Episode CCLXXIX: Oregon!

I’m a Pacific Northwest boy at heart, so how could I not enjoy these gorgeous timelapse scenes from Oregon? Although I have to protest that there aren’t enough scenes from the coast or the green valleys of the Willamette — but then, it’s got an astronomy bias and the skies are not clear as often. I suppose a timelapse of winter skies like seething gray oatmeal is just not as photogenic.

(Episode CCLXXVIII: Evolution, sorta.)

Episode CCLXXVII: War on Christmas again

You will all be distraught to learn that, once again, the godless atheists have fired off more hate speech at Christmas. Atheist households all around the world will be playing this spittle-flecked rant to their children for the next month or so.

Also, Australian Christmas just inverts everything that is right and good. It’s positively hellish.

(Episode CCLXXVI: An animal with style.)

(via Token Skeptic).

Commenting changes coming

You know, this is an incredibly busy time of the year for me: the semester is winding down, students are freaking out, I’ve got vast scary piles of grading, and I’m committing to large amounts of time to small group tutorial sessions. I’m swamped. So when some fucking idiot named Chris decides to flaunt his inanity by spamming the site with German song lyrics in an attempt to a) drown out the conversation (selfish pig), and b) demonstrate his pathetic programming skills, requiring me to spend a half-hour tracking down and cleaning up his mess, I get furious. So furious at his arrogance and destructive efforts that I’m going to give you the information he used to login before he switched to an anonymizer. He used a pseudonym, py.ohlin@gmail.com, at the IP address 74.43.13.138 , static-74-43-13-138.fnd.frontiernet.net. He’s a spammer whose sole talent seems to be the ability to copy-paste repetitively.

In response, to prevent further abuse at the hands of brain-damaged morons like “Chris”, I’m going to have to implement comment registration. I’m switching it on temporarily this afternoon. Try to make it work. If it doesn’t, I’ll be switching it off at 4pm Central so you can voice your complaints and tell me what’s wrong. If you can’t comment in the next few hours, tinker and figure out how to register. If you can’t, come back this evening when the registration requirement is turned off again, and we’ll figure out how to make it work for all the honest, responsible commenters.

Pharyngula sells out!

Welcome to the world of the bourgeouisie, people! The Pharyngula store (conveniently located in a tab at the top of this window) is now available to take your money and deliver into your hands cheesy QUALITY merchandise. Get a t-shirt! A stickypus! Or in a timely gesture to the War on Christmas, get your very own “Happy Monkey” holiday greeting cards!


(Rebecca Watson action figure not included)

Look how happy he is! You can simultaneously send a non-confrontational, cheerful card to your family and friends, and give the wingnuts apoplexy by going one step beyond “Happy Holidays” and “Seasons Greetings” in delivering non-Christian sentiment!

And wait! There’s more! And I don’t just mean more exclamation points, either! Get your buttons!

AWESOME!

All are now available for order. Limited quantities will be available at Skepticon.