jlynch | December 16, 2007I’m going to close things down here until the beginning of the New Year - a combination of projects I need to finish and family commitments mean that I will be posting little (if anything) for the next two weeks. I wish all my readers a happy, safe & peaceful holiday season.
Your Today in Science is below the fold.
Births
1706 - Ãmilie du Châtelet, French mathematician and physicist
1778 - Sir Humphry Davy, English chemist and physicist
1835 - Alexander Emanuel Agassiz, American scientist; son of Louis Agassiz
1853 - Ãmile Roux, French physician
1908 - Willard Frank Libby, American…
jlynch | December 16, 2007Twelve months ago I offered a roundup of the "advances" made by the intelligent design movement in 2006, a month-by-month roundup which differed significantly from the assessment of John West. I had started to do the same for this year, but quickly realized that the ID movement achieved absolutely nothing over the past twelve months. They had achieved so little, I was actually not posting much on the subject. Seriously. Sure, I discussed West getting destroyed in public by historian Mark Borrello, and Frank Beckwith quitting the DI, but by and large the year was filled with ... nothing. The…
jlynch | December 15, 2007And while I’m at it rounding up the year ...
Top ten posts (from any year) for visits this past year
Strange beastie in Maine
Polar bears are threatened
Epic takedown of Pivar
From sea to shining sea
Last LOL I promise, well maybe
Possibly the dumbest argument ever against atheism
Beware the catfish from hell
Oreskes responds to Shulte
Wizzened baby animal alert
An international coalition of non-religious ID scientists & scholars
I’m guessing that #1, #2 & #9 are popular because of Google image searches. Others are popular due to link-love from Pharyngula or people’s obsession with…
jlynch | December 15, 2007Births
1776 - Johann Wilhelm Ritter, German physicist
1882 - Walther Meissner, German physicist
1901 - Margaret Mead, American anthropologist
Deaths
1687 - William Petty, English scientist and philosopher
jlynch | December 15, 2007Last year a few of us did this - basic idea is to reproduce the first sentence of the first post every month over the past year. I’m going to ignore "Today in Science" posts. Let’s see what we got ...
What is this mystery beast captured on film in Kayan Mentarang National Park, East Kalimantan, Indonesia in 2003? [link]
Today I ran a workshop for my freshmen on argumentative writing, so this seems appropriate: [link]
As Razib notes, Arthur Schlesinger has died at the age of 89. [link]
Well, we know where McCain’s priorities lie: [link]
Four years ago on this day, Bush declared that "major…
jlynch | December 15, 2007An English backpacker who stabbed a Scottish traveller to death during a row about creationism and evolution was sent to jail for five years by a judge in Australia.
Alexander York, 33, from Essex, had become involved in a bitter argument over the origins of mankind and later, in the caravan park where they were staying, the row turned to violence.
Scottish backpacker Rudi Boa, 28, from Inverness, fell dying into his girlfriend’s arms after being stabbed in the chest by York in January last year.
Guess which one was the creationist?
The Scottish couple, who were staying in Tumut in the…
jlynch | December 15, 2007Births
1852 - Henri Becquerel, French physicist and Nobel Prize laureate
1860 - Niels Ryberg Finsen, Danish physician and Nobel Prize laureate
1916 - Maurice Wilkins, New Zealand-born physicist and Nobel Prize laureate
1923 - Freeman Dyson, English-born American physicist
Deaths
1958 - Wolfgang Ernst Pauli, Austrian-born American physicist and Nobel Prize laureate
jlynch | December 14, 2007I Am The People, The Mob
I am the people-the mob-the crowd-the mass.
Do you know that all the great work of the world is done through me?
I am the workingman, the inventor, the maker of the world’s food and clothes.
I am the audience that witnesses history. The Napoleons come from me and the Lincolns. They die. And then I send forth more Napoleons and Lincolns.
I am the seed ground. I am a prairie that will stand for much plowing. Terrible storms pass over me. I forget. The best of me is sucked out and wasted. I forget. Everything but Death comes to me and makes me work and give up what I…
jlynch | December 14, 2007Events
1782 - The Montgolfier brothers first balloon lifts on its first test flight.
1900 - Max Planck presents a theoretical derivation of his black-body radiation law.
1962 - Mariner 2 becomes the first spacecraft to fly by Venus.
Births
1909 - Edward Tatum, American geneticist and Nobel Prize laureate
1922 - Nikolay Basov, Soviet physicist and Nobel Prize laureate
Deaths
1873 - Louis Agassiz, Swiss-born American zoologist and geologist [See last year’s post on Agassiz]
jlynch | December 14, 2007A couple of weeks back I noted I noted historian Mark Borrello’s engagement with John West regarding West’s particular spin on the history of eugenics. Now Mark has commented publicly.
Though I repeatedly e-mailed the coordinator of the event and he assured me that he was working hard to get a response from West, the material did not arrive until three days before the talk. Had this been the result of working down to the wire I would’ve understood. Instead, the file I received was a two-year old pdf entitled "Darwin’s Public Policy: Eugenics, Democracy, and the Dangers of Scientific…
jlynch | December 12, 2007Births
1640 - Robert Plot, English naturalist
1662 - Francesco Bianchini, Italian philosopher and scientist
1724 - Franz Aepinus, German scientist
1867 - Kristian Birkeland, Norwegian explorer and scientist
1923 - Philip Warren Anderson, American physicist and Nobel Prize laureate
Deaths
1565 - Conrad Gessner, Swiss naturalist
1783 - Pehr Wilhelm Wargentin, Swedish astronomer
1868 - Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius, German botanist
1895 - Anyos Jedlik, Hungarian physicist
1919 - Woldemar Voigt, German physicist
1930 - Fritz Pregl, Slovenian/Austrian chemist and Nobel Prize laureate…
jlynch | December 11, 2007Births
1866 - Alfred Werner, Swiss chemist and Nobel Prize laureate
1892 - Herman PotoÄnik, Slovenian rocket engineer
jlynch | December 11, 2007
The ancient Greeks said that the Spartans threw any deformed or sick newborns over a cliff, thus practicing eugenics. Indeed, Plato - certainly an individual with a soft spot for Sparta - himself hints at these practices in his Republic. Recent studies of human remains from one such cliff (apothetes) has shown that the remains below are those of individuals between the ages of 18 and 35 and that no children or newborns were disposed of in this manner. Researchers believe the remains are likely to be those of prisoners or traitors.
(source)
jlynch | December 11, 2007Our overlords (can the beatings stop now? please?) have asked us to ask you to take a brief two question quiz regarding languages. Run along and do it ... otherwise the beatings will continue.
jlynch | December 11, 2007Births
1761 - Gian Domenico Romagnosi, Italian physicist
1781 - Sir David Brewster, Scottish physicist
1843 - Robert Koch, German bacteriologist and Nobel Prize laureate
1863 - Annie Jump Cannon, American astronomer
1882 - Max Born, German physicist and Nobel Prize laureate
1925 - Paul Greengard, American neuroscientist and Nobel Prize laureate
Deaths
1797 - Richard Brocklesby, English physician
1950 - Leslie Comrie, New Zealand astronomer
1978 - Vincent du Vigneaud, American chemist and Nobel Prize laureate
1998 - André Lichnerowicz, Polish-French physicist
jlynch | December 10, 2007The Arizona State Board of Education has unanimously voted to increase the amount of required science and math courses for the state’s high school students. Freshmen in 2008 will require a third year of math, and those the following year will require a fourth year. That entering class will also have to complete an additional year of science (an increase from two years).
jlynch | December 10, 2007Presidential debates are largely meaningless. Simpleminded questions posed by simpleminded moderators who actively prevent candidates from answering in any sort of nuanced manner (were they able). In short, a microcosm of American political discourse in which snark and soundbite dominate substance every time.
Wouldn’t it be great if we could hear candidates answer questions on issues that we as scientists - and concerned public - care about? Wouldn’t it be great if we could have candidates devote an extended debate to such issues, a debate in which the environment, medicine & health, and…
jlynch | December 10, 2007Events
1684 - Isaac Newton’s derivation of Kepler’s laws from his theory of gravity, contained in the paper De motu corporum in gyrum, is read to the Royal Society by Edmund Halley.
Births
1452 - Johannes Stöffler, German mathematician and astronomer
1588 - Isaac Beeckman, Dutch scientist and philosopher
1751 - George Shaw, English botanist and zoologist
1805 - Josef Skoda, Bohemian physician
1934 - Howard Martin Temin, American geneticist and Nobel Prize laureate
Deaths
1198 - Averroes, Arab physician and philosopher
1603 - William Gilbert, English scientist
1831 - Thomas Seebeck,…
jlynch | December 9, 2007Tim Lambert has already highlighted this, but since some of the affair played out on this blog ... John Mashey has posted an extended account of the Oreskes/Schulte affair [pdf]. Regular readers will remember that Naomi Oreskes publicly responded to Schulte here and subsequent developments can be followed here and here. As Tim notes "Schulte seems to be guilty of professional misconduct."
jlynch | December 8, 2007Births
1571 - Metius, Dutch mathematician and astronomer
1652 - Augustus Quirinus Rivinus, German physician
1748 - Claude Louis Berthollet, French chemist
1906 - Grace Murray Hopper, American computer pioneer
1917 - James Rainwater, American physicist and Nobel Prize laureate
1919 - William Lipscomb, American chemist and Nobel Prize laureate
1926 - Henry Way Kendall, American physicist and Nobel Prize laureate
Deaths
1798 - Johann Reinhold Forster, German botanist
1830 - Heinrich Christian Friedrich Schumacher, Danish surgeon, botanist and professor of anatomy
1937 - Nils Gustaf Dalén…