jlynch
Posts by this author
December 1, 2007
Births
1525 - Tadeáš Hájek, Czech physician and astronomer
1580 - Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc, French astronomer
1743 - Martin Heinrich Klaproth, German chemist
1925 - Martin Rodbell, American scientist and Nobel Prize laureate
Deaths
1729 - Giacomo F. Maraldi, French-Italian astronomer…
December 1, 2007
In his discussion of West’s recent talk in Minnesota, PZ notes:
I am extremely impressed with the fact that the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior at the University of Minnesota has a historian and philosopher of science on their faculty -- more biology departments ought to make those…
November 30, 2007
Mark Borrello is a good mate of mine and an historian of biology. Greg Laden has an account of Mark publicly handing John West his ass regarding his expectorations re Darwin and eugenics.
PZ was there as well. Apparently West called him "America's Richard Dawkins"!
Nice job, Mark! It will be…
November 30, 2007
Bora reminds us that Open Lab 2007 is now in the judging phase - 329 entries now have to be whittled down to 50. Some unknown reader (thanks!) nominated my Pithecophobes of the World, Unite! Part I, Part II, Part III and Part IV series for inclusion.
November 30, 2007
Wet Evening in April The birds sang in the wet treesAnd I listened to them it was a hundred years from nowAnd I was dead and someone else was listening to them.But I was glad I had recorded for himThe melancholy.
Patrick Kavanagh
I’ve posted poems by Kavanagh before ("Dark Haired Miriam Ran…
November 30, 2007
Events
1974 - Lucy is discovered by Donald Johanson, Maurice Taieb, Yves Coppens and Tim White in the Middle Awash of Ethiopia’s Afar Depression.
Births
1756 - Ernst Chladni, German physicist
1768 - JÄdrzej Åniadecki, Polish writer, physician, chemist and biologist
1858 - Jagdish Chandra Bose,…
November 28, 2007
Births
1627 - John Ray, English naturalist
1762 - Pierre André Latreille, French zoologist
1803 - Christian Doppler, Austrian physicist
1825 - Jean-Martin Charcot, French neurologist
1849 - John Ambrose Fleming, British physicist
1857 - Theodor Escherich, German pediatrician
1874 - Egas Moniz,…
November 28, 2007
Events
1660 - At Gresham College, 12 men, including Christopher Wren, Robert Boyle, John Wilkins, and Sir Robert Moray decide to found what is later known as the Royal Society of London.
1964 - Mariner program: NASA launches the Mariner 4 probe toward Mars.
2004 - A male Po’o-uli dies of avian…
November 27, 2007
Events
2001 - A hydrogen atmosphere is discovered on the extrasolar planet Osiris by the Hubble Space Telescope, the first atmosphere detected on an extrasolar planet.
2005 - The first partial human face transplant is completed in Amiens, France.
Births
1701 - Anders Celsius, Swedish inventor and…
November 26, 2007
Births
1678 - Jean Jacques d’Ortous de Mairan, French geophysicist
1832 - Karl Rudolf König, German physicist
1898 - Karl Ziegler, German chemist and Nobel Prize laureate
1904 - Armand Frappier, French-Canadian physician and microbiologist
1907 - Ruth Patrick, American botanist
1938 - Rodney…
November 25, 2007
The qualifying draw from World Cup 2010 in South Africa was made today. Europe’s Group 8 looks like a challenge for the Irish (current rankings in brackets):
Italy (3)
Bulgaria (18)
Republic of Ireland (35)
Cyprus (65)
Georgia (77)
Montenegro (172)
November 25, 2007
The Sun Devils (9-2) dropped to thirteenth in the BCS after their loss to USC Thursday night. No surprises there. Had the second half been closer a higher ranking would have been possible. But no point dwelling in the past as a number of possible scenarios are possible for the future:
A trip to…
November 25, 2007
Births
1703 - Jean-François Séguier, French astronomer and botanist
1814 - Julius Robert von Mayer, German physician and physicist
1887 - Nikolai Vavilov, Russian geneticist
1913 - Lewis Thomas, American physician and essayist
Deaths
1686 - Nicolas Steno, Danish geologist
1694 - Ismael…
November 24, 2007
Events
1639 - Jeremiah Horrocks and William Crabtree separately observe the first recorded transit of Venus
1859 - Charles Darwin publishes The Origin of Species.
Births
1774 - Thomas Dick, Scottish scientific teacher and writer
1888 - Fredrick Willius, American cardiologist
1925 - Simon van der…
November 23, 2007
10,000
Ten thousand flowers in spring, the moon in autumn,a cool breeze in summer, snow in winter.
If your mind isn’t clouded by unnecessary things,this is the best season of your life.
Wu Men
[Picture: "Autumn Moon," Ansel Adams, 1948]
November 22, 2007
Births
1553 - Prospero Alpini, Italian physician and botanist
1715 - Pierre Charles Le Monnier, French astronomer
1837 - Johannes Diderik van der Waals, Dutch physicist and Nobel Prize laureate
1887 - Henry Moseley, English physicist
1907 - Lars Leksell, Swedish physician
1924 - Colin Macmillan…
November 22, 2007
ASU dropped to 9-2/6-2 with a 44-24 home loss to an admittedly superior USC team. Disappointing overall, particularly because the running game was non-existent, and this means USC has bested us eight years in a row. A 17 point burst by the Trojans in the third quarter put the game away and an…
November 22, 2007
Peter Irons has made it known that Frank Beckwith (Baylor) resigned as a fellow of the Discovery Institute in July.The event went without notice from either Beckwith or the DI. Beckwith’s has in the past stated that he "has never been much of fan [of] design arguments, ever. My interest in the…
November 21, 2007
First of all, I want to wish a happy Thanksgiving to all my American readers. To everyone else, have a happy Thursday. I’ll be laying low for the next four days (a combination of Thanksgiving and grading) and am not likely to post other than a brief comment to tonight’s ASU vs USC football game.…
November 20, 2007
Events
1905 - Albert Einstein’s paper, "Does the Inertia of a Body Depend Upon Its Energy Content?", is published in Annalen der Physik. This paper leads to the mass-energy equivalence E = mc².
1953 - Authorities at the British Natural History Museum announce that the "Piltdown Man" skull was a…
November 20, 2007
Have fellows of the Discovery Institute been caught plagiarizing? You decide.
Does the Discovery Institute lie? You decide.
Does Behe get owned by a grad student? You decide.
Bad week for the cdesign proponentsists by the looks of it.
Oh, and when’s the last time there was any science coming from…
November 19, 2007
Births
1602 - Otto von Guericke, German physicist
1762 - Pierre André Latreille, French entomologist
1886 - Karl von Frisch, Austrian zoologist and Nobel Prize laureate
1889 - Edwin Hubble, American astronomer
1910 - Willem Jacob van Stockum, Dutch physicist
1926 - Andrzej W. Schally, Polish-…
November 17, 2007
I’m finally back from spending a few days in DC - my second trip to the city in the past two weeks. I was there to receive the CASE/Carnegie Professor of the Year award for Arizona. The award - presented by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for the Advancement…
November 13, 2007
Just want to note that I enjoyed the PBS NOVA special "Judgment Day" which fairly depicted (imho) the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial and the machinations the intelligent design supporters.
A student of mine emailed me to let me know that his wife was impressed about his ability to predict what was…
November 13, 2007
They "get drunk all the time. It is becoming really dangerous. We need to stop making alcohol available to them."
They, in this case, are not worthless socialites and Hollywood starlets, but elephants in northeastern India, and the speaker is none other than Paris Hilton, who went on to comment…
November 12, 2007
Events
1971 - Mariner 9 becomes the first spacecraft to orbit another planet (Mars). Though switched off on 27th October 1972, the probe is still in Mars orbit and stable until at least 2022.
Births
1924 - Motoo Kimura, Japanese geneticist (above)
Deaths
1606 - Geronimo Mercuriali, Italian…
November 12, 2007
I blogged about this way back in 2003 when I had a blog on LiveJournal (yeah, I know), but I want to share it with my (now larger) readership. It’s my favorite scientific paper ever:
On 5 June 1995 an adult male mallard (Anas platyrhynchos) collided with the glass facade of the Natuurmuseum…
November 12, 2007
Events
1847 - James Young Simpson is the first to use chloroform as an anaesthetic.
1980 - Voyager I makes its closest approach to Saturn and takes first images of its rings.
Births
1795 - Thaddeus William Harris, American naturalist
1842 - John Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh, English physicist and…