Where is pz myers

Myers is strongly critical of misogyny, lack of respect for women and sexual harassment. He published Carrie Poppy who complained about problems she experienced working at the James Randi Educational Foundation, [16] a day later Myers published rape allegations made against Michael Shermer and harassment allegations against Ben Radford.

He has also published other complaints women made about misogyny in the atheist movement. He also fears there is denialism over the issue and believes only far reaching change can rescue the movement.

Myers hopes his supporters on Pharyngula will "pick a side" and fight those who harass women. See Misogyny Wars for more. PZ gets into trouble for all this. Myers thinks the International Congress of Quantum Chemistry are sexist because they do not have women members or invite women speakers though there are plenty of qualified women quantum chemists.

Myers has written a great deal about the trouble between Ben Radford and Karen Stollznow as have several other Pharyngulites. Myers is concerned about the deepening rift in the atheist movement and mentions particularly online harassment of Melody Hensley. Myers believes the preponderance of men in some science fields is culturally based and has evidence to back this up. Myers would rather miss out on an all expenses paid trip to Europe than help a Faith group make a profit.

Thanks PZ. Rumors exist that Myers has tentacles, indeed Myers encourages such rumors with illustrations of himself as a tentacled being. These rumors are, however completely untrue. In reality PZ is an alien refugee from a planet where the wearing of hats is treated with almost religious awe. As a mere hatless being PZ could no longer remain on his home planet and fled with his family to earth.

Myers reportedly froze to death during the cold Minnesota winter in January See Sorry, guys. The science journal Nature listed Pharyngula as the top-ranked blog written by a scientist.

According to Alexa. Students were required to submit mini-essays to be published online. After the project was finished, Myers still had the web-publishing software, and started to use it himself. The blog is named after his favourite stage in embryonic development , the pharyngula stage. Pharyngula moved to hosting at ScienceBlogs, a project of Seed Magazine, in On Pharyngula, Myers has often criticized the Discovery Institute, Answers in Genesis, and other creationist websites, as well as offering criticisms of Intelligent Design , asserting that its claims are pseudoscientific.

Other posts on Pharyngula cover a broad variety of topics that interest Myers. Myers reviewed Stuart Pivar's book Lifecode , which argues that self-organization at the embryonic and fetal determines the development and final structure of organisms.

After some discussion in the comments threads of Pharyngula, Pivar sued Myers for libel. Categories: Evolutionary biologists Race and intelligence controversy. Read what you need to know about our industry portal bionity. My watch list my. Seeing his frustrated futility cheers me right up. After doing more research, she discovered a book in the collection that she found more upsetting. Oh no! Down below we find stories of homeless kids who are sexually abused, which never ever happens in Spotsylvania, Virginia.

Two board members, Courtland representative Rabih Abuismail and Livingston representative Kirk Twigg, said they would like to see the removed books burned. Jennifer Gosar, sister to the demented fascist Paul Gosar, condemns his behavior and asks how we can sit back and watch him promote racism and genocide.

Paul Gosar's sister, tells Lawrence. Dynamic shot of police leaping into action to defend the citizenry from terrorists! Have you ever read the news and wondered how the loons and right-wing terrorists can get away with it all? We had an insurrection on 6 January, 10 months ago, and the wheels of justice, we are told, grind exceedingly slow, so all we see is slaps on the wrists delivered to the low-level dupes. Reuters has published an article on the ongoing campaign of fear.

In Vermont, a man who says he works in construction told workers at the state election office and at Dominion Voting Systems that they were about to die. The three had much in common. All described themselves as patriots fighting a conspiracy that robbed Donald Trump of the election.

And none have been charged with a crime by the law enforcement agencies alerted to their threats. They were among nine people who told Reuters in interviews that they made threats or left other hostile messages to election workers. In all, they are responsible for nearly two dozen harassing communications to six election officials in four states. Myers: Yes. Faith is simply the suspension of any critical faculties at all.

It's accepting it without consideration for reality. Yeah, also of course the other things that make it survive so well is social aspects, church basement coffee. All that kind of stuff is really great.

When you're a kid going to Sunday school and they offer cookies and juice, oh, OK, I'll go for that. Smith: Well, they offer more than that. Frankly, they offer fellowship and community. I mean, it's not Myers: Well, good friends, yes. But you don't need church to do that. Church seems to try and set up a monopoly on this.

That's one of the things I oppose about it. For instance, in my small town of Morris there are something like 14 churches. Yes, you could say that this is where people come together and they form community. And I think that's great and that's an important function of any small town is you've got to do that. But why do it in the context of a church? Why aren't we doing this with science discussion groups, for my particular bias? Or why aren't we doing this to talk about art and poetry?

Why are we obsessing over this one, really actually erratically written old book? There are other things you can read, besides the Bible. The Bible's really only got a couple of parts of it that are really good. The rest of it is crap, seriously. Smith: Now, you have been described as belonging to a movement that some people call "new atheism. I'm buddies with a lot of the big shot new atheists, people like Richard Dawkins and Dan Dennett.

Smith: They do have some sort of soccer team out there or community group with a jersey and a logo. Myers: What we have is a whole bunch of people who voice their opinions and are looked to as representative of the new atheist movement.

And none of them like the term, because we're not new. There's nothing we're saying that Betrand Russell didn't say. This is all the same old stuff. The only difference is that somehow, in the last 10 years or so, more people have woken up and they're speaking out loudly.

They're not holding back. I think that's really the only difference is we've got the primal scream therapy of atheism.

New atheists are the people who shout and yell a lot about this stuff and say, "Wake up, wake up, think about this stuff. And our guest today is one of the most widely read bloggers in Minnesota. He's a biologist, an atheist, and an unrelenting critic of creationists and the intelligent design movement. PZ Myers writes the blog Pharyngula, where he also attacks bad science and political conservatives, but admires squids and octopuses, which we'll get to in a minute.

You say you have an audience of about three million visits to your blog each month. Who is your audience? Who is listening to you and to whom are you writing?

Myers: Well, I'm writing to myself. That's the easy one to say. I think that's another important characteristic of blogs, that when you write them, you don't try to tailor it to your audience. You're just expressing yourself. And who the people are who are reading this, they're all over the place.

I go to various places around the country and also around the world and meet them. They're all different. There's no way to characterize them. There are probably some people in this room who read it, and they're not all the same. I would say, in general, though, they tend to be politically liberal, fairly tolerant. They tend to be, unfortunately, mostly white. That's one drawback to the atheist movement right now is that we've got a limited diversity there.

But otherwise, large numbers of men and women, both, and a great range of ages. I talk to five year olds who have been introduced to it on the blog, on the web, and I've also talked to 80 year olds. Smith: What about the people who don't agree with you? How many do you suppose are out there reading you regularly? Myers: Oh, lots, yeah. It's an interesting phenomenon, though.

The way I run the blog is extremely open. I try not to censor at all and so people can say anything they want. Which you might think, well then, you're going to be invaded by trolls who will say horrible things and screw up the discussions.

And that does happen. But what's happened is that there are so many people commenting, that they get shredded as soon as they speak up. It's actually been a little bit of a problem. If you read the blog five years ago, you would have found lots of creationists, for instance, showing up and having discussions, getting ripped apart.

Now, after years of this, they've been learning their lesson and not very many of them will jump into the piranha tank anymore. But some do occasionally, and then we have fun. Smith: We've talked about the blog before, and now, the metaphors tend to get fairly aggressive.

Sometimes they have a military cast to them, when you describe the blog and the army of followers. Smith: In this case, not necessarily natural selection, but certainly a predator and prey quality to it.

Is it? When you approach it on a daily basis, are you going in there swinging and fighting? Myers: Yes, definitely. This is part of the cultural wars. Often what will happen is, the typical way I do this is I get up in the morning and I go to my computer. The first thing I do is I look at my email inbox, which typically has a few hundred things from various people around the world who are telling me, "You've got to write about this.

What happens is, the adrenaline stars flowing when you read about some of these outrages. I read that and of course I get outraged. That drives me to write something really quickly about that and get that out there. Then of course everybody else gets outraged and we feed on each other's anger. It's a great deal of fun. So yeah, the adversarial part of this is important.

Smith: You use a lot of blunt and disparaging words to describe people that you don't agree with or people who you think are idiots, trolls, nitwits, et cetera. I wonder if you're ever concerned about your role in promoting a less tolerant conversation. Myers: Well, there's a subtle difference here that what I try to do is promote a conversation that is tolerant. I mean, we do. Think literally about the meaning of the word. We tolerate them, but we do not do is give them a false respect.

What this is all about is eroding this unwarranted respect that's given to religion and foolishness like creationism in this country. We back off so much from this and we refuse to confront it.

We cover it over with manners and nice words. We shouldn't be doing that. We should be openly dismissing a lot of these bad ideas and doing it loudly and proudly.

That's what we do. But of course the tolerance part is that there's no question that nobody is going to deport creationists. Nobody is going to shut down the churches. Nobody is going to do anything like that. What we want to do is put things in a proper perspective. Things like religion and creationism do not belong in government. They do not belong in the public schools. If you want to believe that in the privacy of your home, if you want to get together in church and talk to people about this, yes, that's perfectly reasonable.

That's the tolerance we'll give them. But if you're telling me that the earth is 6, years old, I'm going to call you an idiot. Smith: Where did you get this combativeness? Because on a personal level, as you said, you've been described as a teddy bear. You don't seem like a guy who walks around with a flamethrower ready to burst off, at least in conversation with other people. Myers: Oh, no, I can do this in conversations, too.

It depends on what we're discussing. Where does the combativeness come from? Well, the combativeness largely comes from the fact that I got into this kind of argument because of creationism. In this country, we have this rather ridiculous strain of niblical literalisms. All of this stuff that has been thoroughly debunked, thoroughly disproven, none of this is true.

It's totally false. It's not even something that fits into the leeway that we would give. It's not within the standard deviation margin of error.

Yet, people just blithely accept it. Myers: What's the danger is that we get idiots in political office, that we get schools that do not teach science. Also, that it's self perpetuating. I recall at the last presidential election, probably everybody remembers this, the Republican debates. There was a whole string of Republicans up there and they asked them if they believe in evolution. And what happens? Half of them say, "No.

At that point, this is a level of absurdity that it's just shocking. At this point, what everyone ought to say is, "OK, well, you people who raised your hand and said you don't believe in evolution, you're not qualified for the presidency. You're not qualified for any kind of political office at all. I think you ought to go dig ditches somewhere, because you're not very intelligent. We just sit back and say, "Oh, how surprising, how interesting. Smith: I mean, for example, President Barack Obama is said to be a person of substantial religious belief.

Myers: I have my problems with Barack Obama. The Reverend Barry Lynn, he's a Christian, but he's wonderful. I think he's a great guy. He's standing by his principles and that's what I can really respect.

Myers: Oh, because he puts it in the appropriate place. See, the problem isn't believing in a god. Lots of people do that. It's like lots of people play World of Warcraft. OK, they believe in a fantasy world, but they know it's a fantasy world. They know that this is a personal belief. It's something they enjoy doing. Similarly, people, you can be a minister, you can believe fervently.

But as long as you realize that this is a deeply held, personal belief I have, and I'm not going to try to impose this on public policy. I'm not going to tell this person over here that they're going to hell because they don't share my beliefs. I have no problem with that. That's the way it should be, that's the way everybody should be. I mean, I'm sure that I have some irrational beliefs of my own. I have no idea what they are. Myers: But, again, it's not holding irrational beliefs that makes you an idiot.

It's holding the irrational beliefs and demanding that those be imposed on everyone else. Smith: You've said that science and science education have less authority in our culture now than they may have enjoyed in the past. Why do you think that is? And I assume, secondly, that part of what makes you so combative is that problem that you're identifying.

Myers: Yes, while science is the answer. I'm sorry; you may be a very devout religious person, but praying is not going to solve the world's problems.

It never has. If it did, the world's problems would have been solved in the Dark Ages and those would have been the Light Ages instead, but no, they're not. What we are doing now is we're living in an enlightenment, which is fuelled by rational thinking and science. So we need more of that. That's what will get us out of problems like emerging diseases, global warming and whatever else that's there. There are so many problems that can crop up in a highly technological civilization like ours.

We need that. Science is the answer. So I oppose anything that tends to erode that and try to replace it with superstition. Superstition doesn't work. It may make you feel good. Like I said, if you want it to be a personal belief and you want to hold this, if you want to pray that Congress solves the budget deficit, yes, go ahead. It won't make a difference, but what you need to do is you pray and then you look at the candidates and you say, "OK, I'll vote for this guy because he's offering a rational solution," not because that person is of the same faith as you.

Smith: Would you like to use the blog and the growing influence that you have and, in fact, this space in this radio studio right now to evangelize for the joyful and uplifting things in science? Smith: Because there is so much battle going on in your conversation and in your blogging. Myers: Yes, of course. No, I do write about science, and the power of science and the wonderful things that we discover.

One thing that I've often written about is the fact that these creationist beliefs and these religious beliefs really devalue the human experience. If you look at what science says about evolution, for a specific example, who's heard of the Laetoli footprints?

They're really cool. They're 3. What it is, is a set of footprints preserved in this volcanic ash. There was this huge volcanic eruption, covering everything with ash and dust everywhere. When you look, what you find is that there are these three people walking along, one smaller than the others, one walking in the footprints of the other. You can just imagine that 3. That ought to touch you right here. This is 3. That didn't happen.

The earth is only 6,, 10, years old, somewhere around there, so all of this stuff is thrown away. Similarly, these fossils that we find, they're just these old, dead things, right?

That's all they are, is dead things. But you can read so much more into them. For instance, another famous fossil is Turkana Boy, which is a 1. It's beautiful. It's this young boy. He was probably 10, 11 years old, perfectly preserved. We've got most of the bones present there. It's a spectacular specimen. But when you think about it, this is an 11 year old boy who was growing up healthy and strong, and was wiped out and was killed.

You've just got to wonder, well, what about the family? What did this mean to people then? This is somebody. He would have looked fully human from the neck down. He would have a small cranial capacity, about cc. It's clearly different from us. We would recognize this as somebody different and not of our same species. But at the same time, there's this depth of feeling that you know he had to be experiencing that his family, his tribe, his group was also feeling that this was a big tragedy.

And it's completely gone. It's completely lost to us. Again, you look at religion, you look at creationism, it writes it off as irrelevant. We know he wasn't a Christian; obviously, it couldn't have mattered. You can go even deeper than that. A lot of what people think about evolutionary biology, they think of fossils and they think that these are these old, dried bones.

But most evolutionary biologists now are more focused on the beauty of the molecular biology. Molecular biology is what tells us all this cool stuff about the history of life on earth. For instance, I work on fish in my lab. One of the cool things is to look into the eye of a fish. A fish eye is very much like our eye.