jlynch | April 27, 2009
My colleague and friend Kaye Reed has a nice remembrance of Charlie Lockwood in the current issue of Evolutionary Anthropology. I had reason to mention Charlie during my "Last Lecture" and will admit to getting a little choked-up. The article is unfortunately behind a paywall, but any good university library should have access.
jlynch | April 24, 2009
In the past I have argued that historians of science probably need to get more involved with the fight for good science education. Michael Barton has brought my attention to historian Abigail Lustig giving testimony before the Texas Board of Education.
jlynch | April 24, 2009
Last night I was honored to be the first of three faculty members to take part in the 14th annual Last Lecture series here at ASU. The other two talks are next week. In the interests of completeness, I'm posting the slides here, though they are even more cryptic than usual. See if you can figure out what I said :)
jlynch | April 22, 2009PZ gets it right regarding the Huffington Post: It's the People magazine of the lefty blogosphere. Why anyone pay's attention while Jim Carrey spouts on about autism, I don't know.
jlynch | April 22, 2009OK, quick question! As regular reader will know, I have migrated to a Mac. I have tons of presentations in Powerpoint which, while written on a PC, open seamlessly on the new machine. However, when I open them in Keynote, some stuff (often charts) get screwed up and I have to regenerate the slide. Question is this: why should I use Keynote over Powerpoint? What do I get in the former that don't get in the latter? Why should I spend my summer converting the presentations? Thanks.
jlynch | April 20, 2009On Thursday I will give a "Last Lecture" at ASU. I'm one of three faculty chosen by students to deliver a talk as if it were our last ever. Here is a news story about the event and below is the portion referring to me:
Lynch tells his students that an undergraduate degree is only the beginning of a journey of possibilities, not the determinant of a person’s future path. He’ll talk about his own journey as a young Irish scientist who came to ASU to do research and discovered a love of teaching when he was asked to teach a combined science and humanities course.
“The key to success is to take…
jlynch | April 20, 2009My recent talk at the Sam Nobel Oklahoma Museum of Natural History is now available online on iTunes as a podcast. Here is the link to SNOMNH's podcast feed.
So settle down with a fine beverage and watch me for an hour or so. Feel free to comment below. Oh, and here are the slides:
jlynch | April 20, 2009
The Big Picture has gorgeous shots taken by the Cassini probe. Above is Rhea.
jlynch | April 20, 2009John West over at the DI moans:
David Klinghoffer has a provocative essay commemorating the 10th anniversary of the Columbine High School massacre in Colorado. Klinghoffer notes that Columbine killer Eric Harris was inspired in part by his fanatical devotion to Darwinian natural selection, a trait Harris unfortunately shared with many opponents of human dignity during the past century. Given the pervasive influence of Social Darwinism in our culture, Klinghoffer suggests that Darwin's Tree of Life might be more appropriately viewed as a Tree of Death.
Wow. So much wrong, so little time. Let'…
jlynch | April 19, 2009
J.G. Ballard has died. So I give you "Atrocity Exhibition" by Joy Division. This is the way, step inside.
jlynch | April 16, 2009
Pampas cat, Leopardus pajeros Desmarest 1816
Plate from 'The Zoology of the Voyage of HMS Beagle'
(source)
jlynch | April 15, 2009
Apparently Mycocepurus smithii doesn't. It has become the first ant species to dispense completely with males. More details here.
(The picture above - from the Daily Mail story - is actually by Alex Wild but is unattributed)
jlynch | April 14, 2009The Arizona Education Association is reporting that nearly 4,500 K-12 teachers and other personnel have been pink-slipped for the next school year. What is truly worrying about this is that it is based on reports from only 36 of the 220 districts statewide and more layoffs are inevitable. You may remember that Republican lawmakers called for drastic cuts instead of raising taxes (which haven't been raised state-wide in 20 years). I hope they are happy.
For some context, you need to remember that Arizona before the cuts spent less than almost every state in the Union on education while being…
jlynch | April 13, 2009Janet has some extensive thoughts about the shenanigans over at Amazon.com. Do wander over and have a read. Suffice it to say, I agree with her and will be withholding any business until all of this has been cleared up to my satisfaction.
jlynch | April 13, 2009Seamus Heaney, Irish poet and Nobel Prize winner is 70 today. To celebrate here is his poem "Strange Fruit," one of a series of poems about bog-bodies.
Here is the girl's head like an exhumed gourd.
Oval-faced, prune-skinned, prune-stones for teeth.
They unswaddled the wet fern of her hair
And made an exhibition of its coil,
Let the air at her leathery beauty.
Pash of tallow, perishable treasure:
Her broken nose is dark as a turf clod,
Her eyeholes blank as pools in the old workings.
Diodorus Siculus confessed
His gradual ease with the likes of this:
Murdered, forgotten,…
jlynch | April 12, 2009
This critter is Pogonomyrmex maricopa, a species of harvester ant which is apparently famous for having the most venemous sting of any North American insect. One sting from the Maricopa Harvester Ant is equivalent to twelve honey bee stings. Best of all, it's native to here in Arizona. Just one of the things that I didn't know that I learned over at Alex Wild's latest post. The photo is by him as well.
jlynch | April 12, 2009This is three years old now but worth a repost given the season in question.
HT to Crooks and Liars for reminding me of this.
jlynch | April 12, 2009PZ is reporting that John Maddox - former editor of Nature - has died at the age of 84. Like PZ, I remember him for his review of Rupert Sheldrake's New Age garbage ("morphic resonance" *shudder*). As commentators over at Pharyngula also note, he was responsible for bringing James Randi on board to study the bogus claims of Jacques Benveniste.
The skeptical community has lost a good friend.
jlynch | April 11, 2009Adam Goldstein has a post over at the Evolution: Education & Outreach blog which discusses a forthcoming paper by Genie Scott and Glenn Branch (both of the NCSE). Scott & Branch follow Olivia Judson in calling for the abandonment of the imprecise term "Darwinism". This is certainly something I support, having echoed the idea in talks over the past few years. While the term has a certain historical and philosophical utility, it is practically useless as a descriptor for modern evolutionary biology. The term "Darwinist" is equally as useless. (I should add that my objection to the terms…