jlynch
Posts by this author
October 23, 2007
One result from a Barna Group poll on biblical literalism:
The Bible opens with the description of God creating the universe in six days. That report is accepted as literally true by 60% of the adult population. This passage brought out major distinctions across people groups. For instance, while…
October 23, 2007
According the Associated Press, the White House severely edited congressional testimony given Tuesday by the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on the impact of climate change on health. The testimony was cut from 14 pages to four, though some of the redacted material…
October 22, 2007
Births
1875 - Gilbert N. Lewis, American chemist
1905 - Felix Bloch, Swiss physicist and Nobel Prize laureate
1908 - Ilya Frank, Russian physicist and Nobel Prize laureate
Deaths
1581 - Michael Neander, German mathematician and astronomer
1944 - Charles Glover Barkla, English physicist and Nobel…
October 22, 2007
Good Monday morning to all my readers, especially to the 406 who read the blog via Feedburner. Did you know, that if each and everyone of you donated a mere $10 to our DonorsChoose drive, we’d have raised a total of $5,353 and will have met our challenge goals? That’s less than three cents a day…
October 21, 2007
In a strangely unreal moment - and coming off of a by-week - ASU finds itself ranked #4 in the BCS rankings, reflecting (I guess) the fact that teams we have beaten in turn beat the likes of Oklahoma (#6), Cal (#21), USC (#12) and Oregon (#5).
Up next week is Cal who, because of losing two straight…
October 20, 2007
Events
1983 - The metre is defined at the seventeenth General Conference on Weights and Measures in terms of the speed of light as the distance light travels in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second.
2003 - Images of the dwarf planet Eris are taken and subsequently used in its discovery by the team…
October 19, 2007
But first your DonorsChoose update. We have raised $1,293 (32%) of our $4,000 goal and have eleven more days to raise the remainder. Many of my SciBlings have reached their chosen goal, so it would be nice to join their ranks. Even the minimum donation of $10 would help.
If you donate (or have…
October 19, 2007
This is old news, but in 1998 Random House generated one of those "100 Best Novels" lists as voted by a panel and by readers. Interestingly there was quite the disconnect between what both groups favored:
The Board’s Top 5
ULYSSES by James Joyce
THE GREAT GATSBY by F. Scott Fitzgerald
A PORTRAIT…
October 19, 2007
A colorized scanning electron micrograph depicts a group of methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). The bug made headlines this week because of a report in the Journal of the American Medical Association that it caused 94,000 serious infections and nearly 19,000 deaths in 2005 - most…
October 19, 2007
Nobody heard him, the dead man,But still he lay moaning:I was much further out than you thoughtAnd not waving but drowning.
Poor chap, he always loved larkingAnd now he’s deadIt must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,They said.
Oh, no no no, it was too cold always(Still the dead one lay…
October 18, 2007
Events
1943 - Streptomycin, the first antibiotic remedy for tuberculosis, is isolated by researchers at Rutgers University.
1688 - William Cheselden, English surgeon and anatomist
1858 - George Albert Boulenger, Belgian naturalist
1897 - Salimuzzaman Siddiqui, Pakistani scientist and scholar
1909…
October 17, 2007
Births
1859 - Henri Bergson, French philosopher and author of Creative Evolution.
1897 - Isabel Briggs Myers, American psychological theorist
1902 - Pascual Jordan, German physicist
Deaths
1886 - Philipp Franz von Siebold, German physician
1911 - Alfred Binet, French psychologist
October 17, 2007
Events
1604 - Johannes Kepler observes Kepler’s Star (Supernova 1604), the last supernova to have been observed in the Milky Way.
Births
1919 - Isaak Markovich Khalatnikov, Russian physicist
1936 - Hiroo Kanamori, Japanese seismologist
Deaths
1757 - René Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur, French…
October 15, 2007
A very quiet day ...
Births
1714 - Giovanni Arduino, Italian geologist
October 14, 2007
Events
1951 - Mexican chemist Luis E. Miramontes synthesizes the first oral contraceptive
1997 - The Cassini probe launches from Cape Canaveral on its way to Saturn.
2001 - NASA’s Galileo spacecraft passes within 112 miles of Jupiter’s moon Io.
Births
1608 - Evangelista Torricelli, Italian…
October 13, 2007
Births
1801 - Joseph Plateau, Belgian physicist
1861 - Artur Gavazzi, Croatian geographer
1914 - Raymond Davis Jr., American physicist and Nobel Prize laureate
Deaths
1831 - Jean-Louis Pons, French astronomer
1960 - Abram Ioffe, Russian physicist
1984 - Martin Ryle, English radio astronomer and…
October 13, 2007
On a Saturday in which #1 LSU lost, #2 Cal lost to Oregon State, and USC barely squeezed past Arizona, ASU beat Washington 44-20 after trailing 17-13 at the half- a dominant performance in the second half that nicely illustrated Dennis Erickson’s ability as a coach, particularly considering our top…
October 13, 2007
Events
1773 - The Whirlpool Galaxy (above) was discovered by Charles Messier
1892 - Edward Emerson Barnard discovers D/1892 T1 (Barnard 3), the first comet discovered by photographic means
1976 - The first electron micrograph of an Ebola viral particle was obtained by F.A. Murphy at the C.D.C..…
October 12, 2007
Tonight #16 Hawaii played San Jose State and won 42-35 in overtime. That’s the same San Jose that ASU beat 45-3. Hawaii go 7-0 but frankly, given whom they have beat, are horribly overrated. Despite being unbeaten. Hawaii haven’t really met any real opposition (witness Northern Colorado, Louisiana…
October 12, 2007
On a day when Al Gore and the IPCC won a Nobel Prize for their work on the climate, I just want to quickly highlight one of the projects in our DonorsChoose challenge. This one is from a teacher in Indiana who wants to teach their 25 second-grade students about the weather and states of matter. The…
October 12, 2007
Scibling Shelly is in the running for a $10,000 scholarship. Since she’s a grad student this is a big deal. So, go vote for her. I did.
October 12, 2007
Put Out My Eyes
Put out my eyes, and I can see you still,Slam my ears to, and I can hear you yet;And without any feet can go to you;And tongueless, I can conjure you at will.Break off my arms, I shall take hold of youAnd grasp you with my heart as with a hand;Arrest my heart, my brain will beat as…
October 12, 2007
But first, your DonorsChoose update.
We seem to have stalled out at 19% of our goal. While I’m sure we can feel happy that we are positively impacting the education of 210 students (and four of our challenges have been met), it has been five days since any reader has donated.
Our masters at Seed…
October 11, 2007
If Gore wins the Nobel Peace Prize, will Bush the Younger acknowledge it?
October 11, 2007
What would you do if the Earth was to be destroyed in one hour by a meteorite? Apparently 54% of Britons would spend the time with (or on the phone to) loved ones, 13% would grab a glass of champagne, 9% would have sex, and 3% would pray. Two percent would start looting (why?).
Assuming I was…
October 11, 2007
It goes something like this ...
Reasoning involves using the laws of logic.
Laws of logic are God's standard for thinking.
The atheist's view cannot be rational because he uses things (laws of logic) that cannot exist according to his profession.
I have made you dumber by having you read this.…
October 10, 2007
Events
1968 - Apollo program: NASA launches Apollo 7, the first successful manned Apollo mission, with astronauts Wally Schirra, Donn F. Eisele and Walter Cunningham aboard.
Births
1758 - Heinrich Wilhelm Matthäus Olbers, German astronomer
1884 - Friedrich Bergius, German chemist and Nobel Prize…
October 10, 2007
PZ says something good in agreement with a post by Brian Leiter:
I’d suggest that the Christo-Fascists have done far more damage to our country than any Islamo-Fascist -- after all, the Islamic hordes haven’t been responsible for stripping away our civil liberties, nor did they force us to spend…
October 10, 2007
Births
1731 - Henry Cavendish, British scientist
1780 - John Abercrombie, Scottish physician
1930 - Yves Chauvin, French chemist and Nobel Prize laureate
Deaths
1708 - David Gregory, Scottish astronomer
1876 - Charles Joseph Sainte-Claire Deville, French geologist
1930 - Adolf Engler, German…