jlynch
Posts by this author
April 9, 2007
There is something bitterly ironic about a muppet like Dembski complaining about the Nisbet & Mooney piece on "framing science." His complaint is, after all, coming from a man who accepts money from a group who coin glib phrases like "teach the controversy" and talk about "a new science for a…
April 9, 2007
Births
1651 - Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus, German mathematician
1755 - Samuel Hahnemann, German physician
1762 - Giovanni Aldini, Italian physicist
1887 - Bernardo Houssay, Argentine physiologist, Nobel Prize laureate
1917 - Robert Burns Woodward, American chemist, Nobel Prize…
April 9, 2007
People are discussing the Nisbet & Mooney "Framing Science" paper, but due to real life getting in the way, I haven't been able to either read the (short) paper or the (long) blogospheric coverage. I will however note that Greg Laden makes a great point over at Pharyngula:
In the manner of Dale…
April 8, 2007
Events
1959 - Mercury program: NASA announces the selection of the United States' first seven astronauts, which the news media quickly dub the "Mercury Seven" (see above).
1967 - The first Boeing 737 (a 100 series) takes its maiden flight.
Births
1770 - Thomas Johann Seebeck, German physicist…
April 8, 2007
Cheeta turns 75 today, continuing his run as the oldest living non-human primate and making him a shoo-in as your Monday Mammal. You can donate to the CHEETA sanctuary (which also cares for other ex-movie primates) here.
April 8, 2007
AP is running a story that the Integrated Taxonomic Information System-Species 2000 Catalog of Life has reached 1,009,000 extant species and expects to reach 1.75 million by 2011. Along with the Tree of Life project, the Catalog of Life offers plenty of information for the budding systematist.
April 7, 2007
Births
1541 - Michele Mercati, Italian physician
1818 - August Wilhelm von Hofmann, German chemist
1865 - Charles W. Woodworth, American entomologist
1869 - Harvey Cushing, American neurosurgeon
1911 - Melvin Calvin, American chemist, Nobel Prize laureate for discovering the Calvin Cycle (see…
April 6, 2007
Events
1827 - John Walker sells the first friction match. He had invented it in the previous year.
1938 - LSD is first synthesized (see above)
1964 - IBM announces the System/360.
1969 - The Internet's symbolic birth date: publication of RFC 1.
2001 - Mars Odyssey is launched.
Births
1727 -…
April 6, 2007
Ode to a Trilobite
Frank P. Zeidler (1935)
The stone mason who split the limestone block
With lucky stroke of hammer left quite whole
The imprint that you gave Niagara rock
When you met death in open sea or shoal.
He little thought, that workman did, when he
Began to pound the stone to make it…
April 5, 2007
Events
648 BC - Earliest solar eclipse recorded by the Ancient Greeks.
1938 - Teflon is discovered.
1965 - Launch of Early Bird, the first communications satellite to be placed in geosynchronous orbit.
1973 - Launch of Pioneer 11 (current position above)
Births
1613 - Stjepan GradiÄ, Croatian…
April 5, 2007
The BBC is reporting that the Sumatran striped rabbit (Nesolagus netscheri), probably the rarest lagomorph, has been seen again, this time by a camera trap. It is only the third sighting since 1972.
April 5, 2007
Over at Fark.com they are discussing this photo of a Goliath tigerfish (Hydrocynus goliath) which occurs in the Congo River basin, the Lualaba River, Lake Upemba and Lake Tanganyika.
April 4, 2007
Mike Dunford earlier introduced Bush to the Constitution, a document that he has in the past referred to as "just a goddammed piece of paper" and which has been ignored by his regime. Yesterday, he appointed Swift-Boat and GOP financier Sam Fox as
ambassador to Belgium, this despite withdrawing Fox…
April 4, 2007
Births
1622 - Vincenzo Viviani, Italian mathematician
1827 - Joseph Lister, English surgeon
1869 - Sergei Chaplygin, Russian physicist and engineer
1929 - Ivar Giaever, Norwegian physicist, Nobel laureate
Deaths
1900 - Joseph Louis François Bertrand, French mathematician
1967 - Hermann Joseph…
April 3, 2007
Events
1969 - Denton Cooley implants the first temporary artificial heart.
1983 - Space Shuttle Challenger makes its maiden voyage into space (STS-6).
1996 - Comet Hyakutake was imaged by the USA Asteroid Orbiter Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous and the Hubble Space Telescope (see above).
Births…
April 2, 2007
Southern Keeled Octopus, Octopus berrima, juveniles inside eggs (source)
April 2, 2007
Births
1529 - Michael Neander, German mathematician and astronomer
1683 - Mark Catesby, English naturalist
1693 - George Edwards, English naturalist
1715 - William Watson, English physician and scientist
1764 - John Abernathy, English surgeon
1934 - Jane Goodall, English zoologist, who since…
April 1, 2007
Vasan, a baby Malaysan Tapir (Tapirus indicus) at Edinburgh Zoo.
(AP Photo/Andrew Milligan,PA)
April 1, 2007
Haeckel's Primitive Snouter
Archirrhinos haeckelii
For more on the Rhinogradentia, see Darren Naish's recent posts.
April 1, 2007
Births
1618 - Francesco Maria Grimaldi, Italian mathematician and physicist
1923 - G. Spencer-Brown, English mathematician
1934 - Paul Joseph Cohen, American mathematician
Deaths
1742 - James Douglas, Scottish physician and anatomist
1827 - Ludwig Heinrich Bojanus, German physician and…
April 1, 2007
I guess we all fell for it. It turns out that the whole Michael Egnor cafuffle was an elaborate ruse to have us Darwinists make fools of ourselves. Boy, do we feel dumb! Still, Egnor has managed to outdo his parodic self with this:
"materialism is nonsense, because if matter and energy are all that…
March 31, 2007
Well, we know where McCain's priorities lie:
An Arizona Republic analysis of voting records found that McCain has missed 42 votes this session. That's 33 percent of the 126 roll-call votes that had been held before lawmakers left town Friday for a weeklong Easter recess.
Only Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S…
March 31, 2007
Events
1826 - Samuel Morey patents the internal combustion engine.
Births
1578 - William Harvey, English physician who described the flow of blood though the human body (see above)
1776 - Sophie Germain, French mathematician
1856 - Acacio Gabriel Viegas, Indian physician
1865 - Richard Adolf…
March 31, 2007
Given the question, 'Is evolution well-supported by evidence and widely accepted within the scientific community?', 48% of Americans say 'No'. Now, whatever about the "well-supported by evidence" clause (it is), evolution is "widely accepted" and even the anti-evolutionists admit it. Apparently…
March 31, 2007
I spent this afternoon giving a public talk to the Greater Phoenix Mensa Regional Gathering. The topic was the history of anti-evolutionism (largely Intelligent Design) in this country over the past twenty years. Slides (without my soft Irish accent) are available here for those that care.
The…
March 30, 2007
Events
1970 - Explorer 1 re-enters the Earth's atmosphere (after 12 years in orbit).
1994 - Bill Kimbel, Don Johanson and Yoel Rak report the finding in Ethiopia of the first fairly complete Australopithecus afarensis skull (AL 444-2, see above)
Births
1596 - René Descartes, French…
March 30, 2007
You scored as Existentialism. Your life is guided by the concept of Existentialism: You choose the meaning and purpose of your life.
"Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does."
"It is up to you to give [life] a meaning."
--…
March 30, 2007
Sea otters "holding hands" at the Vancouver Aquarium. This is especially for PZ as I know he deep down really likes mammals and that whole cephalopod thing is just a front. ( Via Boing Boing.)
March 29, 2007
Events
240 BC - 1st recorded perihelion passage of Halley's Comet.
1842 - Anesthesia is used for the first time in an operation by Crawford Long.
1951 - Remington Rand delivers the first UNIVAC I computer to the United States Census Bureau.
Births
1894 - Sergey Ilyushin, Russian aerospace…
March 28, 2007
Events
1807 - The asteroid Vesta is discovered.
1974 - NASA's Mariner 10 becomes the first spaceprobe to fly by Mercury (see above)
Births
1824 - Ludwig Büchner, German philosopher and physician
1873 - Tullio Levi-Civita, Italian mathematician
1927 - John Robert Vane, English pharmacologist,…