jlynch
Posts by this author
April 26, 2008
From Evolved and Rational:
You only start to feel insulted when Ben Stein decides that the Holocaust is his "personal" reason for "investigating" evolution, and trust me, you feel really insulted. No, Ben Stein, your movie is not a personal crusade on behalf of your lost ancestors. No, Ben Stein,…
April 26, 2008
Below the fold because it’s a 250k image. But it’s worth it.
Via eclectech - I can’t wait to use it in a presentation.
April 26, 2008
I ran across this story covering Jeremy Hall’s case (PZ comments) and just want to quote the following:
[Hall’s atheism] eventually came out in Iraq in 2007, when he was in a firefight. Hall was a gunner on a Humvee, which took several bullets in its protective shield. Afterward, his commander…
April 26, 2008
Onias raises an interesting question (to which I have no answer) in another thread, namely:
I was wondering if any of you folks at science blogs can discuss the issue of LGBT people in science. Apart from Jim Pollack, Alan Turing and a few others, we seem to be underrepresented. Is it due to…
April 25, 2008
Via BikeMonkey I see that DrugMonkey had a "106 Books of Pretension" meme going last October. Namely, "the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing’s users." So here we go - what I’ve read is in italics, what I never finished is struck through:
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell…
April 25, 2008
According to Expelled, this guy must be some kind of "Darwinist," right?
He’s Tony Zirkle and he’s seeking the Republican nomination for Congress in Indiana. Above he is addressing a bunch of like-minded individuals - at a birthday celebration for Hitler no less. Visiting his campaign site is…
April 25, 2008
The Telegraph has a list up of the top fifty "best cult books," a category they describe as:
the sort of book that people wear like a leather jacket or carry around like a totem. The book that rewires your head: that turns you on to psychedelics; makes you want to move to Greece; makes you a…
April 24, 2008
Riding the Ox Home
Riding the ox home, taking it easy,
The flute’s notes vanish in the evening haze.
Tapping time to a folk song, happy as can be -
It’s all too much for words.
K’uo-an (trans. Stanley Lombardo)
[image source]
April 21, 2008
Steve Matheson (a Reformed Christian biologist at Calvin College and occasional commenter here) has this to say about the Darwin/Hitler meme that is popular with the Expelled set:
If you’re a Christian who thinks that the Nazis are a useful polemical tool against evolution, then maybe you should…
April 21, 2008
I want to share one of my favorite quotes ever from an historian of science: George Sarton writing in his magisterial (and sadly unfinished) A History of Science:
The influence of Timaeus upon later times was enormous and essentially evil. A large portion of Timaeus had been translated into Latin…
April 21, 2008
So maybe I'm missing something but ... Expelled took in $3 million over the weekend. With over 1000 theaters and three days, that comes to ~$1000 per theater per day. At approximately $5 a ticket, that means we're looking at roughly 200 people seeing the movie per day per theater. Maybe 50 people…
April 20, 2008
Wilkins has a little Aesopian fable that you may want to read.
Still grading, so your Monday Mustelid will be late ... i.e. not on Monday!
April 18, 2008
Some quickies ...
The University of Oklaholma has announced its year-long Darwin 2009 celebration: This View of Life. Apparently it is being launched on February 12th with a public lecture by some guy called Lynch. Yeah, that Lynch. More of that later, no doubt.
Set Ben Straight and win stuff. See…
April 17, 2008
Today is the day when it will all come crashing down around us evil Darwinists. Expelled has been, uh, expelled from whence it came. Yes, the prophet Benjamin will speak and the scales will be lifted from the eyes of the public. Verily I say unto thee, repent now.
April 17, 2008
Taming the Ox
Don’t lose the whip, hold onto the rope
Or he’ll buck away into the dirt.
Herded well, in perfect harmony
He’ll follow along without any constraint.
K’uo-an (trans. Stanley Lombardo)
[image source]
April 17, 2008
Hofstra University solicits submissions for an interdisciplinary conference titled "Darwin’s Reach: A Celebration of Darwin’s Legacy across Academic Disciplines," to be held March 12-14, 2009.
Primatologist Frans de Waal, paleontologist Niles Eldredge, and Judge John Jones (who wrote the Dover…
April 17, 2008
From MartinC:
Is this stuff real science?Or is it just fantasy,That belongs in a place likeBob Jones University?Just close your eyes,Don’t think, just accept IDI’m a game show host,I don’t know biology,But this sleazy bunch, told me so,It could be lies, how would I know?So long as the check clears…
April 16, 2008
Darwin’s papers held at Cambridge are now online. Major props to John van Wyhe and the people at the Darwin Online project for this.
April 16, 2008
I’ve been sitting on this for an hour because, frankly, I can’t stop laughing quietly to myself. As Andrea over at the Thumb notes, the producers of Expelled are now in trouble with Yoko Ono for using Lennon’s "Imagine" without permission. Seriously. I’m not making this up. First it was plagiarism…
April 16, 2008
Richard Weikart:
Today's Darwinists are not Nazis and not all Darwinists agree with Dawkins, Wilson, Ruse, Singer, or Watson. However, some of the ideas being promoted today by prominent Darwinists in the name of Darwinism have an eerily similar ring to the ideologies that eroded respect for human…
April 16, 2008
So I’m all a-flutter with anticipation for the opening of Expelled - two days to go to the big day on which Darwinism will finally fall. To prepare, I checked Yahoo Movies for the screening times in my area. What’s this? Only two cinemas are brave enough to show it? The AMC Mesa Grand and the AMC…
April 15, 2008
An absolutely stunning nightscape taken ten kilometers from Flagstaff (Arizona) just three weeks ago: the San Francisco Peaks covered with lenticular cloud with the Milky Way behind. All a testament to the status of the city as the first International Dark Sky City. Having spent plenty of time in…
April 15, 2008
One more shot across the bows before I go back to more serious work. Expelled producers claim that:
A variety of papers, micrographs, illustrations and animations with depictions of the cellular transport system of kinesin were used and are freely available on the internet. We invite you to learn…
April 15, 2008
I’ve been quiet the past few days, primarily because I’m all nervous about the upcoming launch of Expelled - I’ve realized it’s going to be the Waterloo that Dembski predicted eight years ago. Hah! Not really. The simplistic history in the movie (ignoring all other factors including Christianity in…
April 14, 2008
My backyard is currently a hive of activity. It’s just past 3pm here in Tempe and the temperature is about 96 degrees. As a break from grading, I’m sitting on my back patio watching the avian world unfold. A splendid male Great-tailed Grackle (Quicalus mexicanus) has been noisily courting two…
April 13, 2008
Phil Plait brings to my attention that John Archibald Wheeler died yesterday. As Phil says:
John Archibald Wheeler was a genius, an amazing physicist who felt that teaching as well as research was important. His students included Richard Feynman, widely recognized as one of the true geniuses of all…