Evolution. Global Warming. Embryonic Stem Cells. In the battles we fight for science, too often we pay attention to the bigger issues and let lesser known skirmishes slip in under the radar. When was the last time you heard a science writer call for accuracy in basic human biology? And so it happens that without the due attention paid to the misconceptions that crop up and persist in the human mind, they rise to the surface and manifest as unsightly signs of pervasive ignorance: Six Flags Marine World embraces Storkism. Read More…

Guests of the Mindcast know the definition of delicious. It comes in the form of pure, home-made (well, plant-made, bee-finished, and my home-extracted) “HONEY.”

Note the use of all-capital letters - it was customary for honey that came from a single source to be labeled this way to distinguish it from more processed and mixed-source “Honey.” It’s still honey in either case, but it loses some of the unique distinctiveness when multiple sources are mixed together. Honey is not honey is not honey. Would you mix together a Kenwood Merlot, some Beaujolais from France, and “Two Buck Chuck” Charles Shaw? Didn’t think so. Read More…

I often find myself at the hardware store finding parts for bee boxes and apparati, tubes to cool a condenser with water from the kitchen faucet, and pieces of wood for making a test tube spice rack. I prefer to shop at Orchard Supply Hardware, but seeing as how there isn’t one in Davis, I often find myself at Ace. One day, Ace Hardware decided to put up a sign which got laughs from me every time I passed it. They decided to say: “Support our Troops,” but had the most uncanny way of presenting it, so bad that it deserves to be the next installment of Monday Madness.

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Over the weekend, I conceived of a new kind of blog post that I would attempt to write regularly every week, showcasing the limits of human stupidity. I mean, I talk about all sorts of examples of human ingenuity, but sometimes people do things that really make you wonder if they are members of our species. I took a couple pictures of signs in preparation for what I will now call, Monday Madness.

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You may remember the fantastic Double Helix Nebula, which appeared to be coiling backwards for DNA, thus I dubbed it the “Z-DNA Nebula.” In an email, the discoverer of this structure, Mark Morris, echoed this sentiment, but in his email he expressed doubts about whether we could get a better picture and resolve the direction of twisting issue. Why? Because an infra-red telescope in an airplane, a project called SOFIA, was on the chopping block at NASA, and we would need it to study this nebula more closely. I’m pleased to report that that is no longer the case, SOFIA lives!

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I can’t believe I missed this post at Pharyngula. Apparently, Ann Coulter figured out that evolution was false. Why? Because Evolution is supported by biologists, you know, women. She’s suggesting that we can guage the relative merits of stupid evolutionary “Darwiniacs” and their super-smart Intelligent Design “Coulterparts” on the basis of sex ratios… and she’s right. Read More…

And I thought my Star Wars rendition of the Tangled Bank was good - Skeptic Rant has presented The 38th issue of the Skeptic’s Circle complete with computer graphics. Sit back, click on in, and open up a bottle of cola - Skeptic Cola. Now that the bar is raised, I’ll have a Rum & Cola, barkeep! Awesome!