jlynch | February 22, 2008Bruce Gordon is expectorating on Dan Brooks’ post on the ID conference (see here). Remember that Brooks received an email after the meeting "stating that the ID people considered the conference a private meeting,and did not want any of us to discuss it, blog it, or publish anything about it. They said they had no intention of posting anything from the conference on the Discovery Institute’s web site (the entire proceedings were recorded). They claimed they would have some announcement at the time of the publication of the edited volume of presentations, in about a year, and wanted all of us…
jlynch | February 17, 2008It’s that time of the year - first set of papers to be graded. That, coupled with our job search and some other things means I’m not going to be able to post anything over the next seven to ten days.
So there’ll be no "Monday Mustelid" or "Today in Science" for a while. Just warning ya!
jlynch | February 16, 2008Births
1723 - Tobias Mayer, German astronomer
1781 - René Laënnec, French physician
1792 - Karl Ernst von Baer, German biologist
1796 - Philipp Franz von Siebold, German physician
1888 - Otto Stern, German physicist and Nobel Prize laureate
Deaths
1600 - Giordano Bruno, Italian philosopher
1680 - Jan Swammerdam, Dutch biologist
jlynch | February 16, 2008Births
1727 - Nikolaus Joseph von Jacquin, Austrian scientist
1804 - Karl Theodor Ernst von Siebold, German physiologist
1822 - Francis Galton, English biologist and biometrician
1834 - Ernst Haeckel, German zoologist and philosopher
Deaths
1531 - Johannes Stöffler, German mathematician and astronomer
1754 - Richard Mead, English physician
1980 - Erich Hückel, German physicist
1997 - Chien-Shiung Wu, Chinese-American physicist
jlynch | February 14, 2008Events
1946 - ENIAC, the first general-purpose electronic computer, unveiled at the University of Pennsylvania.
Births
1564 - Galileo Galilei, Italian astronomer and physicist
1809 - André Dumont, Belgian geologist
1861 - Charles Edouard Guillaume, French physicist and Nobel Prize laureate
1873 - Hans von Euler-Chelpin, German-born chemist and Nobel Prize laureate
Deaths
1988 - Richard Feynman, American physicist and Nobel Prize laureate
1999 - Henry Way Kendall, American physicist and Nobel Prize laureate
jlynch | February 14, 2008Those of us who teach can imagine what would be like. A lecture hall full of students. Some eager to learn, some who couldn’t care less. Some still in their teens, some returning to college after many years. All vibrantly human. And then the unthinkable happens, as happened today in Northern Illinois University.
After Virginia Tech, I walked into my lecture theater and looked at the 140 students. And then looked at the exits. For the first time I looked at the exits. That moment, searching for potential escape routes, has stayed in my mind’s eye. It is particularly strong tonight.
jlynch | February 14, 2008In The Chronicle of Higher Education (12/21/01) William Dembski had this to say about his publication strategy:
"I've just gotten kind of blase about submitting things to journals where you often wait two years to get things into print. And I find I can actually get the turnaround faster by writing a book and getting the ideas expressed there. My books sell well. I get a royalty. And the material gets read more."
which makes the following all the more ironic. On commenting of Dawkins' $3.5 million contract for Only A Theory? he says:
$3.5million is a lot of money. The question I have is…
jlynch | February 13, 2008
I don’t do Hallmark holidays, but in the spirit of sharing something on Valentine's Day, I give you this wonderful cartoon (source). Be sure and check this one out as well. Excellent stuff.
jlynch | February 13, 2008Events
1961 - Lawrencium is first synthesized at the University of California.
2000 - NEAR Shoemaker enters orbit around asteroid 433 Eros, the first spacecraft to orbit an asteroid.
Births
1848 - Benjamin Baillaud, French astronomer
1869 - Charles Wilson, Scottish physicist and Nobel Prize laureate
1898 - Fritz Zwicky, Swiss-American physicist and astronomer
Deaths
1975 - Julian Huxley, British biologist
1989 - James Bond, American ornithologist
2003 - Dolly, first cloned mammal
jlynch | February 12, 2008
Yesterday was Darwin Day. And a beagle won Best In Show at the Westminster Kennel Club. Coincidence? I think not.
jlynch | February 12, 2008Events
1633 - Galileo Galilei arrives in Rome for his trial before the Inquisition.
1880 - Thomas Edison observes the Edison effect.
2004 - The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics discovers the universe’s largest known diamond, white dwarf star BPM 37093.
Births
1672 - Ãtienne François Geoffroy, French chemist
1743 - Joseph Banks, English botanist and naturalist
1910 - William Shockley, American physicist, eugenicist and Nobel Prize laureate
Deaths
1787 - RuÄer BoÅ¡koviÄ, Croatian scientist
2005 - Emilios T. Harlaftis, Greek astrophysicist
jlynch | February 11, 2008Events
2001 - NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft touchdown in the "saddle" region of 433 Eros becoming the first spacecraft to land on an asteroid.
Births
1637 - Jan Swammerdam, Dutch scientist
1665 - Rudolf Jakob Camerarius, German botanist and physician
1785 - Pierre Louis Dulong, French physicist
1804 - Heinrich Lenz, German physicist
1809 - Charles Darwin, English naturalist
1918 - Julian Schwinger, American physicist and Nobel Prize laureate
Deaths
1612 - Christopher Clavius, German astronomer
1799 - Lazzaro Spallanzani, Italian biologist
1958 - Douglas Hartree, English mathematical physicist
jlynch | February 10, 2008Births
1657 - Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle, French scientist
1839 - Josiah Willard Gibbs, American physicist
1898 - Leó Szilárd, Hungarian-born physicist
1908 - Vivian Ernest Fuchs, English geologist
Deaths
1868 - Léon Foucault, French astronomer
1973 - Hans D Jensen, German physicist and Nobel Prize laureate
1976 - Alexander Lippisch, German scientist
1978 - James B Conant, American chemist
1991 - Robert W. Holley, American biochemist and Nobel Prize laureate
jlynch | February 10, 2008Last time I wrote about ASU basketball was early January when we beat the University of Arizona Wildcats 64-59 in overtime to go 3-0 in Pac10 play. Much moaning came from Wildcat supporters with claims that, had they had their phenom freshman (Bayless) the score would have been different.
Soon after that game the Sun Devils entered a tail-spin and went to 4-5 in conference before finding themselves today facing the full strength Wildcats away from home. Wildcat supporters predicted a massacre. Well, guess what? ASU came back from a sixteen point deficit to win 59-54. I wonder what the…
jlynch | February 10, 2008
As promised, here [pdf, 7.83M] are the slides from today’s Darwin Day talk for the Humanist Society of Greater Phoenix. There were somewhere between 80 and 100 people in attendance, and I think it went quite well.
And for any attendees who stop by here [pdf] are the slides from my September talk on Intelligent Design.
jlynch | February 9, 2008Births
1785- Claude-Louis Navier, French physicist
1846 - Ira Remsen, American chemist
1897 - John Franklin Enders, American virologist and Nobel Prize laureate
1902 - Walter Houser Brattain, American physicist and Nobel Prize laureate
Deaths
1865 - Heinrich Lenz, German physicist
1923 - Wilhelm Röntgen, German physicist and Nobel Prize laureate
1944 - Eugène Michel Antoniadi, Greek astronomer
1952 - Henry Drysdale Dakin, British-American biochemist
jlynch | February 8, 2008I don’t usually do blog carnivals but Linnaeus’ Legacy #4 is up at The Other 95% and mentions a post of mine. Wander on over to see the current best posts on taxonomy and systematics.
jlynch | February 8, 2008Here’s a strategy:
Point to some negative consequence, single out a belief system or people group that you don’t particularly like, make a connection--no matter how tenuous--and suggest a solution.
Let’s see it applied using an example we’re all familiar with the Discovery Institute using (paging John West!):
Eugenics -> Darwinism -> Teach ID.
See how easy that is. Except what’s interesting is that the strategy is one that Regis Nicoll feels is one that is being used by the "neo-atheists" (yes, the usual suspects of Dawkins, Harris & Hitchens get hauled out). Nicoll, a Centurion…
jlynch | February 8, 2008
Births
1781 - Johann Baptist von Spix, German scientist
1865 - Erich von Drygalski, German geographer, geophysicist, and polar scientist
1910 - Jacques Monod, French biochemist and Nobel Prize laureate
1925 - Burkhard Heim, German physicist
1963 - Brian Greene, American physicist
Deaths
1752 - Fredric Hasselquist, Swedish naturalist
1940 - Eugene Bleuler, Swiss psychiatrist
1979 - Dennis Gabor, Hungarian physicist and Nobel Prize laureate
1994 - Howard Martin Temin, American geneticist and Nobel Prize laureate