jlynch
Posts by this author
March 22, 2009
I spent last Thursday and Friday at the Unchallengeable Orthodoxies conference hosted by the ASU Sandra Day O'Connor Law School in conjunction with the University of Cambridge. Lots of interesting discussion on academic freedom, scientific practice and suchlike. I presented a 20 minute case study…
March 21, 2009
I've been using my Macbook for two week now and am very comfortable with it. While I'd never become a rabid Apple fanboi, this comment by Microsoft's Steve Ballmer strikes me a simply assinine:
"Apple gained about one point, but now I think the tide has really turned back the other direction. The…
March 21, 2009
The DI-inspired "Academic Freedom/Strengths & Weaknesses" bill that was in committee in New Mexico has failed to get a hearing before close of session and has thus expired. Dave Thomas has more over at PT. The state of play for 2009 must be depressing for the DI
Mississippi - dead in committee…
March 19, 2009
Colocolo, Leopardus colocolo Molina 1782
The next felid up should have been L. braccatus Cope 1889. Unfortunately I have was unable to find a good picture of the species. In any case, until recently, it was held to be a subspecies of the colocolo.
The Colocolo is a small cat, only weighing 3 to 7…
March 18, 2009
As some here know, I have a daughter. If some idiot (like, for example, Laura Ingraham) made a comment about her, I'd stand up for her. That's what fathers do - especially if that comment had something to do about your daughter's body. Apparently this is not the case with John McCain. Quoting…
March 17, 2009
John Wilkins has informed me that Marjorie Grene, the noted historian and philosopher of biology, died of cancer yesterday. I was just using her wonderful The Philosophy of Biology: An Episodic History yesterday while preparing a class.
March 15, 2009
The peanut gallery over at Uncommon Descent seems to be uncommonly interested in beating the Darwinism/Racism meme to death (see here, for example, for my comment on one such post and here and here for Barry Arrington's latest ejaculations on the matter; the latter features this historically…
March 15, 2009
Texas House Bill 4224 (introduced yesterday) attempts to introduce "strengths and weaknesses" language, despite opposition from scientists and educators. More over at NCSE.
March 14, 2009
Mike Dunford has linked to a CAP poll for measuring political ideology. What can I say, I'm procrastinating, so I answered the questions and scored 344 out of 400. That makes me a god-damned baby-eating liberal pinko scumbag "extremely progressive." Below is the mean score by group:
I have yet…
March 13, 2009
Over at PT, Hector Avalos is reporting that the deadline has passed for the DI-inspired "Evolution Academic Freedom Act” (HF 183) to move out of committee in Iowa. This one is now officially dead. Thus the scorecard so far looks like:
Mississippi - dead in committee
Oklahoma - dead in committee…
March 12, 2009
Jim Cramer (of CNBC "Mad Money") doesn't come off too well when he chats with Stewart. See here (video) and here. Short version: the financial news industry is guilty of sins of commission in all of this. As Stewart says, "it's not a fucking game".
March 12, 2009
Next week there is a big conference here at ASU - hosted in conjunction with University of Cambridge - examining the concept of "Unchallengeable Orthodoxy in Academia and Science." The general purpose of the conference is:
To critically examine the precept that American and British universities and…
March 11, 2009
The following is shamelessly lifted from Jim Lippard's blog:
On March 28, SkeptiCamp Phoenix 2009 will take place at Arizona State University in Tempe.
Participants include Mike Stackpole of the Phoenix Skeptics on "Practical Techniques for Street Skepticism," John Lynch on "Academic Freedom and…
March 11, 2009
Over at Uncommon Descent (no link provided due to censorship of comments), Denyse O'Leary is urging "Darwinists" to "divorce" The Descent of Man because not to do so is to support "Darwin's racism" and to thus support racism today.
I'm wondering if O'Leary actually ever read Descent and followed…
March 10, 2009
It's Day 5 of my transition to using OS X and all is well. Once I got used to the different ways of doing things, things have been running remarkably smoothly. The trackpad on the Macbook has taken a bit of getting used to, but I now find myself pawing impotently at the pad on my Dell when I need…
March 9, 2009
Joe Cain and Michael Ruse have edited a volume, Descended from Darwin: Insights into American Evolutionary Studies 1925-1950, that has been published by the American Philosophical Society. Thanks to a grant from the APS, the complete volume is available for free at Cain's website. Some really…
March 8, 2009
John Coltrane, with Wynton Kelly on piano, Paul Chambers on bass, and Jimmy Cobb on drums, performing "On Green Dolphin Street".
March 8, 2009
The Koolade over at ARN is particularly strong today. Robert Deyes speaks of "biologist Casey Luskin". Seriously. At best, Luskin was a geologist MS in earth sciences before becoming a lawyer. He has one (second-author) paper:
Lisa Tauxe, Casey Luskin, Peter Selkin, Phillip Gans, and Andy Calvert…
March 7, 2009
A few days back I asked my loyal readers for their opinions on the Macbook Pro (thanks to all who commented). In the end, I went with the Macbook and have been spending the afternoon adjusting to things. Everything is going well so far.
The purchase at the local Apple Store went without a hitch (…
March 6, 2009
This makes me want to go see the movie:
Very strong humanist, socialist, antinomian worldview major heroic characters deny God final winner in the battle of superheroes believes that killing people in the interests of peace is a worthwhile endeavor, a belief shared by most major Communist…
March 6, 2009
This is Toby, a red panda at Houston Zoo. This article lead to this comment:
Don't be fooled. The Red Panda's "cuteness" is simply a reflection of the human tendency to anthropomorphize animals. In reality, the Red Panda is a vicious omnivore, willing to eat (or try to eat) anything it can put…
March 6, 2009
It is nice to know that things are working so smoothly over in Oklahoma that Representative Todd Thomsen has the free time to propose a resolution (HR 1015)
opposing the invitation to Richard Dawkins to speak on campus; encouraging the University of Oklahoma to engage in a certain discussion of…
March 6, 2009
This being the bicentenary of Darwin’s birth - and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his masterwork - many folks seem to have the goal of reading Origin for the first time. Generally speaking the first edition of 1859 (or the second of 1860) is taken as the best edition to begin with - in…