jlynch | March 11, 2008Theodore Beale, a.k.a. "Vox Day", quote-miner and "Christian libertarian opinion columnist," apparently has issues with women in science. This via Ed Brayton:
Because they are the intellectual driving force of humanity, men will be fine. They will simply continue to do what they have always done and pursue the same challenges they have always pursued, focused on the realities of success rather than its superficial attributes. It is the institutions they are exiting, voluntarily and involuntarily, that will be destroyed instead. It is written that "women ruin everything"; having destroyed the…
jlynch | March 11, 2008Births
1910 - Robert Havemann, German chemist
1920 - Nicolaas Bloembergen, Dutch physicist and Nobel Prize laureate
Deaths
1920 - Julio Garavito Armero, Colombian astronomer
1955 - Alexander Fleming, Scottish scientist and Nobel Prize laureate
1977 - Ulysses S. Grant IV, American geologist
jlynch | March 9, 2008Events
1977 - Rings of Uranus: Astronomers discover rings around Uranus.
1982 - Syzygy: all nine planets align on the same side of the Sun.
2006 - Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter arrives at Mars.
Births
1628 - Marcello Malpighi, Italian physician
1709 - Georg Steller, German naturalist
Deaths
1585 - Rembert Dodoens, Flemish physician and botanist
1670 - Johann Rudolf Glauber, German chemist
1942 - William Henry Bragg, English physicist and Nobel Prize laureate
1966 - Frits Zernike, Dutch physicist and Nobel Prize laureate
jlynch | March 9, 2008
Yesterday I took John Wilkins to the Feathered Dinosaurs and the Origin of Flight exhibit at the Arizona Natural History Museum. It was a wonderful opportunity to see 30+ fossils from China along with assorted models and recreations, particularly of Deinonychus (above, particularly cool), Therizinosaurus, Microraptor, Cryptovolans, Confuciusornis, Caudipteryx, and Shenzhouraptor. Some of the exhibit can be seen here [pdf] in a brochure by the Utah Dinosaur Museum. While John and I were a little puzzled at some of the statements on the accompanying descriptions, the exhibit overall comes…
jlynch | March 9, 2008Apparently it is PZ's birthday. Wander on over and remind him how old he is ...
Events
2006 - Liquid water is discovered on Enceladus, the sixth largest moon of Saturn.
Births
1564 - David Fabricius, German astronomer
1758 - Franz Joseph Gall, German neuroscientist & phrenologist
1887 - Fritz Lenz, German geneticist
1923 - Walter Kohn, Austrian-born physicist and Nobel Prize laureate
Deaths
1851 - Hans Christian Ãrsted, Danish physicist
1954 - Eva Ahnert-Rohlfs, German astronomer
1954 - V. Walfrid Ekman, Swedish oceanographer
1974 - Earl Wilbur Sutherland Jr., American physiologist…
jlynch | March 8, 2008
The National Center for Science Education has launched ExpelledExposed.com which will contain responses to Ben Stein’s pro-ID crapola Expelled once the movie goes live on April 18th.
jlynch | March 8, 2008Our Overlords are launching a "Super Reader" program which allows us to nominate two readers to receive super powers. Well not so much super powers as the ability to tag posts to appear in a RSS feed that will be on the Sb front page. You get to choose the posts throughout the Sb network that you think represent the best of what we do and you recommend them to others. Future plans are to allow even more interactivity between blog(ger)s and readers. So are you a regular reader of Stranger Fruit who wants to be in at the ground floor of this experiment? If so, leave a comment saying why you…
jlynch | March 8, 2008Sincerest apologies for being MIA for quite a while now. This week in particular was hectic (in good ways) and time to blog was negligible. Two candidates interviewed and the systematics workshop was excellent. But it is now Saturday, Spring Break has started, and I theoretically have some down free time. Wilkins is going to be staying with me for a few days, so we hope to hit the Arizona-Sonoran Desert Museum and the "Feathered Dinosaurs and the Origin of Flight" exhibit at the Arizona Museum of Natural History before heading north to Utah for the Edges and Boundaries of Biological Objects…
jlynch | March 6, 2008Richard Dawkins was talking here tonight. Unfortunately because of family commitments I wasn’t able to make it and ended up giving my ticket to Wilkins who has his thoughts already online. Jim Lippard (whom Wilkins and I are grabbing a beer with on Saturday) has a comment or two on the talk up. By either account, I didn't miss much beyond what I already read in The God Delusion. I suspect Saturday's discussion will be interesting!
jlynch | March 3, 2008Apologies for no Monday Mustelid yesterday. Busy, busy.
Events
1675 - John Flamsteed appointed first Astronomer Royal
1774 - First sighting of Orion Nebula by William Herschel.
1997 - Bill Clinton bans federally funded human cloning research.
2002 - Canada bans human embryo cloning but permits government-funded scientists to use embryos left over from fertility treatment or abortions.
2006 - Final contact attempt with Pioneer 10 by the Deep Space Network. No response was received.
Births
1835 - John Hughlings Jackson, English neurologist
1847 - Karl Bayer, Austrian chemist
1854 - Napier…
jlynch | March 2, 2008
Events
1879 - The United States Geological Survey is created.
Births
1918 - Dr. Arthur Kornberg, American biochemist and Nobel Prize laureate
Deaths
1703 - Robert Hooke, English scientist
1765 - William Stukeley, English archaeologist
1988 - Sewall Wright, American evolutionary biologist
1999 - Gerhard Herzberg, German-born chemist and Nobel Prize laureate
jlynch | March 2, 2008Things I can do that I no longer need to do (from here by way of here). Examining this list will no doubt tell you a lot about what I spent the past nearly forty years doing with technology.
Adjusting rabbit ears on top of a TV
Adjusting a television’s horizontal and vertical holds
Adjusting a television’s color and hue adjustments
Adjusting the tracking on a VCR
Adjusting the head azimuth of a Commodore’s Datassette
Archie AT commands for dial-up modems
Autoexec.bat editing
Backing up a PC using QIC-40 or QIC-80 tapes
BASIC Booting off a floppy disk
Burnishing a cartridge connector with a…
jlynch | March 1, 2008It’s going to be quite the busy week here at ASU. John Wilkins is in town, as is Richard Dawkins. For the latter’s talk on Thursday, I’ve managed to snag VIP tickets - courtesy of the RDF - for Wilkins and I. Then we also have the launch of the International Institute for Species Exploration (Monday) and a two-day workshop Systematics and Biodiversity: Concepts and Prospects (Tuesday and Wednesday) featuring such names as Norm Platnick, Olivier Rieppel, Robert Kohler, Polly Winsor, a bunch of us ASU people, and, eh, Wilkins. A nice mix of historians, philosophers and taxonomists.
On top of…
jlynch | March 1, 2008No real time to post anything substantial - still grading and we have job candidates in this coming week. Still, here’s something to keep you amused.
Events
1808 - The inaugural meeting of the Wernerian Natural History Society was held in Edinburgh.
1972 - The Pioneer 10 space probe is launched
1998 - Data sent from the Galileo spacecraft indicates that Europa has a liquid ocean under a thick crust of ice.
Births
1779 - Joel Roberts Poinsett, American statesman and botanist
1862 - Boris Borisovich Galitzine, Russian physicist
Deaths
1729 - Francesco Bianchini, Italian philosopher and…
jlynch | March 1, 2008Events
1896 - Henri Becquerel discovers radioactivity.
1966 - Venera 3 crashes on Venus becoming the first spacecraft to land on another planet.
1980 - Voyager 1 probe confirms that Janus (moon of Saturn) exists.
Births
1910 - Archer John Porter Martin, English chemist and Nobel Prize laureate
1943 - Richard H. Price, American physicist
1943 - Rashid Sunyaev, Russian physicist
Deaths
1697 - Francesco Redi, Italian physician
1911 - Jacobus Henricus van ’t Hoff, Dutch chemist and Nobel Prize laureate
1966 - Fritz Houtermans, German physicist
1995 - Georges J.F. Kohler, German biologist and…
jlynch | February 23, 2008Vox Day - who writes for WorldNetDaily - has published a book, The Irrational Atheist which is available for free online. It’s an attack on Hitchens, Harris, Dawkins and other "new atheists". Brent Rasmussen over at Unscrewing the Inscrutable has taken the book very seriously. So I decided to check it out. Unfortunately, it doesn’t start off very well for Day.
Turning to chapter 1, you see the epigraph Vox Dei, as every philosopher knows, cannot be trusted in science attributed to Charles Darwin. Is Darwin actually saying that the "voice of God" is not to be trusted in science? As anyone who…
jlynch | February 23, 2008Some quick takes as I’m still too busy to write anything significant ...
With everything going on at the moment, I’ve been neglecting to post on the Irish rugby team’s performance in the Six Nations Championship. On the 7th they lost to France (26-21) and today they beat Scotland, 34-13. So that is two wins and a loss so far, enough to put them in second place (albeit because of a better point differential than France or England) behind Wales, whom they play next.
Somehow I hadn’t noticed that Neil Young released two live albums last year, Live at Massey Hall 1971 and Live at the Fillmore…