jlynch | March 23, 2008Apparently Nisbet thinks we should desist from pointing out what a fiasco this whole affair has been for the supporters of Expelled. Apparently he thinks this is helping the enemy. He also thinks Dawkins and Myers should return to their seat at the back of the bus. Perhaps that might be true about "new atheism" (and I have stated my views on that before), but this isn’t about atheism. It is about a dumb move that was made by Mark Mathis and the supporters of Expelled. It is about how they are spinning their stupidity through lies and mistruths. It is about how their dumb little movie twists…
jlynch | March 22, 2008The Expelled boyos seem to be tightening up their act. Now you can’t RSVP for future events all of which have been removed from the list. Compare this (yesterday) with this.
There’s a screening scheduled for Harkins Arizona Mills at 7pm on April 3rd. I RSVPed last night and got the following in reply:
Dear John Lynch,
This is a confirmation of your RSVP for the free "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" movie screening.Venue information is below.
Theater: Harkins Arizona Mills
5000 Arizona Mills Circle
Tempe, AZ 85281
Date: April3
Time:7:00 PM
Number of seats reserved: 1
YOUR NAME WILL BE ON A…
jlynch | March 21, 2008Phil Plait on the reductio ad Hitlerum that is central to Expelled!:
For the producers of this movie to continue this Big Lie tying evolution and Nazis together is an irony almost too big to comprehend, given that this is precisely how Nazi propaganda worked. In a rich field of creationist ironies, this may be the elephant in the room. They are projecting onto their enemies the very thing they are guilty of.
For Ben Stein to go to concentration camps and promote creationism is beyond the pale. It’s a lie, it’s ugly, and it should spark universal condemnation from every thinking human on the…
jlynch | March 21, 2008Truth:
This was a private screening with no admission charge, and you had to reserve seats ahead of time; you also had to sign a promise that you wouldn’t record the movie while you were there, and they were checking ID. Everyone in my family reserved seats under our own names, myself included. There was no attempt to "sneak in" [emphasis mine]
Lie:
Others may be crashing because they want to trash it before it even gets reviewed by the media. P.Z. Myers, who was not let into a showing last night in Minnesota, probably falls in the latter category.
No surprises. Myers (and Dawkins) did not…
jlynch | March 21, 2008I have only one student completing an honors thesis with me this semester. Congratulations are due to Jes Joganic for successfully defending her thesis (An examination of the factors contributing to the development of posterior plagiocephaly in infants) this afternoon, a thesis that one colleague described as the best undergraduate research he had ever encountered. Moments like this make it all worthwhile.
jlynch | March 20, 2008
Looking for the Ox
Searching through tall endless grass,Rivers, mountain ranges, the path trails off.Weary, exhausted, no place left to hunt:Maples rustle, evening, the cicada’s song.
K’uo-an (trans. Stanley Lombardo)
[image source]
jlynch | March 20, 2008This is absolutely hilarious.
After all, who is more famous?
This guy ....
or this guy
jlynch | March 18, 2008
Ben Stein recently met with Ken Ham, prompting Mark Looy (an Answers in Genesis drone) to effusively declare:
the brilliant Ben Stein, actor/economist/lawyer/presidential speechwriter/science observer-a 21st-century Einsteinian figure ... told Ken that he was aware of the "wonderful" facility near Cincinnati and hoped to visit one day
No comment.
jlynch | March 17, 2008Births
1640 - Philippe de la Hire, French mathematician and astronomer
1905 - Thomas Townsend Brown, American scientist
1907 - John Zachary Young, British biologist
Deaths
1907 - Marcellin Berthelot, French chemist
jlynch | March 16, 2008Events
1950 - Researchers announce the creation of Californium.
Births
1870 - Horace Donisthorpe, British entomologist
1881 - Walter Rudolf Hess, Swiss physiologist and Nobel Prize laureate
1931 - David Peakall, British scientist
Deaths
1764 - George Parker, 2nd Earl of Macclesfield, English astronomer
1846 - Friedrich Bessel, German mathematician and astronomer
1853 - Christian Doppler, Austrian physician and mathematician
1956 - Irene Joliot-Curie, French physicist and Nobel Prize laureate
1983 - Haldan Keffer Hartline, American physiologist and Nobel Prize laureate
jlynch | March 15, 2008Events
1867 - Publication of an article by Joseph Lister outlining the discovery of antiseptic surgery.
Births
1750 - Caroline Herschel, German-born English astronomer
1789 - Georg Simon Ohm, German physicist
1794 - Ami Boué, Austrian geologist
1834 - James Hector, Scottish geologist
1851 - Martinus Beijerinck, Dutch microbiologist and botanist
1918 - Frederick Reines, American physicist and Nobel Prize laureate
1937 - Amos Tversky, Israeli psychologist
Deaths
1935 - John James Richard Macleod, Scottish-born physiologist and Nobel Prize laureate
1998 - Derek Harold Richard Barton,…
jlynch | March 15, 2008John Wilkins and I have been at the Edges and Boundaries of Biological Objects workshop here in Salt Lake City for the past few days. John live-blogged some of the talks, so you may want to check his posts out. Lots of interesting stuff was discussed about populations (here and here), the fossil record (here), ecosystems (here and here), system dynamics and boundaries (here and here), DNA bar-coding (here and here), species, rank-free classification, and homology. All in all some really thought-provoking ideas that will take me a good while to digest.
Discussions are likely to continue at the…
jlynch | March 14, 2008Events
2004 - Announcement of the discovery of 90377 Sedna, the farthest natural object in the Solar system so far observed.
Births
1713 - Nicolas Louis de Lacaille, French astronomer
1813 - John Snow, English epidemiologist
1821 - Johann Josef Loschmidt, Austrian scientist
1854 - Emil Adolf von Behring, German physician and Nobel Prize laureate
1920 - E. Donnall Thomas, American physician and Nobel Prize laureate
1925 - Bert Bolin, Swedish meteorologist
1930 - Zhores Ivanovich Alferov, Russian physicist and Nobel Prize laureate
Deaths
1898 - Henry Bessemer, English metallurgist
1951 -…
jlynch | March 14, 2008
A Cow Mourning For Her Calf
Oft at some consecrated altar-side,Where fragrant incense burns, a calf lies slain,And from his breast breathes out the warm life-tide:But the lone mother, o’er the grassy landFar ranging, sees his cloven hoof-prints plain,And leaves with roving eyes no spot unscannedFor her lost young, and fills with lowings wildThe shady wood; then tireless turns againTo the bare stall, sore stricken for her child.Naught can the dewy grass, or tender leaf,Or brimming river-bank, once fondly known,Avail to bannish that o’er-mastering grief;Nor by the sight of other calves,…
jlynch | March 13, 2008Events
1942 - John Bumstead and Orvan Hess became the first in the world to successfully treat a patient, Anne Miller, using penicillin.
Births
1835 - Giovanni Schiaparelli, Italian astronomer
1854 - Paul Ehrlich, German scientist and Nobel Prize laureate
1862 - Vilhelm Bjerknes, Norwegian physicist
1879 - Albert Einstein, German-born physicist and Nobel Prize laureate
Deaths
1995 - William Alfred Fowler, American physicist and Nobel Prize laureate
jlynch | March 13, 2008Events
1781 - William Herschel discovers Uranus.
1925 - Scopes Trial: A law in Tennessee prohibits the teaching of evolution.
1930 - The news of the discovery of Pluto was telegraphed to the Harvard College Observatory.
Births
1720 - Charles Bonnet, Swiss naturalist and writer
1733 - Joseph Priestley, English scientist
1855 - Percival Lowell, American astronomer
1899 - John Hasbrouck van Vleck, American physicist and Nobel Prize laureate
Deaths
1773 - Philibert Commerçon, French naturalist and explorer
1990 - Bruno Bettelheim, American psychiatrist
jlynch | March 12, 2008Births
1824 - Gustav Kirchhoff, German physicist
1835 - Simon Newcomb, American astronomer and mathematician
1838 - William Henry Perkin, English chemist
1863 - Vladimir Vernadsky, Russian mineralogist
1880 - Henry Drysdale Dakin, British-American biochemist
1881 - Gunnar Nordström, Finnish physicist
1907 - Dorrit Hoffleit, American astronomer
1925 - Leo Esaki, Japanese physicist and Nobel Prize laureate
Deaths
1991 - Ragnar Granit, Finnish neuroscientist and Nobel Prize laureate