jlynch
Posts by this author
June 15, 2007
Events
1963 - Vostok 6 Mission, Cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova becomes the first woman in space.
Births
1591 - Joseph Solomon Delmedigo, Italian physician, mathematician, and music theorist
1633 - Jean de Thévenot, French traveler and scientist
1801 - Julius Plücker, German mathematician and…
June 15, 2007
Once again, Jason Rosenhouse goes to ID events so that you don’t have to. Wednesday, he saw Behe give a "staggeringly dull" talk in Washington. Details here.
June 14, 2007
Events
1667 - The first human blood transfusion is administered by Jean-Baptiste Denys.
1752 - Benjamin Franklin proves that lightning is electricity.
2002 - Near earth asteroid 2002 MN misses our planet by 75,000 miles (120,000 km) about one third the distance to the moon. EVERYBODY PANIC!
Births…
June 14, 2007
George Monbiot ends his "debate" with Alexander Cockburn (see here and here) with a paragraph that more-or-less encapsulates how I feel:
I have followed Alexander Cockburn’s writing for many years and I have admired it. His has been an important and persuasive voice on many progressive issues. But…
June 13, 2007
Events
1822 - Charles Babbage proposes a difference engine in a paper to the Royal Astronomical Society entitled "Note on the application of machinery to the computation of astronomical and mathematical tables."
1951 - UNIVAC I is dedicated by U.S. Census Bureau.
1962 - The European Space Research…
June 13, 2007
Sea otter (Enhydra lutris) mother and eleven day old cub at the Sunshine International Aquarium in Tokyo. This one is specially for my daughter who loved the otters holding hands and is coming home tonight after two weeks in Ireland. (And it turns out to be post #1000 since I moved to Scienceblogs…
June 13, 2007
Jason Rosenhouse has already noted that Tom Woodward opined that "in the next six to twelve months, Darwinism will go into a steep nose dive as the result of Behe’s new book." How is this "tremendously important" book going to change the landscape of ID? Early indications appear to say ... not at…
June 13, 2007
Apparently "66 percent of U.S. drivers aged between 18 and 24 send text messages while driving and 93 percent talk on their cell phone behind the wheel. This compared to 16 percent of Americans cell phones owners overall texting behind the wheel and 77 percent talking on the phone while on the road…
June 13, 2007
Others have mentioned Jerry Coyne’s shredding of Behe’s Edge of Evolution in The New Republic. I’d just like to highlight this paragraph as it more or less summarizes everything that Coyne has to say:
In the end, The Edge of Evolution is not an advance or a refinement of the theory of intelligent…
June 12, 2007
Events
1983 - Pioneer 10 becomes the first manmade object to leave the solar system.
Births
1773 - Thomas Young, English scientist
1831 - James Clerk Maxwell, Scottish physicist
1876 - William Sealey Gosset, English chemist
1894 - Leo Kanner, Austrian-American physician
1911 - Luis Alvarez,…
June 12, 2007
Jason’s recent encounter with ID-apologist Tom Woodward spurred me to revisit his book Darwin Strikes Back: Defending the Science of Intelligent Design (2006) which I had tossed aside months back due to its breathless, inane cheerleading for ID. Not surprisingly, the talk Jason witnessed follows…
June 12, 2007
Interesting map matching the GDP [Gross Domestic Product] of US states to those of countries worldwide.
[Seen here, via here.]
June 12, 2007
"[M]ost of our prisoners would love to be in a facility more like Guantanamo and less like the state prisons that people are in in the United States." Mike Huckabee (R Candidate for President)
Makes you just wish that Huckabee could be held indefinitely somewhere without charges or evidence.
June 11, 2007
So I was watching Adult Swim last night (Futurama x2 followed by The Family Guy) and they were running a cool visualization by Aaron Koblin of the air traffic over the US.
There is more at Koblin's site.
Now, I need to go and watch tonight’s episodes!
June 11, 2007
Events
1967 - Venera 4 (the first space probe to enter another planet’s atmosphere and successfully return data) is launched
Births
1577 - Paul Guldin, Swiss astronomer and mathematician
1812 - Edmond Hébert, French geologist
1899 - Fritz Albert Lipmann, American biochemist, Nobel laureate (d.…
June 11, 2007
Awhile back, Mark Hoofnagle took on what he termed "the lunatic ravings" of Alexander Cockburn in The Nation. In his piece, Mark noted that Cockburn wrote:
Not so long ago, [Martin] Hertzberg sent me some of his recent papers on the global warming hypothesis, a construct now accepted by many…
June 11, 2007
I’m having a rough day of it today. I’m a huge fan of The Sopranos but haven’t seen the last two episodes. Reason: my better half has been out of the country and I have taped them both to share with her when she returns on Wednesday. Problem is, it’s difficult to avoid online discussion of the last…
June 11, 2007
Some out there may care that Apple have released their web browser (Safari) for Windows. Having played about with it for a bit, I cant really see any reason to shift from Firefox.
Now, if they could only release Quicksilver...
June 10, 2007
Events
2004 - Cassini-Huygens makes its closest flyby of Phoebe (above)
Births
1723 - Johann Georg Palitzsch, German astronomer
1876 - Alfred L. Kroeber, American anthropologist
1915 - Nicholas Metropolis, Greek-American mathematician, physicist and computer scientist
1937 - Robin Warren,…
June 10, 2007
ASU are heading to the College World Series on a 7-1 defeat of Ole Miss tonight and a 4-3 comeback last night. Next stop, Omaha! Oh, and the ASU Women Track & Field are NCAA indoor and outdoor champs. All good.
As some of you may know, I don’t care for pro-football or pro-baseball. NCAA is…
June 10, 2007
Jason has been running a series about Tom Woodward’s recent talk at the Discovery Institute in Washington [1, 2, 3, 4]. This caught my eye:
Woodward closed by setting the date for the end of Darwinism’s reign as the dominant paradigm at ...wait for it...2025. Later he suggested that it might be…
June 10, 2007
A newborn South African bat eared fox learns to stalk and hunt birds at the San Diego Zoo’s Wild Animal Park. Born in late April this youngster and his four siblings, not pictured, have just recently emerged from their birthing den and are now learning how to explore and hunt.(Ken Bohn/Zoological…
June 10, 2007
Over at Evolving Thoughts, John Wilkins has unearthed a piece by Bertrand Russell on agnosticism. Russell starts out by differentiating atheism and agnosticism:
An agnostic thinks it impossible to know the truth in matters such as God and the future life with which Christianity and other religions…
June 9, 2007
Events
2003 - The Spirit Rover is launched, beginning NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover mission.
Births
1706 - John Dollond, English optician
1710 - James Short, Scottish mathematician
1803 - Henry Darcy, French scientist
1804 - Hermann Schlegel, German ornithologist
1861 - Pierre Duhem, French…
June 8, 2007
Births
1812 - Johann Gottfried Galle, German astronomer
1875 - Henry Hallett Dale, English scientist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
1937 - Harald Rosenthal, German biologist
Deaths
1875 - Gérard Paul Deshayes, French geologist
1959 - Adolf Otto Reinhold Windaus, German…
June 8, 2007
Alicia Boole Stott was born today in 1860 in Cork (Ireland), the daughter of George Boole. Despite receiving no formal education, in 1914 she was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Groningen for her work on four-dimensional geometry, work which (while published in 1900 & 1910…
June 7, 2007
Births
1625 - Giovanni Domenico Cassini, Italian scientist
1724 - John Smeaton, English civil engineer
1745 - Caspar Wessel, Danish mathematician
1851 - Jacques-Arsène d’Arsonval, French physicist
1860 - Alicia Boole Stott, Irish mathematician
1916 - Francis Crick, English molecular biologist;…
June 7, 2007
... or at least can't think critically about polling questions. Today USA Today/Gallup announced poll results on evolution. The "highlights":
"Evolution, that is, the idea that human beings developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life" is probably or definitely false: 44%
"…
June 6, 2007
Births
1811 - James Young Simpson, British obstetrician
1862 - Philipp Lenard, Austrian physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
1877 - Charles Glover Barkla, English physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
1896 - Robert S. Mulliken, American chemist, Nobel Prize laureate
Deaths
1826 - Joseph von Fraunhofer,…