jlynch
Posts by this author
July 11, 2007
Births
1849 - Sir William Osler, Canadian physician and author
1850 - Otto Schoetensack, German anthropologist
1861 - George Washington Carver, American botanist
1863 - Albert Calmette, French physician
1863 - Paul Karl Ludwig Drude, German physicist
1913 - Willis Lamb, American physicist, Nobel…
July 10, 2007
Events
1979 - Skylab (above) returns to Earth.
Births
1916 - Aleksandr Mikhailovich Prokhorov, Russian physicist, Nobel laureate
1924 - César Lattes, Brazilian physicist
1931 - Tullio Regge, Italian physicist
Deaths
1909 - Simon Newcomb, American astronomer and mathematician
July 10, 2007
Events
1796 - Carl Friedrich Gauss discovered that every positive integer is representable as a sum of at most three triangular numbers.
1925 - Scopes Trial: In Dayton, Tennessee, the so-called "Monkey Trial" begins with John T. Scopes, a young high school science teacher, accused of teaching…
July 8, 2007
6.02 x 1023
Births
1800 - Friedrich Gustav Jakob Henle, German physician
1858 - Franz Boas, German anthropologist
1911 - John A. Wheeler, American physicist
1926 - Ben Roy Mottelson, American-born physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
Deaths
1856 - Amedeo Avogadro, Italian chemist; the number of…
July 8, 2007
I'm going to be scarce the next twelve days or so. "Today in Science" will continue to be posted, but there will be no other posts until I get back into circulation. Enjoy the break!
July 8, 2007
I received a copy of Planet Earth on DVD (the version with David Attenborough narrating) for my recent birthday. This was a fun segment and one that my daughter loved - a displaying male Superb Bird of Paradise (Lophorina superba).
July 8, 2007
The Wellcome Trust has released its medical image collection under the Creative Commons Attribution, Non-commercial Licence 2.0. Go get yourself some pictures.
July 8, 2007
In 1999, Dembski established the Michael Polanyi Center - an ID institute - at Baylor University. As this article notes, Dembski appropriated Michael Polanyi’s name, contrary to the wishes of his literary executor and son, Nobel Laureate John Polanyi, in an attempt to associate Polanyi with a cause…
July 8, 2007
Births
1857 - Alfred Binet, French psychologist
1895 - Igor Tamm, Russian physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
Deaths
1695 - Christiaan Huygens, Dutch scientist
1784 - Torbern Bergman, Swedish chemist
1895 - Johann Josef Loschmidt, Austrian scientist
1934 - Benjamin Baillaud, French astronomer
1939 -…
July 7, 2007
Mort Sahl said:
The reason people still remember [John F. Kennedy] is because he’s a metaphor for what they were capable of. And the reason they hate Nixon is he’s the metaphor for what they became.
Makes you wonder what Sahl would say Bush is a metaphor for.
July 7, 2007
Births
1746 - Giuseppe Piazzi, Italian astronomer
1843 - Camillo Golgi, Italian physician and Nobel laureate
July 6, 2007
This is interesting - a chart of presidential approval ratings going back to Truman (click to embiggen). Interesting that the highest approval rates occurred in wartime (Truman post WWII, Bush pere in Iraq, and Bush fils post 9/11) and that all of these positive rates plunged significantly. Also…
July 6, 2007
Wendy the Whippet has a genetic disorder that has resulted in an exceptionally muscular appearance. For comparison, this is what a normal whippet looks like. Story here, ht to Fark.com.
Photograph by Bruce Stotesbury, Times Colonist
July 6, 2007
In the past, ID supporters have not only attacked evolution, but also the link between AIDS and HIV (witness Phil Johnson, Tom Bethell, and Jonathan Wells) and anthropogenic global warming (witness the expectorations of Dave Springer - a.k.a. DaveScott - over at Uncommon Descent). Now, it appears…
July 6, 2007
On his 61st birthday, a July 2-3 Newsweek poll reveals Bush’s approval rating to be a scant 26%, the lowest for any sitting president in 35 years (Nixon sank to 23%). Amazingly, 60% of Republicans are brainwashed enough to approve of Bush’s job performance.
July 5, 2007
Events
1885 - Louis Pasteur successfully tests his vaccine against rabies on Joseph Meister.
Births
1766 - Alexander Wilson, Scottish-born naturalist
1785 - William Jackson Hooker, English botanist
1903 - Hugo Theorell, Nobel laureate
Deaths
1476 - Regiomontanus, German astronomer
1854 - Georg Ohm…
July 5, 2007
Events
1687 - Isaac Newton publishes Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica.
1951 - William Shockley invents the junction transistor.
1996 - Birth of Dolly, first cloned mammal. Dolly died in 2003 and now resides at the Royal Museum of Scotland (above)
1998 - Japan launches a probe to Mars…
July 4, 2007
June was the month of greatest traffic ever here at Strangerfruit with 51,656 page views. That’s a mere speck compared to Pharyngula with 1,411,566, but I’m happy nonetheless.
More details below the fold ...
Top Five June Posts
From Sea to Shining Sea
An international coalition of non-religious…
July 4, 2007
Back in October, Afarensis introduced us to the Douc langur (Pygathrix nemaeus), and noted that the species was comprised of three subspecies, one of which was the grey-shanked douc langur (P. n. cinerea). That subspecies is one of the 25 rarest primates in the world and fewer that 1000 individuals…
July 4, 2007
My post-doctoral research was in hybridization among endangered desert fishes here in the American Southwest, so it has made me happy to read that a new population of the endangered Desert pupfish (Cyprinodon macularius, above) has mysteriously appeared in man-made research ponds in Salton Sea,…
July 4, 2007
This little cutie (click for bigger version) is the first Maclaud’s horseshoe bat (Rhinolophus maclaudi) ever photographed and the first seen in the wild in 40 years. The species was rediscovered in the highland forests of Guinea and is one of the approximately seventy species of horseshoe bat…
July 4, 2007
Dawkins is "is just another angry atheist, trading on his reputation as an evolutionist and spokesperson for science to vent his personal opinions about religion." So says David Sloan Wilson. That should get some fireworks started on this 4th.
July 4, 2007
Events
1054 - A supernova is observed near ζ Tauri. For several months it remains bright enough to be seen during the day. Its remnants form the Crab Nebula (above).
1934 - Leo Szilard patents the chain-reaction design for the atomic bomb.
1997 - NASA’s Pathfinder space probe lands on the…
July 3, 2007
Events
1844 - The last pair of Great Auks (Alca impennis, above) is killed.
Births
1875 - Ferdinand Sauerbruch, German surgeon
Deaths
1672 - Francis Willughby, English biologist
1790 - Jean-Baptiste L. Romé de l’Isle, French chemist
1954 - Siegfried Handloser, German physician
July 2, 2007
See here. Words fail me at the moment.
Update: Ed makes a good point,
Ethically, it's repulsive but not exactly anything new. The solution is to amend the Constitution to set limits on the president's ability to pardon and commute sentences. At the very least, they should be forbidden from…
July 1, 2007
Births
1862 - William Henry Bragg, English physicist, Nobel laureate
1884 - Alfons Maria Jakob, German neurologist
1906 - Hans Bethe, German-born nuclear physicist, Nobel laureate
1946 - Richard Axel, American scientist, Nobel laureate
Deaths
1621 - Thomas Harriot, English astronomer
1843 -…
July 1, 2007
Jerry Coyne has posted a reply to Behe’s reply to his original review of Edge of Evolution. A sample:
Behe excoriates me for claiming that his defeat (and that of intelligent design [ID]) in the Dover case was more damaging than the scientific criticisms levelled at Darwin’s Black Box. His mistake…