jlynch | November 20, 2007Events
1905 - Albert Einstein’s paper, "Does the Inertia of a Body Depend Upon Its Energy Content?", is published in Annalen der Physik. This paper leads to the mass-energy equivalence E = mc².
1953 - Authorities at the British Natural History Museum announce that the "Piltdown Man" skull was a hoax.
1969 - The first ARPANET link is established.
Births
1931 - Revaz Dogonadze, Georgian scientist
Deaths
1555 - Georg Agricola, German scientist
1652 - Jan Brożek, Polish mathematician, physician, and astronomer
1881 - Ami Boué, Austrian geologist
1970 - Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman, Indian…
jlynch | November 20, 2007Have fellows of the Discovery Institute been caught plagiarizing? You decide.
Does the Discovery Institute lie? You decide.
Does Behe get owned by a grad student? You decide.
Bad week for the cdesign proponentsists by the looks of it.
Oh, and when’s the last time there was any science coming from these guys? Instead we have yet another version of Pandas from Dembski and Wells, a popular book from Behe (one which appeared still-born), and nothing from Paul Nelson. Remember two and a half years ago when he stated
Bill Dembski and I have been working on a shorter article, with some of the…
jlynch | November 19, 2007Births
1602 - Otto von Guericke, German physicist
1762 - Pierre André Latreille, French entomologist
1886 - Karl von Frisch, Austrian zoologist and Nobel Prize laureate
1889 - Edwin Hubble, American astronomer
1910 - Willem Jacob van Stockum, Dutch physicist
1926 - Andrzej W. Schally, Polish-born endocrinologist and Nobel Prize laureate
Deaths
1704 - Charles Plumier, French botanist
1778 - Francesco Cetti, Italian scientist
1934 - Willem de Sitter, Dutch scientist
1945 - Francis William Aston, British chemist and Nobel Prize laureate
1976 - Trofim Lysenko, Stalinist biologist
jlynch | November 17, 2007I’m finally back from spending a few days in DC - my second trip to the city in the past two weeks. I was there to receive the CASE/Carnegie Professor of the Year award for Arizona. The award - presented by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education - is the only national award that recognizes professors for their commitment to undergraduate education and mentoring. I was deeply, deeply, honored to be counted among the four national award winners and the forty state winners, especially as the nomination comes from your…
jlynch | November 13, 2007Just want to note that I enjoyed the PBS NOVA special "Judgment Day" which fairly depicted (imho) the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial and the machinations the intelligent design supporters.
A student of mine emailed me to let me know that his wife was impressed about his ability to predict what was going to happen next (I guess regarding the evidence presented by the plaintiffs) in the documentary. I had lectured on the history of ID last week, so that made me happy. At least one of the 85 students is remembering the material!
Overall, the program only strengthened the image of the ID movement as…
jlynch | November 13, 2007They "get drunk all the time. It is becoming really dangerous. We need to stop making alcohol available to them."
They, in this case, are not worthless socialites and Hollywood starlets, but elephants in northeastern India, and the speaker is none other than Paris Hilton, who went on to comment that "It is just so sad."
That sound you just heard? My irony meter exploding.
In any case, between the rampaging monkeys and the elephants, India sounds like a madhouse!
Update: Apparently not.
jlynch | November 12, 2007
Events
1971 - Mariner 9 becomes the first spacecraft to orbit another planet (Mars). Though switched off on 27th October 1972, the probe is still in Mars orbit and stable until at least 2022.
Births
1924 - Motoo Kimura, Japanese geneticist (above)
Deaths
1606 - Geronimo Mercuriali, Italian philologist and physician
1994 - Motoo Kimura, Japanese geneticist
jlynch | November 12, 2007
I blogged about this way back in 2003 when I had a blog on LiveJournal (yeah, I know), but I want to share it with my (now larger) readership. It’s my favorite scientific paper ever:
On 5 June 1995 an adult male mallard (Anas platyrhynchos) collided with the glass facade of the Natuurmuseum Rotterdam and died. An other drake mallard raped the corpse almost continuously for 75 minutes. Then the author disturbed the scene and secured the dead duck. Dissection showed that the rape-victim indeed was of the male sex. It is concluded that the mallards were engaged in an 'Attempted Rape Flight’…
jlynch | November 12, 2007Events
1847 - James Young Simpson is the first to use chloroform as an anaesthetic.
1980 - Voyager I makes its closest approach to Saturn and takes first images of its rings.
Births
1795 - Thaddeus William Harris, American naturalist
1842 - John Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh, English physicist and Nobel Prize laureate
1896 - Salim Ali, Indian ornithologist
Deaths
1742 - Friedrich Hoffmann, German physician and chemist
1916 - Percival Lowell, American astronomer
jlynch | November 11, 2007Current BCS Rankings
LSU
Oregon
Kansas
Oklahoma
Missouri
West Virginia
Ohio State
ASU
Now, some thoughts.
ASU lost (by 12 points, away) to the then #5 team in the country. OSU lost at home to an unranked team.
Oklahoma lost to Colorado, ASU beat Colorado. Oklahoma’s SOS is lower than ASU’s (68 vs 50).
Kansas’ schedule (e.g. Central Michigan, SE Louisiana, Toledo, Florida International all at home) is weaker than ASU’s (SOS of 73 vs 50). They beat Colorado 19-14, we beat them 33-14.
Just suggesting that ASU should be ranked higher than #8, that’s all.
jlynch | November 11, 2007An "old-fashioned point of view" from Wayne Johns of Texas:
Whatever happened to little girls playing with dolls and dreaming of becoming wives and mothers? Whatever happened to young men looking for a good Christian wife and finding a young woman still clinging to her doll? Me, old fashioned? I guess. Me, a male chauvinist pig? To answer that I would have to say, "Oink, oink, oink."
Zuska's going to have a field day!
jlynch | November 11, 2007
White-Crowned Sparrow, Zonotrichia leucophrys
We recently planted winter grass and have managed to attract large numbers of white-crowned sparrows, a species that I hadn’t seen before here in Tempe.
[image source]
jlynch | November 10, 2007Events
1675 - Gottfried Leibniz demonstrated integral calculus for the first time to find the area under the graph of y = f(x) function.
Births
1743 - Carl Peter Thunberg, Swedish naturalist
1930 - Hugh Everett, American physicist
Deaths
1686 - Otto von Guericke, German scientist
1884 - Alfred Brehm German zoologist
1973 - Artturi Ilmari Virtanen, Finnish chemist and Nobel Prize laureate
jlynch | November 10, 2007ASU managed to squeak past UCLA 24-20 to go 9-1 for the season and take the lead in the Pac-10 (Oregon have a bye-week). After years of not winning in California, two straight road wins in that state are welcome.
Next up (on Thanksgiving) is USC followed by Arizona. Both are home games and perfectably winnable. A Rose Bowl appearance against either Ohio State or Michigan is still on the cards.
jlynch | November 9, 2007Births
1565 - Laurentius Paulinus Gothus, Swedish theologian and astronomer
1695 - John Bevis, English physician and astronomer
1918 - Ernst Otto Fischer, German chemist and Nobel Prize laureate
1935 - Igor Dmitrievich Novikov, Russian astrophysicist
1935 - Bernard Babior, American biochemist
1961 - Rudolf Grimm, Austrian physicist
Deaths
1990 - Mário Schenberg, Brazilian physicist
jlynch | November 9, 2007The ScienceBlogs DonorsChoose Challenge ended a few days back while I was in DC. Eighteen readers of this blog raised $1,970.29, a sum which completely funded seven projects and will impact nearly three hundred needy students. Overall, we here at ScienceBlogs raised over $70,000.
My sincere thanks to everyone who donated.
jlynch | November 8, 2007Events
1921 - Albert Einstein awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work with the photoelectric effect.
1994 - Discovery of the chemical element Darmstadtium.
Births
1721 - Mark Akenside, English poet and physician
1731 - Benjamin Banneker, American scientist
1873 - Otfrid Foerster, German neurologist
1874 - Albert Francis Blakeslee, American botanist
1885 - Theodor Kaluza, German scientist
1897 - Ronald George Wreyford Norrish, British chemist and Nobel Prize laureate
1934 - Carl Sagan, American astronomer
Deaths
2002 - William Schutz, American psychologist
jlynch | November 8, 2007ID supporters seem to like Antony Flew, the one-time atheist philosopher who has apparently seen the light and become a deist. They have awarded him the Phillip Johnson Award for Liberty and Truth, they have lauded his latest book, and Bill Dembski exclaims "God bless Antony Flew!" But at the risk of raining on the parade, there’s something that Bill needs to realize - the fearless Flew seems to have a very ambivalent attitude (to put it mildly) to eugenics.
Prometheus Books recently published its New Encyclopedia of Unbelief, a work to which I provided an entry on Haeckel and co-wrote (with…
jlynch | November 7, 2007Events
1895 - While experimenting with electricity Wilhelm Röntgen discovers X-rays.
Births
1656 (N.S.) - Edmond Halley, British astronomer and mathematician
1854 - Johannes Rydberg, Swedish physicist
1885 - Hans Cloos, German geologist
1922 - Christiaan Barnard, South African heart surgeon
1923 - Jack Kilby, American electrical engineer and Nobel Prize laureate
Deaths
1934 - Carlos Chagas, Brazilian physician