jlynch
Posts by this author
September 14, 2007
PZ raises an excellent point about the hysteria being shown by Dembski and others regarding the "Evolutionary Informatics Lab" that Robert Marks was trying to host at Baylor. The Lab, you will remember, does not actually exist in any material sense - it is merely a webpage (currently here) which…
September 14, 2007
Ah, Friday. Supposedly the day I can devote to doing some research, but instead I’m attempting to distil six hours of lectures on Darwin’s life into one easy to digest three hour bolus. In short, I’m going to be busy for a while.
Around the ScienceBlogs, I will note that Mark, PZ and John Wilkins…
September 14, 2007
Yes, it has been a long time.
My Lover Asks Me
My lover asks me: "What is the difference between me and the sky?" The difference, my love, Is that when you laugh, I forget about the sky.
Nizar Qabbani
September 14, 2007
Events
1959 - The Soviet probe Luna 2 crashes onto the Moon, becoming the first man-made object to reach it.
Births
1769 - Alexander von Humboldt, German naturalist and explorer
1804 - John Gould, British ornithologist who worked on Darwin’s specimens from the voyage of H.M.S. Beagle
1849 - Ivan…
September 13, 2007
I predict this may ruffle a few feathers. I don’t have time to comment myself, but I’m sure PZ, Jason and other can more than adequately weigh in. Avery Cardinal Dulles writes in the theo-con journal First Things:
Science, however, performs a disservice when it claims to be the only valid form of…
September 13, 2007
Events
1994 - Ulysses probe passes the Sun’s south pole.
Births
1851 - Walter Reed, American physician and biologist
1886 - Robert Robinson, British chemist and Nobel Prize laureate
1887 - Lavoslav Ruzicka, Croatian chemist and Nobel Prize laureate
1948 - Dimitri Nanopoulos, Greek physicist…
September 12, 2007
Before we get to your TiS, a quick apology for things being relatively quiet here. A combination of class preps and service have kept me abnormally busy. Hopefully things will clear up come the weekend.
Events
1933 - Leó Szilárd, waiting for a red light, conceives the idea of the nuclear chain…
September 10, 2007
Events
1961 - Formation of the World Wildlife Fund.
1997 - Mars Global Surveyor reaches Mars.
Births
1522 - Ulisse Aldrovandi, Italian naturalist
1877 - James Hopwood Jeans, English physicist
Deaths
1760 - Louis Godin, French astronomer
1995 - Anita Harding, neurologist
September 10, 2007
Events
1858 - George Mary Searle discovers the asteroid 55 Pandora.
Births
1624 - Thomas Sydenham, English physician
1892 - Arthur Compton, American physicist and Nobel laureate
1937 - Jared Diamond, American biologist
1941 - Stephen Jay Gould, American paleontologist
Deaths
1749 - Ãmilie du Châ…
September 9, 2007
Did Klaus-Martin Schulte plagiarize his response to Naomi Oreskes from Christopher Monckton? Looks like it. You be the judge.
Is Monckton hanging around the comments of this blog, trying to scare people. Looks like it. You be the judge.
September 9, 2007
Just got back from my public lecture - approximately 90 secular humanists packed into the meeting room to hear me talk about the history of the Intelligent Design Movement and their recent fortunes. The talk lasted a little over an hour and there was plenty of questions and discussion afterwards.…
September 9, 2007
Events
1839 - John Herschel takes the first glass plate photograph.
Births
1737 - Luigi Galvani, Italian physician and physicist
1922 - Hans Georg Dehmelt, German-born physicist and Nobel laureate
1923 - Daniel Carleton Gajdusek, American virologist and Nobel laureate
Deaths
1841 - A. P. de…
September 8, 2007
Births
1918 - Derek Harold Richard Barton, British chemist and Nobel laureate
Deaths
1811 - Peter Simon Pallas, German zoologist
1894 - Hermann von Helmholtz, German physician and physicist
1965 - Hermann Staudinger, German chemist and Nobel laureate
1980 - Willard Libby, American chemist and…
September 7, 2007
I had the pleasure of spending Friday evening as Guest Coach for the Sun Devil women’s soccer team. The Guest Coach program honors faculty who are selected by student-athletes and allows them to get behind the scenes on game day. So 5:30pm saw my daughter and I at the soccer stadium, meeting the…
September 7, 2007
Events
1936 - The last surviving thylacine dies at the Hobart Zoo.
Births
1707 - Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, French naturalist
1829 - Friedrich August Kekulé von Stradonitz, German organic chemist
1836 - August Toepler, German physicist
1914 - James Van Allen, American space scientist…
September 6, 2007
Following on from Oreskes' reply to Schulte, the endocrinologist replies with an open letter over at SPPI, a contrarian mouthpiece. Schulte notes:
I drafted the paper because I had become concerned that patients were being perhaps unduly alarmed by media reports of catastrophic climate change and…
September 6, 2007
This coming Sunday I will be giving a public talk on the Intelligent Design movement for the Humanist Society of Greater Phoenix. Details:
Designs on Darwin: A History of the Intelligent Design Movement
September 9th @ 9:00am (Brunch to start, followed by talk)
HomeTown Buffet, 1312 N. Scottsdale…
September 6, 2007
Births
1732 - Johan Wilcke, Swedish physicist
1766 - John Dalton, British chemist and physicist
1802 - Alcide d’Orbigny, French naturalist
1829 - Marie Zakrzewska, Polish physician
1876 - John James Richard Macleod, Scottish-born physician, physiologist, and Nobel laureate
1892 - Sir Edward…
September 5, 2007
I will, with sadness, note that the tenor Luciano Pavarotti has died of pancreatic cancer. He was 71 and probably the greatest tenor of his generation (source)
This is timeless ...
September 5, 2007
A few months ago I predicted this would happen. I saw the interface in action over the Summer and, boy, was I impressed. Now you can have all the fun without the phone. Pity it's only 16G though.
September 5, 2007
As some of you may know, I received my undergraduate and graduate training at University College Dublin (Ireland). Now it seems that there is at least one gullible and uninformed supporter of ID in that esteemed university. John Feehan is a lecturer who works on agricultural management systems and…
September 5, 2007
From here:
I'm confident that in the not-to-distant future the information-revolution will sound the death knell for Darwinism. The hard evidence of technology will shake the pillars of evolutionary theory and toss them into the dustbin of history. When America restores true Bible science and…
September 5, 2007
Events
1977 - Voyager program: Voyager 1 is launched
1984 - STS-41-D: The Space Shuttle Discovery lands after its maiden voyage.
Births
1787 - François Sulpice Beudant, French mineralogist and geologist
1792 - Pierre-Armand Dufrénoy, French geologist and mineralogist
1857 - Konstantin…
September 4, 2007
Events
1956 - The IBM RAMAC 305, the first commercial computer that used magnetic disk storage, is introduced.
Births
1906 - Max Delbrück, German biologist and Nobel laureate
1913 - Stanford Moore, American chemist and Nobel laureate
Deaths
1784 - César-François Cassini de Thury, French…
September 3, 2007
Apologies to a number of people who had comments held up in moderation in this thread. I've only just returned from three days in San Diego and was not in a position to keep an eye on the comments.
September 2, 2007
Events
1976 -Viking 2 lands at Utopia Planitia on Mars.
Births
1710 - Abraham Trembley, Swiss naturalist
1869 - Fritz Pregl, Slovenian chemist and Nobel laureate
1899 - Frank Macfarlane Burnet, Australian biologist and Nobel laureate
1905 - Carl David Anderson, American physicist and Nobel…
September 2, 2007
Births
1850 - Woldemar Voigt, German physicist
1853 - Wilhelm Ostwald, German chemist and Nobel laureate
1877 - Frederick Soddy, British chemist and Nobel laureate
Deaths
1764 - Nathaniel Bliss, English Astronomer Royal
1832 - Franz Xaver, Baron Von Zach, Austrian astronomer
2004 - Joan Oró,…
August 31, 2007
Events
1804 - Juno, one of the largest main belt asteroids, was discovered by Karl Ludwig Harding.
1914 - The last passenger pigeon, a female named Martha, dies in captivity in the Cincinnati Zoo.
1979 - The American space probe Pioneer 11 becomes the first spacecraft to visit Saturn when it passes…
August 31, 2007
Naomi Oreskes’ reply to Schulte got me thinking about the journal Energy & Environment, which appears to be the climate science equivalent of Rivista di Biologia (more here on that particular turkey). The journal was founded in 1990 and it offers a home for climate contrarians. According to…
August 31, 2007
Ah, Labor Day weekend. Sun, fun, and the start of college football. ASU plays San Jose State (home of my Scibling Janet) tomorrow night - the first game under Dennis Erickson. There is should be little doubt that ASU will win, though they may struggle against the Spartans.