jlynch
Posts by this author
August 17, 2006
The Maine beastie is apparently getting significant media coverage on the eastern seaboard. Loren Coleman (a cryptozoologist) has some more photos and thinks that it is a dog gone feral, possibly a chow or akita. All very plausible, imho.
August 16, 2006
Sullivan on the British bomb plot:
So far, no one has been charged in the alleged terror plot to blow up several airplanes across the Atlantic. No evidence has been produced supporting the contention that such a plot was indeed imminent. Forgive me if my skepticism just ratcheted up a little notch…
August 16, 2006
Boingboing has picked up on this story of a "hybrid mutant of something" found dead in Maine. Apparenty locals have, over the past few years, been "seeing and hearing a mysterious animal with chilling monstrous cries and eyes that glow in the night." The above photo makes the animal look a litte…
August 14, 2006
From AP:
X-ray machines that screen airline passengers' shoes cannot detect explosives, according to a
Homeland Security Department report on aviation screening.
Findings from the report, obtained by The Associated Press, did not stop the Transportation Security Administration from announcing…
August 14, 2006
Busy week here. Teaching starts next week, so this is full of organizational meetings, retreats, syllabus writing, xeroxing, etc. And to top it all, I'm currently laid out with lower back pain. Argh!
Blogging will thus be sporadic for a while, and in lieu of anything significant to say ...
You…
August 13, 2006
Bruce Schneier writes:
None of the airplane security measures implemented because of 9/11 -- no-fly lists, secondary screening, prohibitions against pocket knives and corkscrews -- had anything to do with last week's arrests. And they wouldn't have prevented the planned attacks, had the terrorists…
August 11, 2006
Cory Doctorow over at BoingBoing:
Here's a question: Does Tony Blair get to bring his laptop on his government plane? Can Laura Bush keep her lipstick with her on Air Force One? Does Dick Cheney take off his shoes and get them x-rayed before he flies? How about Condi Rice's knee-high lace-up boots…
August 11, 2006
It's Friday and I feel a poem coming on.
Down By The Salley Gardens
Down by the salley gardens my love and I did meet;
She passed the salley gardens with little snow-white feet.
She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree;
But I, being young and foolish, with her would not agree.
In…
August 10, 2006
Science has just published a short comparative study of international acceptance of evolution. Thirty-four countries were polled, and guess what? We score 33rd - edging out Turkey for last place.
Reference is, Jon D. Miller, Eugenie C. Scott, and Shinji Okamoto (2006) "Public Acceptance of…
August 9, 2006
This MSNBC article highlights research which has used synchroton-radiation X-ray tomographic microscopy to study the three-dimensional structure of embryos from the mid-Cambrian annelid, Markuelia. The research is being lead by Phil Donoghue at the University of Bristol, whose website also…
August 8, 2006
I like Bill Maher. On Saturday he's playing here in Phoenix, and we'll be there. Here he is on Leno doing some good stuff on Mel Gibson etc.
August 8, 2006
Ed has written a little about Dembski's claim that Barbara Forrest (of Creationism's Trojan Horse fame) owes her career to him. I am reminded of last year when Dembski accused Jeff Shallit and Wes Elsberry of "making a name for themselves by parasitizing my work." At that time, June 2005, I wrote…
August 8, 2006
A few weeks ago I noted the fact that some Christians appear to detect design and divine control in the beauty of nature. For example, witnessing lightning and a rainbow simultaneously, one observer was driven to comment: "It reminded me that God is really in control." Now, it appears, Dembski is…
August 6, 2006
Reader #100,000 since my move to ScienceBlogs passed through at 16:17:49 MST. The reader was at Hamline University in St Paul MN, and I think I know who it is (Hi Ed! Comment if it was you).
I guess I'll just take the opportunity to thank all my readers over the past seven months.
August 6, 2006
In April 2005, I posted a piece (reproduced below the cut) that discussed Evolutionary Monographs as the putative outlet for Paul Nelson's 1998 Ph.D. thesis, a thesis that argues against common descent. In comments over at the Panda's Thumb, Nelson noted that:
Bill Dembski and I have been working…
August 6, 2006
David Byrne on the documentary Jesus Camp:
Right wing political agendas and slogans are mixed with born again rituals that end with most of the kids in tears. Tears of release and joy, they would claim -- the children are not physically abused. The kids are around 9 or 10 years old, recruited from…
August 5, 2006
August 6, 2001, is the day that George W. Bush received the Presidential Daily Brief headlined, "Bin Laden determined to strike in U.S." The PDB stated that Al Qaeda maintained a support structure in the U.S. that could aid attacks, that one idea was to hijack U.S. airplanes, and that the FBI had…
August 5, 2006
Seen at Crooks & Liars:
In his new book, The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created A War Without End, [Former Ambassador to Croatia Peter ] Galbraith, the son of the late economist John Kenneth Galbraith, claims that American leadership knew very little about the nature of Iraqi…
August 4, 2006
Earlier this week Bill ("Vise, Vise, Baby") Dembski claimed research by ID supporters was slight because of "threats" to "families and livelihoods" by the "Darwinian fascists" (a phrase he later quietly redacted to "Darwinian enforcers"). Needless to say, he didn't provide any evidence of threats…
August 4, 2006
It's Friday and I feel like a poem. Many readers may know Malcolm Lowry from his 1947 work Under The Volcano which was rated one of the 100 greatest novels of the twentieth century. Lowry was also a poet and authored one of my favorite poems "We Sit Unhackled, Drunk and Mad to Edit" which I…
August 4, 2006
Here we go again:
Italy ::
Honk ::
Shades ::
Tool ::
Modern ::
Tension ::
Conservative ::
Weight ::
Insurance ::
Political ::
Thoughts below the fold.
Italy :: Football
Honk :: Tonk
Shades :: Cool
Tool :: Use
Modern :: Times
Tension :: Relief
Conservative :: Corrupt
Weight…
August 3, 2006
On his radio show, Neal Boortz asked
[H]ow incompetent, how ignorant, how worthless is an adult that can't earn more than the minimum wage?... You have to really, really, really be a pretty pathetic human being to not be able to earn more than [the minimum wage.]
No comment.
(source)
August 2, 2006
Dembski predicts:
This war will not be decided by courts, legislators, or school boards, but by young people as they wake up to the fact that dogmatic Darwinists have been systematically indoctrinating and disenfranchising them. Just as the counterculture of the 60s overturned the status quo, so a…
August 2, 2006
I just have to share this comment from this thread:
Actually, it is atheism that is the problem...more specifically, the attempt to make man (or at least some men through the power of the state) God.
Then, when the idea of experimentation on humans, made acceptable by beginning with human embryos…
August 2, 2006
Dembski posted an anonymous email he received accusing a "prominent anti-ID proponent" of supressing an "ID-friendly" experiment (actually a computer model) that was developed by an undergraduate student.
What's interesting here is that, despite not being able to confirm anything in the e-mail,…
August 2, 2006
We have a new SciBling, David Dobbs over at Smooth Pebbles. Wander over and say hi!
August 2, 2006
The ID reaction to Kansas is beginning to trickle in. Paul Nelson gives us a little fable claiming that the science standards don't matter anyway, and John West said the outcome would not stop people from learning about the "growing controversy" over evolution."
Let's face it guys -- up until last…
August 1, 2006
News from Kansas seems to be that Bacon & Willard won their primaries and Morris & Patzer lost, being replaced by pro-science Republicans. As Nick notes, "[t]he likelihood is therefore that the new Board of Education will switch from being a 6-4 pro-creationism majority to at least a 6-4…