jlynch
Posts by this author
April 19, 2009
J.G. Ballard has died. So I give you "Atrocity Exhibition" by Joy Division. This is the way, step inside.
April 16, 2009
Pampas cat, Leopardus pajeros Desmarest 1816
Plate from 'The Zoology of the Voyage of HMS Beagle'
(source)
April 15, 2009
Apparently Mycocepurus smithii doesn't. It has become the first ant species to dispense completely with males. More details here.
(The picture above - from the Daily Mail story - is actually by Alex Wild but is unattributed)
April 14, 2009
The Arizona Education Association is reporting that nearly 4,500 K-12 teachers and other personnel have been pink-slipped for the next school year. What is truly worrying about this is that it is based on reports from only 36 of the 220 districts statewide and more layoffs are inevitable. You may…
April 13, 2009
Janet has some extensive thoughts about the shenanigans over at Amazon.com. Do wander over and have a read. Suffice it to say, I agree with her and will be withholding any business until all of this has been cleared up to my satisfaction.
April 13, 2009
Seamus Heaney, Irish poet and Nobel Prize winner is 70 today. To celebrate here is his poem "Strange Fruit," one of a series of poems about bog-bodies.
Here is the girl's head like an exhumed gourd.
Oval-faced, prune-skinned, prune-stones for teeth.
They unswaddled the wet fern of her hair
And…
April 12, 2009
This critter is Pogonomyrmex maricopa, a species of harvester ant which is apparently famous for having the most venemous sting of any North American insect. One sting from the Maricopa Harvester Ant is equivalent to twelve honey bee stings. Best of all, it's native to here in Arizona. Just one…
April 12, 2009
This is three years old now but worth a repost given the season in question.
HT to Crooks and Liars for reminding me of this.
April 12, 2009
PZ is reporting that John Maddox - former editor of Nature - has died at the age of 84. Like PZ, I remember him for his review of Rupert Sheldrake's New Age garbage ("morphic resonance" *shudder*). As commentators over at Pharyngula also note, he was responsible for bringing James Randi on board to…
April 11, 2009
Adam Goldstein has a post over at the Evolution: Education & Outreach blog which discusses a forthcoming paper by Genie Scott and Glenn Branch (both of the NCSE). Scott & Branch follow Olivia Judson in calling for the abandonment of the imprecise term "Darwinism". This is certainly…
April 9, 2009
I'm currently reading Hoelldobler & Wilson’s The Superorganism and just ran across this post by Alex Wild which claims that
the whole section of The Superorganism devoted to the evolutionary history of ants is muddy, incoherent, and entirely at odds with the increasingly clear picture emerging…
April 6, 2009
Today we celebrate Paul Nelson Day in honor of the five year anniversary of his theory of "ontogenic depth" and a promised exposition that has never appeared. Methods of celebration vary - PZ has in the past suggested that we should make it a point to ask people "How do you know that?" today, and…
April 4, 2009
Most readers probably have heard of Michael Egnor, the DI's pet neurosurgeon. Egnor has been harping on about what he perceives as the lack of utility of evolution - which he, of course, equates with "Darwinism" - in medicine since 2007, and various folks here have commented on what has been termed…
April 2, 2009
A few weeks back, I updated you on the story of Macho B, the male jaguar that was captured in southeastern Arizona and subsequently euthanized due to apparent chronic kidney failure. The Arizona Republic is reporting that Sharon Dial, a pathologist at Arizona Veterinary Diagnostic Lab, is claiming…
March 31, 2009
Sadly, to the DI, this is what counts as the utterance of a "serious scholar who knows what he's saying:"
Evolutionary theory is at odds with itself: It cannot accept that man is a special being, raised above all others in evolutionary history, and it cannot deny that only man is capable of science…
March 29, 2009
Matt Taibbi on Jake DeSantis' narcissism:
Only a person with a habitually overinflated sense of self-worth could think he deserves a $700,000 retention bonus, even if it has to be paid by taxpayers, when in reality no one "deserves" that much money. It may be that some people do get paid that much…
March 29, 2009
SkeptiCamp Phoenix 2009 went off wonderfully yesterday. Big thanks to Jim Lippard for doing such a wonderful organizational job.
The picture above is me beginning my 20 minute gallop through the issue of academic freedom and the intelligent design movement. Shorter - and undoubtedly more coherent…
March 28, 2009
SkeptiCamp Phoenix beings in a few minutes. Jim Lippard has all the details and Magic Tony, one of the presenters, will be live-blogging the event, and there may also be twittering at #skepticamp. I'll be adding bits and pieces as the spirit moves me.
March 27, 2009
Asian small-clawed otter pups @ San Diego Zoo. More here.
March 27, 2009
Geoffroy's cat, Leopardus geoffroyi d'Orbigny & Gervais 1844
(source)
March 24, 2009
The following was posted to the mailing list for the International Society for the History, Philosophy and Social Studies of Biology (ISHPSSB) by Dick Burian. I felt it worth reposting here.
Marjorie Grene passed away March 16 at age 98 after a brief illness. Marjorie Glicksman Grene, born Dec. 13…
March 23, 2009
NCSE is reporting that the Supreme Court has today denied certiorari without comment to Caldwell v. Caldwell, which challenged the constitutionality of the Understanding Evolution website. It's yet another setback for the DI who supported Caldwell. Let's just blame those liberal Darwinists over at…
March 23, 2009
Or at least it did in Darwin's day. See here.
"Thanks to the discovery, historians now have the exact date of Darwin's arrival at the university - January 26th, 1828 - as well as a huge assortment of details which will enable them to reconstruct his undergraduate life as never before."
March 23, 2009
The Dawkins @ Oklahoma debacle continues. As Greg Lukianoff correctly notes:
Think about it: If every time a student or faculty member invited, say, Rick Warren to speak on campus, they knew they would be subjected to a thorough and time-consuming investigation by state officials, you can all but…
March 23, 2009
Darren Naish brings an interesting paper to our attention: a claim that over 400 new mammal species have been discovered since 1993. While 60% of these were formerly classified within another species (i.e. were cryptic species), the remainder are apparently brand-spanking-new. Wander on over to…
March 22, 2009
Nicholas Hughes was an evolutionary ecologist specializing in salmonids at the University of Alaska (Fairbanks). He was also the son of poets Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath. He killed himself by hanging yesterday after a bout with depression. He was 47. Times of London obit is here.
(HT to TR Hummer)