jlynch
Posts by this author
December 28, 2006
Over at Bad Astronomy, Phil Plait has his top ten astronomical images from 2006. The winner is above, but do drop over and checkout the rest.
December 28, 2006
I don't really have time to write anything on this at the moment as I'm busy with another project, but I will note that American Naturalist is making available an interesting paper that uses the AVIDA system to study ecological specialization in digital organisms.
The transition from generalist to…
December 27, 2006
On this day in 1829, Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, Le Chavalier de Lamarck died penniless and blind in Paris. Lamarck is, of course, popularly remembered as the father of Lamarckism. But let us remember a few things - Darwin accepted "Lamarckism" (the inheritance of acquired…
December 27, 2006
June 2006:
Microsoft senior vice president Bob Muglia opened up TechEd 2006 in Boston Sunday evening by proclaiming that Windows Vista was the most secure operating system in the industry. But a bold statement can only go so far, and much of this week's conference has been spent reinforcing that…
December 26, 2006
Today in 1831, Charles Darwin left Plymouth on board the HMS Beagle for a voyage that would be epoch-making in the history of science. He would return to England on the 2nd of October 1836. In 1837 he would begin a series of notebooks that would culminate in his 1842 "pencil sketch" of his theory…
December 26, 2006
Note: Since I'm getting a lot of queries about this photo ... I don't own copyright for the photo and don't have the contact information for the source of the picture. I got the photo off the web and neglected to note the source. Googling "polar bear" should result in the original, but that may…
December 26, 2006
At the risk of restarting the arguments of last month (and,
oh, what fun they were!), I will note that Richard Dawkins writes:
Congratulations to P Z Myers on this brilliant piece of satire. It applies not just to Allen Orr's review in NYRB, but to all those many reviews of TGD that complain of my…
December 25, 2006
From AP:
Reaching into the back of a truck, U.S. anti-immigration activist Don Pauly [founder of the Emigration Party of Nevada] grabs a Mexican flag, a can of lighter fuel and an aluminum baking tray and heads to the curbside outside the Mexican consulate. As a small group of police officers,…
December 25, 2006
ASU got beaten by Hawai'i 41-24 in the Hawai'i Bowl, Leading 10-3 at the half, but down 24-10 late in the third, ASU rallied for two touchdowns and had a third negated by penalty to nearly pull out a final win for Koetter. But no joy. You can't win a game if you allow the opposing QB throw for 559…
December 25, 2006
Isaac Newton was born on Christmas Day 1642 (Julian calender). As Alexander Pope famously said. "Nature and nature's laws lay hid in night;, God said 'Let Newton be' and all was light."
December 23, 2006
I'm going to be force myself to remain offline for the next few days, so I just want to take the opportunity to wish all my readers a peaceful holiday season. Back soon ...
December 23, 2006
Over at Pharyngula, PZ has a nice story about how the Doushantuo fossils (example on right), thought to be cleavage-stage animal embryos from 580 mybp, may in fact be fossilized bacteria (example on left). Check it out.
December 22, 2006
With the recent bad news about the vaquita and the Yantzee river dolphin, it is good to have some positive news to report about cetaceans. This press release, from the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, reports
that four elusive Arnoux's Beaked Whales (Berardius arnuxii)…
December 22, 2006
Seen at TPM:
According to Network World's Paul McNamara, the communications director for U.S. Rep. Denny Rehberg (R-MT), Todd Shriber, hired two 'hackers' to break into the computer of his alma mater, Texas Christian University, and change his college grades.
He went trolling for the law-breaking…
December 22, 2006
So I survived jumping out of a perfectly good plane.
All I can say is what a rush once you get over the "what the hell am I doing here"-feeling that is inevitable. Twenty of your closest friends squeeze into a Twin Otter, climb to 13,000 feet, and amazingly quickly decant themselves (as harnessed…
December 22, 2006
I'm not going to be around today. As a present to my wife, I'm taking her sky-diving for the first time - a harness jump from 13,000 feet with approximately one minute of free-fall. It's a surprise, so shhhhhhhh! Actually, by the time you read this, we will be beginning our short orientation…
December 21, 2006
While some may be blogging about large extinct beasties, it's also worth remember the little ones. AP is reporting:
The discovery of fossilized remains of a mouse-like animal that lived at least 16 million years ago is the first hard evidence that New Zealand had its own indigenous land mammals, a…
December 20, 2006
Regular readers may remember that I have a softspot for catfish and earlier this year purchased a lace catfish (Synodontis nigrita), a species native to many African countries. The genus Synodontis (Cuvier 1816) is interesting for a number
of reasons. For example, S. multipunctatus (the gorgeous…
December 20, 2006
National Geographic is reporting:
The recently declared extinction of the Chinese river dolphin has focused attention on the plight of another imperiled marine mammal--the world's smallest porpoise.
Found only in waters off Mexico, the vaquita [Phocoena sinus] may now be the most endangered of…
December 20, 2006
Bora and Janet have done it, so why not. Basic idea is to reproduce the first sentence of the first post over the past year.
I've noted before that a significant number of lawyers not only to deny evolution but also appear to think that their training as a lawyer enables them to adjudicate…
December 20, 2006
John West of the Discovery Institute has presented his version of the year in ID. In summary:
A year after Dover, Darwinists seem increasingly disillusioned as well as shrill, the central part of Judge Jones' "brilliant" decision has been found to be riddled with errors and copied nearly verbatim…
December 19, 2006
A malformed embryonic or neonate choristoderan reptile from the Lower Cretaceous Yixian Formation of northeastern China is described. The tiny skeleton exhibits two heads and two necks, with bifurcation at the level of the pectoral girdle. In a fossil, this is the first occurrence of the…
December 19, 2006
From EurekaAlert:
Approximately 6 percent of human and chimp genes are unique to those species, report scientists from Indiana University Bloomington and three other institutions. The new estimate, reported in the inaugural issue of Public Library of Science ONE (Dec. 2006), takes into account…
December 19, 2006
I spent last night reading the updated version of Ron Numbers' classic work The Creationists. While the majority of the text has not changed from the 1992 edition, Numbers has added two new chapters - one on Intelligent Design and another on the spread of creationism outside the US.
For those that…
December 19, 2006
What a year it has been for the Discovery Institute and the Intelligent Design movement! Below the fold, I detail the advances that ID has made in the short time since Judge Jones delivered his ruling in Kitzmiller v. Dover.
January
Dembski:
Just as a tree that has been "rimmed" (i.e., had its bark…
December 19, 2006
Ed's got a bunch of stories up this afternoon dealing with ID:
The Cobb Country sticker case has been settled and the country will not order the placement of "any stickers, labels, stamps, inscriptions, or other warnings or disclaimers bearing language substantially similar to that used on the…
December 19, 2006
Horrible news out of Libya - the Tripoli/Benghazi Six were today sentenced to death despite scientific evidence of their innocence. Orac, Bora, PZ, Abel, and Revere all join in denouncing this miscarriage of justice. You can read more at on their blogs.
December 18, 2006
... because none of us are going anywhere.
Everyone else has mentioned it, but I was busy finishing grading. Now thats out of the way, here are my fellow SciBlings in all their, ahem, glory. I'm in the top right-hand corner looking very redheaded. Here is the big version for those of you who want…