jlynch
Posts by this author
December 5, 2006
As Bora notes, the 2006 Weblog Award nominees have been announced and there are some startlingly familiar names:
Best Science Blog
PharyngulaJohn Hawks Anthropology WeblogRealClimateDeltoidGood Math, Bad MathMixing Memory The Panda's ThumbIn the PipelineBad Astronomy BlogSciGuy
Best Medical/Health…
December 5, 2006
Your Political Profile:
Overall: 10% Conservative, 90% Liberal
Social Issues: 0% Conservative, 100% Liberal
Personal Responsibility: 0% Conservative, 100% Liberal
Fiscal Issues: 25% Conservative, 75% Liberal
Ethics: 0% Conservative, 100% Liberal
Defense and Crime: 25%…
December 4, 2006
Terry Bowden points out what could have been had there been a eight-team playoff for the college football championship.
Now that would have been some good football ... although I dispute his claim that Florida would beat Michigan.
December 4, 2006
"Unable to win Senate confirmation, U.N. Ambassador John Bolton will step down when his temporary appointment expires within weeks, the White House said Monday" (source). Don't let the door hit you on the way out.
December 3, 2006
So I guess it is Ohio State versus Florida for the national championship. Florida leapt over Michigan in the BCS rankings and the Wolverines are fated to meet USC in the Rose Bowl (my money is on Michigan).
I still think Michigan (11-1, second place in Big 10) are a better team than Florida (12-1,…
December 3, 2006
I don't think anyone is surprised by this ...
Your 'Do You Want the Terrorists to Win' Score: 94%
You are a terrorist-loving, Bush-bashing, "blame America first"-crowd traitor. You are in league with evil-doers who hate our freedoms. By all counts you are a liberal, and as such cleary desire…
December 3, 2006
Over at Framing Science, Matt notes that the WaPo is running a series of pieces by historians putting Bush's presidency in historical context. Back in May 2004, History News Network reported that "eight in ten historians [...] rate the current presidency an overall failure." In particular, the …
December 2, 2006
I said all along that USC weren't as good as they thought they were and were not deserving of their #2 ranking. After all, when #3, they only beat unranked ASU by a single touchdown. And now, unranked UCLA beat them 13-9 in a great game.
National Championship game ... not yours, USC, not yours.
As…
December 2, 2006
For some years now, we have been hearing about Paul Nelson's forthcoming monograph On Common Descent, which one assumes will stem from his now [eight] year old PhD in philosophy Common Descent, Generative Entrenchment, and the Epistemology in Evolutionary Inference. As the DI/CSC website notes, "[h…
December 1, 2006
AP is reporting:
[Incoming Senate Judiciary Chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy], business travelers and privacy advocates expressed outrage Friday over the unannounced assignment of terrorism risk assessments to American international travelers by a computerized system managed from an unmarked, two-story…
December 1, 2006
Docker
There, in the corner, staring at his drink.The cap juts like a gantry's crossbeam,Cowling plated forehead and sledgehead jaw.Speech is clamped in the lips' vice.
That fist would drop a hammer on a Catholic-Oh yes, that kind of thing could start again;The only Roman collar he…
November 30, 2006
Today in 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give her bus seat to a white man and is arrested for violating the city's racial segregation laws.
November 30, 2006
USA Today is reporting that Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport will next month begin trials of backscatter x-ray screening. And how are the TSA ensuring that "naked" pictures of passengers wont appear online?
At airports, they will be programmed to shade or blur travelers' bodies and medical devices.…
November 30, 2006
I like this photo for some reason - seven-day-old stump-tailed or bear macaque (Macaca arctoides). Follow the link for pictures of adults and details of this endangered species.
Credit: AP-Photo.
November 29, 2006
As part of the Panda's Thumb series debunking Jonathan Wells' latest dreck (The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design), Tim Sandefur, himself a self-avowed conservative libertarian Republican, argues that Wells' work offers "no helpful contribution" to any debate about the…
November 28, 2006
With the ASU football season winding down, it is time to turn to other things. So why not rugby? The Irish team are favorites for the coming Six Nations Championship, after winning the Triple Crown last year, and a series of victories over South Africa, Australia and the Pacific Islanders which…
November 27, 2006
I've managed to finish my grading. Yipee! What this means is that the semester is finally beginning to wind down. Sure, there will be some grading left to do, but it will be relatively less onerous. Three classes left to teach, a handful of graduate student papers, and some short pieces from my…
November 26, 2006
No posting today (or perhaps even tomorrow) as I'm tucked away in my lair grading. In any case, Mike Dunford made the only point I was going to make.
November 25, 2006
It's the last regular season game for ASU - the Territorial Cup game against the University of Arizona Wildcats. At the beginning of the season, I don't think anyone would have predicted that ASU would have a 3-5 PAC-10 record and U of A (4-4) would have beaten three ranked opponents in a row…
November 24, 2006
As of today, November 25th, US involvement in Iraq has lasted longer than US involvement in World War II - 1348 days. The "War on Terror" has been longer. And what do we have to show for it?
November 24, 2006
PZ drew our attention to the Southern Poverty Law Center's roundup of hate groups nationwide. As a public service announcement, I note that Arizona has fifteen hate groups which seems like a bloody high number to me: five Neo-Nazi groups, one Christian Identity group, two Black Separatist groups,…
November 24, 2006
Someone in all this brouhaha (I can't remember whom and can't find the comment online) claimed that only creationists use the phrase "Darwinian Fundamentalist". The phrase actually originated with Stephen Jay Gould (New York Review of Books, June 12 1997) for the "conviction that natural selection…
November 24, 2006
There is a flamefest going on at the moment regarding atheism, agnosticism and creationism and it strikes me that many of us are missing the wood for the trees. I hope most of us can agree on the following:
It has been claimed that there are two broad groups within the pro-science movement: those…
November 23, 2006
Under Bush, the US has taken upon itself to bring democracy to other countries. However, as the Economist Intelligence Unit's index of democracy [pdf] shows, the US ranks fairly badly as a democracy itself, coming in 17th worldwide. Evaluated based on electoral process & pluralism, functioning…
November 23, 2006
I'm sure that this Thanksgiving many of us are gorged on turkey. As a respite, I give you the above ... a European record wels catfish, Silurus glanis, all 8 foot and 226lbs of it.
November 23, 2006
Larry Moran seems to think that I belong to the "Neville Chamberlain 'apeasement' [sic] school" of evolutionists. So what does one need to believe to be part of this school? Moran, having spent long hours talking with me on these issues, and knowing me so well, can enlighten us. In short, one must…
November 22, 2006
I've been involved in the creation/evolution battle - for such it is - since 1998. Over the years, I have talked to many groups - students, concerned citizens, scientists, lawyers - on this issue and have often been asked to recommend a book that would offer the non-scientist advice as how to deal…