jlynch
Posts by this author
April 13, 2008
Bush’s approval rating is now down to 28%, the lowest of his tenure as POTUS, and a drop of 62% from his high in September 2001. As Gallup notes, both Bush Sr and Jr went through 60% drops in their approval during their tenure. It must be genetic, I guess.
Strangely (or maybe not) approval among…
April 13, 2008
Just this last week, my daughter had her first AIMS test (Arizona’s standardized test) - an annual week of tests on reading, writing and math. In preparation, all "superfluous" subjects - such as science and social studies - were abandoned in the weeks before hand. Failing students result in…
April 13, 2008
A few days back I took on Denyse O’Leary’s "science journalism by press release" modus operandi. Now, T. Ryan Gregory has taken on the same press release while dispelling the "early branching equals primitive" fallacy that underlies O’Leary’s claims. Wander on over and have a read.
April 12, 2008
One of the central themes within Expelled is the equation of Darwinism with Nazism. We are treated to a somber Ben Stein visiting the death camps. Without Darwin they wouldn’t have existed goes the simplistic viewpoint. Yet, before we criticize Stein and the producers of the movie, we must…
April 11, 2008
David Bolinsky of XVIVIO has posted an open letter regarding the copyright infringement by Expelled. Interestingly, Mike Edmondson who was the animator for the movie has been scrubbed from the Expelled website and Dembksi has hinted that the producers had squirreled away money for copyright…
April 11, 2008
Catching the Ox
Last desperate effort, got him!
Hard to control, powerful and wild,
The ox sprints up a hill and at the top.
Disappears into the misty clouds.
K’uo-an (trans. Stanley Lombardo)
[image source]
April 10, 2008
Predictably, Denyse O’Leary is getting all excited about a paper in this week’s Nature that finds Ctenophora (comb jellies) to be the first multicellular branch off the Tree of Life, a divergence that precedes that of the relatively simpler sponges. Apparently only accessing a LiveScience article,…
April 10, 2008
Chris Heard on Mark Mathis’ admission that Christian scientists were excluded from Expelled because they "would have confused the film unnecessarily":
Mathis as much as says that because he personally cannot reconcile Christian belief with evolutionary biology, prominent Christian scientists ...…
April 9, 2008
More Expelled dishonesty. Michael Shermer wondered why the movie opens with a packed house of Pepperdine students listening to Stein:
The biology professors at Pepperdine assure me that their mostly Christian students fully accept the theory of evolution. So who were these people embracing Stein’s…
April 9, 2008
I don’t usually highlight my e-mail spam, but this was so priceless, I just had to. So much wrong here:
Guinness is running its "Online Lottery" out of a PO box in Killorglin. I’ve seen Killorglin. It’s best known for a goat being annually named King of Ireland. Seriously.
And apparently now the…
April 9, 2008
Via Phil Plait, this uber-cool false-color image of Phobos produced by HiRISE at the University of Arizona.
April 9, 2008
Regular readers will remember law professor Peter Irons for his epic legal takedown of Stuart Pivar. Well he’s gone and done it again and this time he has been involved with a letter from XVIVO correctly accusing Premise Media (makers of Expelled!) of copyright infringement. Here’s the gist:
We…
April 8, 2008
Cheeta turns 76 today, continuing his run as the oldest living non-human primate. You can donate to the CHEETA sanctuary (which also cares for other ex-movie primates) here.
April 7, 2008
Yes, it is that time of the year again, Paul Nelson Day. PZ suggests we should all make it a point to ask people "How do you know that?" today, and the ones who actually can explain themselves competently will be complimented by being told that they're no Paul Nelson. A further tradition is that…
April 6, 2008
Over at Skepchick, Rebecca is highlighting Something Awful’s Photoshop Phriday with a wonderful faux cover for Unscientific American. Wander over to her to see it. This one made me snort:
There are plenty more here including The Old Republic.
April 3, 2008
Seeing the Ox
Oriole in the branch chirps and chirps,
Sun warm, breeze through the willows.
There is the ox, cornered, alone.
That head, those horns! Who could paint them?
K’uo-an (trans. Stanley Lombardo)
[image source]
April 3, 2008
Apparently 81% of respondents to a recent NYT/CBS survey feel "things have pretty seriously gotten off on the wrong track" for this country - up from 69% last year and 35% in 2003. Only 4% said the country is better off than five years ago (what the hell are these nimrods smoking?).
According to…
April 3, 2008
Remember the e-mail I received stating that tonight’s Expelled screening in Tempe was canceled? The e-mail simply stated:
The Tempe, AZ Screening has been canceled.
Well, Ken McKnight called the theater today two or so hours before the screening. Ken says:
I just called the Arizona Mills Harkins…
April 2, 2008
Received an e-mail this morning notifying me (and five others) that the Tempe screening has been canceled. Interesting thing is that the original mailing I received had a further 15 names on it. In addition, "boughtbythecross," "homeschoolma," and "covenant-dad" were not CCed on the e-mail I…
April 1, 2008
A new journal, titled Evolutionary Applications, has just appeared and the 2008 contents will be available online for free.
Evolution now permeates essentially all aspects of biology, and evolutionary concepts and methods are being applied to problems of considerable practical importance. For…
March 31, 2008
The ICR’s Christine Dao has a review of Expelled online where she states:
According to From Darwin to Hitler author Richard Weikart, Hitler saw World War II as a Darwinian struggle for existence, and he justified the practice of eugenics by saying that mankind had "transgressed the law of natural…
March 31, 2008
The basic incompetence of the Expelled producers continues. This morning I received an e-mail telling me that the scheduled screening (7pm on April 3rd) as been re-scheduled for 6pm on that date. Where the incompetence of these boyos comes in is that they cc’ed a bunch of people on the message and…
March 30, 2008
I don’t watch NBA basketball. I don’t watch NCAA basketball. I used to play basketball in high school and played club basketball in college (Ireland doesn’t have the same college scene as here). The reason why I don’t watch is something Chad has hit upon when talking about Davidson’s run for the "…
March 30, 2008
This made me laugh if only because I used to row back in Ireland:
In Ireland, it is not uncommon for university rowing teams to cancel practice because there is a swan in the river. Rowing teams tend to be composed of men who are built like very large trees. Trees that bench-press Volvos. These men…
March 29, 2008
Matt Nisbet has coughed up yet another post on PZ and framing. It begins:
You don’t have to be a social scientist to recognize that the distribution of opinion among people who comment at Scienceblogs is very different from the perspective found among the wider science community and even among…
March 29, 2008
If you have problems with heights, this may not be the job for you. (via BackReaction)