jlynch
Posts by this author
December 12, 2007
Births
1640 - Robert Plot, English naturalist
1662 - Francesco Bianchini, Italian philosopher and scientist
1724 - Franz Aepinus, German scientist
1867 - Kristian Birkeland, Norwegian explorer and scientist
1923 - Philip Warren Anderson, American physicist and Nobel Prize laureate
Deaths
1565…
December 11, 2007
Births
1866 - Alfred Werner, Swiss chemist and Nobel Prize laureate
1892 - Herman PotoÄnik, Slovenian rocket engineer
December 11, 2007
The ancient Greeks said that the Spartans threw any deformed or sick newborns over a cliff, thus practicing eugenics. Indeed, Plato - certainly an individual with a soft spot for Sparta - himself hints at these practices in his Republic. Recent studies of human remains from one such cliff (…
December 11, 2007
Our overlords (can the beatings stop now? please?) have asked us to ask you to take a brief two question quiz regarding languages. Run along and do it ... otherwise the beatings will continue.
December 11, 2007
Births
1761 - Gian Domenico Romagnosi, Italian physicist
1781 - Sir David Brewster, Scottish physicist
1843 - Robert Koch, German bacteriologist and Nobel Prize laureate
1863 - Annie Jump Cannon, American astronomer
1882 - Max Born, German physicist and Nobel Prize laureate
1925 - Paul…
December 10, 2007
The Arizona State Board of Education has unanimously voted to increase the amount of required science and math courses for the state’s high school students. Freshmen in 2008 will require a third year of math, and those the following year will require a fourth year. That entering class will also…
December 10, 2007
Presidential debates are largely meaningless. Simpleminded questions posed by simpleminded moderators who actively prevent candidates from answering in any sort of nuanced manner (were they able). In short, a microcosm of American political discourse in which snark and soundbite dominate substance…
December 10, 2007
Events
1684 - Isaac Newton’s derivation of Kepler’s laws from his theory of gravity, contained in the paper De motu corporum in gyrum, is read to the Royal Society by Edmund Halley.
Births
1452 - Johannes Stöffler, German mathematician and astronomer
1588 - Isaac Beeckman, Dutch scientist and…
December 9, 2007
Tim Lambert has already highlighted this, but since some of the affair played out on this blog ... John Mashey has posted an extended account of the Oreskes/Schulte affair [pdf]. Regular readers will remember that Naomi Oreskes publicly responded to Schulte here and subsequent developments can be…
December 8, 2007
Births
1571 - Metius, Dutch mathematician and astronomer
1652 - Augustus Quirinus Rivinus, German physician
1748 - Claude Louis Berthollet, French chemist
1906 - Grace Murray Hopper, American computer pioneer
1917 - James Rainwater, American physicist and Nobel Prize laureate
1919 - William…
December 8, 2007
No, not a processed meat made from young dogs of African origin, but this:
My Name is Ronald Gigs, I and my Wife are on a Christian mission to Africa and we came along with our little Puppy Jenny. After a while we notice that the weather here is not good for the Jenny and we have not been able to…
December 8, 2007
Births
1730 - Jan Ingenhousz, Dutch-born British physiologist and botanist
1795 - Peter Andreas Hansen, Danish astronomer
1874 - Ernst Moro, Austrian physician
1947 - Thomas R. Cech, American chemist and Nobel Prize laureate
Deaths
1632 - Philippe van Lansberge, Flemish astronomer
1779 - Nathan…
December 7, 2007
John Stockwell (among others) has suggested that there needs to be a baseline with which to compare Behe’s productivity as a scientist. Stockwell suggested Sean B. Carroll and, as always, I’m happy to oblige. (FYI, I’ve omitted Carroll’s review articles.)
Couple of things are of note here. Firstly…
December 7, 2007
Hawk Roosting
I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed.Inaction, no falsifying dreamBetween my hooked head and hooked feet:Or in sleep rehearse perfect kills and eat.
The convenience of the high trees!The air’s buoyancy and the sun’s rayAre of advantage to me;And the earth’s face upward for…
December 6, 2007
Events
1900 - Max Planck discovers the law of black body emission.
1972 - Apollo 17, the last Apollo moon mission, is launched. The crew take the photograph known as "The Blue Marble" (above) as they leave the Earth.
1995 - The Galileo spacecraft arrives at Jupiter, a little more than six years…
December 6, 2007
Over at this thread, a reader asked for Behe’s publication record in a similar format to Gonzalez’s. Glad to oblige. (As always, click for a big ’un).
Note how his productivity drops off hugely once he gets publicly involved with ID in 1991. Much like Gonzalez, Behe’s most productive period occurs…
December 6, 2007
DI "policy analyst" Logan Gage tells us:
Michael Behe does biochemical research with his University of Pennsylvania Ph.D.; Jonathan Wells does biological research with his U.C. Berkeley Ph.D.; Stephen Meyer researches the history and philosophy of science with his Cambridge University Ph.D.; etc.…
December 6, 2007
If only to prove I have too much time on my hands as the semester winds to a close ... here is Michael Behe’s peer-reviewed scientific output over time (again, click for biggie). Remember, friends don’t let friends who were productive scientists become ID "theorists."
December 6, 2007
Over at Neurotopia the peer-less Evil Monkey has posted an excellent entry on Guillermo Gonzalez and how his productivity as a published scientist dropped off significantly when he began his tenure track at Iowa State and how - based on this alone - he would have probably had a rough time getting…
December 6, 2007
Births
1586 - Niccolò Zucchi, Italian astronomer
1778 - Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac, French physicist and chemist
1863 - Charles Martin Hall, American chemist
1890 - Yoshio Nishina, Japanese physicist
1920 - George Porter, British chemist and Nobel Prize laureate
Deaths
1771 - Giovanni Battista…
December 5, 2007
Over the next few weeks I’m going to manually moving pre-2006 posts on Stranger Fruit over to this site. Longtime readers - or is that reader - will remember that the blog was hosted on my own server between January 2004 and December 2005 but disappeared into the aether after a database crash early…
December 5, 2007
In the past I have discussed Jonathan Wells’ paper "Do Centrioles Generate a Polar Ejection Force?", the journal in which it appeared (Revista di Biologia), and its editor, Giuseppe Sermonti. Steve Matheson over at Quintessence of Dust has seen fit to comment extensively on the paper and how it has…
December 5, 2007
Births
1855 - Clinton Hart Merriam, American ornithologist
1868 - Arnold Sommerfeld, German physicist
1896 - Carl Ferdinand Cori, Austrian-born biochemist and Nobel Prize laureate
1901 - Werner Heisenberg, German physicist and Nobel Prize laureate
1903 - Cecil Frank Powell, British physicist…
December 4, 2007
Births
1852 - Orest Khvolson, Russian physicist
1908 - Alfred Hershey, American bacteriologist and Nobel Prize laureate
Deaths
1123 - Omar Khayyám, Persian poet, astronomer, mathematician, and philosopher
1798 - Luigi Galvani, Italian physicist
1935 - Charles Robert Richet, French physiologist
December 2, 2007
Events
1904 - The Jovian moon Himalia is discovered by Charles Dillon Perrine.
1967 - A transplant team headed by Christiaan Barnard carries out the first heart transplant on a human (53-year-old Louis Washkansky).
1973 - Pioneer 10 sends back the first close-up images of Jupiter.
1999 - NASA loses…
December 2, 2007
As I stayed up late last night to watch Hawai’i stumble past a mediocre Washington team (who are last place in the Pac-10), I got to thinking. Sure, Colt Brennan is a very talented kid who has been able to work well with some good receivers, but the Warrior’s record of 12-0 is vastly overrated and…
December 1, 2007
Births
1885 - George Richards Minot, American physician and Nobel Prize laureate
1931 - Nigel Calder, British science writer
Deaths
1987 - Luis Federico Leloir, French-born chemist and Nobel Prize laureate
1987 - Yakov Borisovich Zel’dovich, Russian physicist
December 1, 2007
The Territorial Cup is the oldest college football trophy game and the 81st edition of it will be played tonight at Sun Devil Stadium when ASU (#13, 9-2, 6-2) take on the University of Arizona (5-6, 4-4). Depending on the result (and that of other games), ASU could still make either the Rose or…