Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
I’ve read 83 of NPR's Top 100 Science-Fiction & Fantasy Books — and that’s about enough. Of the ones I have read there were about a dozen I wish I hadn’t, and of the ones I haven’t read, there were none I’m interested in reading.
You never know when you might get tested.
An Indian bride has walked out of her wedding after her bridegroom-to-be failed to solve a simple maths problem, according to police in Uttar Pradesh.
The bride asked the groom to add 15 and six. When he replied 17, she called off the marriage.
Reports say the groom’s family tried to convince the bride to return, but she refused saying the man was illiterate.
A church, Panama City Beach’s Life Center is no longer tax exempt, because authorities decided that they didn’t like its sacraments…which involved nude body-painting events (but the human body is one of god’s greatest creations, how can you object to celebrating it?) and selling sexually explicit t-shirts (again, sex is holy, isn’t it?). They were specifically appealing to college youth who were in town for spring break.
Terry took Death’s arm and followed him through the doors and on to the black desert under the endless night.
— Terry Pratchett (@terryandrob) March 12, 2015
Death had a statement: “THE DEATH OF THE WARRIOR OR THE OLD MAN OR THE LITTLE CHILD, THIS I UNDERSTAND, AND I TAKE AWAY THE PAIN AND END THE SUFFERING.”
Anomalocaris has always been one of my favorite Cambrian animals — it was so weird, and it was also the top predator of the age, making it the equivalent of T. rex. The anomalocarids were also a diverse and successful group, so wouldn’t you know it…it also had a distant filter-feeding cousin in the Ordovician. This is Aegirocassis benmoulae.
I’ve now read two novel attempts to explain the existence of junk DNA. To a lot of people, the very idea of junk DNA is offensive: whatever process built us, whether divine fiat or the razor-sharp honing of natural selection, must be powerful, omnipotent or nearly so, and incapable of tolerating any noise or sloppiness, especially not to the degree seen in the eukaryotic genome. There is no room for error in design.
There’s also a strong whiff of human exceptionalism. Look at us, we’re pretty much perfect! Or at least, movie stars and super-models are the pinnacle of creation/evolution. How can you even look at Scarlett Johansson or George Clooney and suggest that they are built of monkey bits and lizard leftovers, or that their manufacture was in any way slapdash?
So there’s an amazing fringe literature out there reaching desperately to find some excuse to justify every scrap of DNA, and especially every bit of human DNA, as purposeful. It sometimes gets weird.
In 2003, a reporter asked candidates for the mayor of San Francisco questions from the Voight-Kampff test. Most of them failed.
