — but I’ll let you all say it’s entirely my fault.
We do have a great lineup in readiness, and it will be even better given a few more months to develop, so none of this is a problem with the speakers, but is entirely due to the distractions that depleted our collection of available organizers.
