jlynch | April 16, 2008Darwin’s papers held at Cambridge are now online. Major props to John van Wyhe and the people at the Darwin Online project for this.
jlynch | April 16, 2008 I’ve been sitting on this for an hour because, frankly, I can’t stop laughing quietly to myself. As Andrea over at the Thumb notes, the producers of Expelled are now in trouble with Yoko Ono for using Lennon’s "Imagine" without permission. Seriously. I’m not making this up. First it was plagiarism from, not one, but two sources, now it’s ripping off the Lennon estate. These guys are going to need to hire some damned good lawyers.
jlynch | April 16, 2008Richard Weikart:
Today's Darwinists are not Nazis and not all Darwinists agree with Dawkins, Wilson, Ruse, Singer, or Watson. However, some of the ideas being promoted today by prominent Darwinists in the name of Darwinism have an eerily similar ring to the ideologies that eroded respect for human life in the pre-Nazi era.
There you have it folks - if we're not careful and muzzle those "prominent Darwinists" we're heading for Nazi Eugenics Version 2.0.
jlynch | April 16, 2008 So I’m all a-flutter with anticipation for the opening of Expelled - two days to go to the big day on which Darwinism will finally fall. To prepare, I checked Yahoo Movies for the screening times in my area. What’s this? Only two cinemas are brave enough to show it? The AMC Mesa Grand and the AMC Arizona Center. Strange. I wonder why Harkins (the big-dog in Arizona theaters and host for the infamous Tempe screening) has not picked up such a cultural tsunami? And look at this! Both AMC theaters have only one screening scheduled for Friday (a.k.a The Big Day). At 10:30am. Wow, that’s sure to…
jlynch | April 15, 2008
An absolutely stunning nightscape taken ten kilometers from Flagstaff (Arizona) just three weeks ago: the San Francisco Peaks covered with lenticular cloud with the Milky Way behind. All a testament to the status of the city as the first International Dark Sky City. Having spent plenty of time in Flagstaff, I can attest to the spectacular skies at night, but obviously I’ve never seen anything like this. APOD has a (much) bigger version which you really need to see.
jlynch | April 15, 2008 One more shot across the bows before I go back to more serious work. Expelled producers claim that:
A variety of papers, micrographs, illustrations and animations with depictions of the cellular transport system of kinesin were used and are freely available on the internet. We invite you to learn more about this incredible little transport engine through the following links:
http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2003/december10/kinesinproof-1210.htmlhttp://www.stanford.edu/group/blocklab/kinesin.htmlhttp://www7.nationalacademies.org/bpa/reports_bmm.htmlhttp://www.umich.edu/news/MT/04/Fall04/…
jlynch | April 15, 2008I’ve been quiet the past few days, primarily because I’m all nervous about the upcoming launch of Expelled - I’ve realized it’s going to be the Waterloo that Dembski predicted eight years ago. Hah! Not really. The simplistic history in the movie (ignoring all other factors including Christianity in "explaining" the rise of Nazi eugenics), the "framing" and lies of the producers & promoters, and the plagiarism from, not one, but two sources will spell doom for this dreck, at least within the mainstream.
Real reason for the silence is that grading has started again and we’re into the last…
jlynch | April 14, 2008My backyard is currently a hive of activity. It’s just past 3pm here in Tempe and the temperature is about 96 degrees. As a break from grading, I’m sitting on my back patio watching the avian world unfold. A splendid male Great-tailed Grackle (Quicalus mexicanus) has been noisily courting two females on the lawn and seems to have achieved two matings. One of the three female Black-chinned Hummingbirds (Archilochus alexandri) we have nesting in our trees has taken possession of our feeder (and the nearby flowering agave) and is very active in defending it from all comers - including a male…
jlynch | April 13, 2008Phil Plait brings to my attention that John Archibald Wheeler died yesterday. As Phil says:
John Archibald Wheeler was a genius, an amazing physicist who felt that teaching as well as research was important. His students included Richard Feynman, widely recognized as one of the true geniuses of all time. His contributions to quantum mechanics and relativity were enormous. He invented the term black hole.
There is an obit over at Cosmic Variance and I’m sure more will follow.
jlynch | April 13, 2008Bush’s approval rating is now down to 28%, the lowest of his tenure as POTUS, and a drop of 62% from his high in September 2001. As Gallup notes, both Bush Sr and Jr went through 60% drops in their approval during their tenure. It must be genetic, I guess.
Strangely (or maybe not) approval among Republicans is at 66% (versus 24% for independents and 6% for Democrats). That’s some mighty strong Kool-Aid there.
The lowest ever for a President was 22% (for Truman in February 1952). If the economy continues to tank, I think we can expect that Bush will "reach" that mark.
jlynch | April 13, 2008Just this last week, my daughter had her first AIMS test (Arizona’s standardized test) - an annual week of tests on reading, writing and math. In preparation, all "superfluous" subjects - such as science and social studies - were abandoned in the weeks before hand. Failing students result in failing schools and funding being pulled. So the superfluous gets abandoned and that annoys me.
Equally as annoying is that, in a time where literacy in this country is sub-standard and schools are being forced to teach to the test thanks to the No Child Left Behind act, the Reading is Fundamental…
jlynch | April 13, 2008A few days back I took on Denyse O’Leary’s "science journalism by press release" modus operandi. Now, T. Ryan Gregory has taken on the same press release while dispelling the "early branching equals primitive" fallacy that underlies O’Leary’s claims. Wander on over and have a read.
jlynch | April 12, 2008 One of the central themes within Expelled is the equation of Darwinism with Nazism. We are treated to a somber Ben Stein visiting the death camps. Without Darwin they wouldn’t have existed goes the simplistic viewpoint. Yet, before we criticize Stein and the producers of the movie, we must acknowledge that there are scientists - biologists even - who harbor(ed) anti-Semitic views. Witness the following:
By their own will, [Jews] prefer to live a separate life, in apartheid from the surrounding communities. They form their own communes (kahals), they govern themselves by their own rules and…
jlynch | April 11, 2008 David Bolinsky of XVIVIO has posted an open letter regarding the copyright infringement by Expelled. Interestingly, Mike Edmondson who was the animator for the movie has been scrubbed from the Expelled website and Dembksi has hinted that the producers had squirreled away money for copyright lawsuits. Sayeth Dembski:
I’ve gotten to know the producers quite well. As far as I can tell, they made sure to budget for lawsuits. Also, I know for a fact that they have one of the best intellectual property attorneys in the business. I expect that the producers made their video close enough to the…
jlynch | April 11, 2008
Catching the Ox
Last desperate effort, got him!
Hard to control, powerful and wild,
The ox sprints up a hill and at the top.
Disappears into the misty clouds.
K’uo-an (trans. Stanley Lombardo)
[image source]
jlynch | April 10, 2008Predictably, Denyse O’Leary is getting all excited about a paper in this week’s Nature that finds Ctenophora (comb jellies) to be the first multicellular branch off the Tree of Life, a divergence that precedes that of the relatively simpler sponges. Apparently only accessing a LiveScience article, O’Leary breathlessly declares:
All this shock and awe comes from not taking the Avalon explosion and the Cambrian explosion of life forms seriously for what they can tell us about the real history of life, rather than the Darwinian fantasy.
Problem is, if one reads the original article, one gets a…
jlynch | April 10, 2008
Chris Heard on Mark Mathis’ admission that Christian scientists were excluded from Expelled because they "would have confused the film unnecessarily":
Mathis as much as says that because he personally cannot reconcile Christian belief with evolutionary biology, prominent Christian scientists ... who do affirm both at once don’t deserve attention. Remember, please, that this comes from the associate producer of a film whose entire thesis is that well-meaning religious scientists are being persecuted or ostracized --"expelled"-- for wanting to talk about God! Yet prominent Christian…
jlynch | April 9, 2008
More Expelled dishonesty. Michael Shermer wondered why the movie opens with a packed house of Pepperdine students listening to Stein:
The biology professors at Pepperdine assure me that their mostly Christian students fully accept the theory of evolution. So who were these people embracing Stein’s screed against science? Extras. According to Lee Kats, associate provost for research and chair of natural science at Pepperdine, "the production company paid for the use of the facility just as all other companies do that film on our campus" but that "the company was nervous that they would not…