jlynch | June 12, 2007Jason’s recent encounter with ID-apologist Tom Woodward spurred me to revisit his book Darwin Strikes Back: Defending the Science of Intelligent Design (2006) which I had tossed aside months back due to its breathless, inane cheerleading for ID. Not surprisingly, the talk Jason witnessed follows the book quite closely, so you can save yourself the pain by just reading Jason’s posts [1, 2, 3, 4].
On page 77, Woodward tries to deal with the accusation that ID does not make any predictions. He replies that ID does indeed have a "clear and daring prediction." And what is it?
"Darwinists will not…
jlynch | June 12, 2007
Interesting map matching the GDP [Gross Domestic Product] of US states to those of countries worldwide.
[Seen here, via here.]
jlynch | June 12, 2007
"[M]ost of our prisoners would love to be in a facility more like Guantanamo and less like the state prisons that people are in in the United States." Mike Huckabee (R Candidate for President)
Makes you just wish that Huckabee could be held indefinitely somewhere without charges or evidence.
jlynch | June 11, 2007So I was watching Adult Swim last night (Futurama x2 followed by The Family Guy) and they were running a cool visualization by Aaron Koblin of the air traffic over the US.
There is more at Koblin's site.
Now, I need to go and watch tonight’s episodes!
jlynch | June 11, 2007Events
1967 - Venera 4 (the first space probe to enter another planet’s atmosphere and successfully return data) is launched
Births
1577 - Paul Guldin, Swiss astronomer and mathematician
1812 - Edmond Hébert, French geologist
1899 - Fritz Albert Lipmann, American biochemist, Nobel laureate (d. 1986)
1942 - Bert Sakmann, German physiologist, Nobel laureate
Deaths
1982 - Karl von Frisch, Austrian zoologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
jlynch | June 11, 2007Awhile back, Mark Hoofnagle took on what he termed "the lunatic ravings" of Alexander Cockburn in The Nation. In his piece, Mark noted that Cockburn wrote:
Not so long ago, [Martin] Hertzberg sent me some of his recent papers on the global warming hypothesis, a construct now accepted by many progressives as infallible as Papal dogma on matters of faith or doctrine. Among them was the graph described above so devastating to the hypothesis.
To which Mark replied:
Ah, papers! But wait. Where are these papers published? Where are the citations? Where is the peer review? How can we possibly…
jlynch | June 11, 2007I’m having a rough day of it today. I’m a huge fan of The Sopranos but haven’t seen the last two episodes. Reason: my better half has been out of the country and I have taped them both to share with her when she returns on Wednesday. Problem is, it’s difficult to avoid online discussion of the last episode. Maybe I should retire from the Intertubes until Thursday!
jlynch | June 11, 2007Some out there may care that Apple have released their web browser (Safari) for Windows. Having played about with it for a bit, I cant really see any reason to shift from Firefox.
Now, if they could only release Quicksilver...
jlynch | June 10, 2007
Events
2004 - Cassini-Huygens makes its closest flyby of Phoebe (above)
Births
1723 - Johann Georg Palitzsch, German astronomer
1876 - Alfred L. Kroeber, American anthropologist
1915 - Nicholas Metropolis, Greek-American mathematician, physicist and computer scientist
1937 - Robin Warren, Australian pathologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine
Deaths
1903 - Nikolai Bugaev, Russian mathematician
1934 - Lev Vygotsky, Russian psychologist
jlynch | June 10, 2007ASU are heading to the College World Series on a 7-1 defeat of Ole Miss tonight and a 4-3 comeback last night. Next stop, Omaha! Oh, and the ASU Women Track & Field are NCAA indoor and outdoor champs. All good.
As some of you may know, I don’t care for pro-football or pro-baseball. NCAA is something else, however.
jlynch | June 10, 2007Jason has been running a series about Tom Woodward’s recent talk at the Discovery Institute in Washington [1, 2, 3, 4]. This caught my eye:
Woodward closed by setting the date for the end of Darwinism’s reign as the dominant paradigm at ...wait for it...2025. Later he suggested that it might be within ten years that evolution as we know it suffers a decisive failure. And then he predicted a severe nosedive for evolution in the next six to twelve months as Behe’s book soaks into the public consciousness.
There’s the timetable, folks: 2008 a severe nosedive, 2017 decisive failure, and 2025 end…
jlynch | June 10, 2007
A newborn South African bat eared fox learns to stalk and hunt birds at the San Diego Zoo’s Wild Animal Park. Born in late April this youngster and his four siblings, not pictured, have just recently emerged from their birthing den and are now learning how to explore and hunt.(Ken Bohn/Zoological Society of San Diego/Associated Press)
Learning to "stalk and hunt birds," eh? Good luck with that. Otocyon megalotis is unique among the fox-like canids in being highly insectivorous, specializing in eating dung beetles and harvester termites, the latter making up nearly 70% of their diet. They do…
jlynch | June 10, 2007Over at Evolving Thoughts, John Wilkins has unearthed a piece by Bertrand Russell on agnosticism. Russell starts out by differentiating atheism and agnosticism:
An agnostic thinks it impossible to know the truth in matters such as God and the future life with which Christianity and other religions are concerned. Or, if not impossible, at least impossible at the present time. ... An atheist, like a Christian, holds that we can know whether or not there is a God. The Christian holds that we can know there is a God; the atheist, that we can know there is not. The Agnostic suspends judgment,…
jlynch | June 9, 2007
Events
2003 - The Spirit Rover is launched, beginning NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover mission.
Births
1706 - John Dollond, English optician
1710 - James Short, Scottish mathematician
1803 - Henry Darcy, French scientist
1804 - Hermann Schlegel, German ornithologist
1861 - Pierre Duhem, French physicist
1929 - E. O. Wilson, American biologist (above)
Deaths
1836 - André-Marie Ampère, French physicist
1944 - Willem Jacob van Stockum, Dutch physicist
jlynch | June 8, 2007Births
1812 - Johann Gottfried Galle, German astronomer
1875 - Henry Hallett Dale, English scientist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
1937 - Harald Rosenthal, German biologist
Deaths
1875 - Gérard Paul Deshayes, French geologist
1959 - Adolf Otto Reinhold Windaus, German chemist, Nobel Prize laureate
1989 - George Wells Beadle, American geneticist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
jlynch | June 8, 2007
Alicia Boole Stott was born today in 1860 in Cork (Ireland), the daughter of George Boole. Despite receiving no formal education, in 1914 she was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Groningen for her work on four-dimensional geometry, work which (while published in 1900 & 1910) was conducted in her late teens and early twenties. She is probably best known for coining the term "polytope" to refer to a convex solid in four dimensions. You can read more here about her first paper, On certain series of sections of the regular four-dimensional hypersolids (1900).
jlynch | June 7, 2007Births
1625 - Giovanni Domenico Cassini, Italian scientist
1724 - John Smeaton, English civil engineer
1745 - Caspar Wessel, Danish mathematician
1851 - Jacques-Arsène d’Arsonval, French physicist
1860 - Alicia Boole Stott, Irish mathematician
1916 - Francis Crick, English molecular biologist; Nobel laureate
1918 - John D. Roberts, American chemist
1930 - Robert Aumann, German-born Israeli mathematician; Nobel laureate
1936 - Kenneth G. Wilson, American physicist, Nobel laureate
1947 - Eric F. Wieschaus, American biologist, Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
Deaths
1835 - Gian Domenico…
jlynch | June 7, 2007... or at least can't think critically about polling questions. Today USA Today/Gallup announced poll results on evolution. The "highlights":
"Evolution, that is, the idea that human beings developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life" is probably or definitely false: 44%
"Creationism, that is, the idea that God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years" is probably or definitely true: 66%
15% said that they would be more likely to vote for a candidate that did not believe in evolution.
The second question is usually…
jlynch | June 6, 2007Births
1811 - James Young Simpson, British obstetrician
1862 - Philipp Lenard, Austrian physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
1877 - Charles Glover Barkla, English physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
1896 - Robert S. Mulliken, American chemist, Nobel Prize laureate
Deaths
1826 - Joseph von Fraunhofer, German physicist
1954 - Alan Turing, British mathematician and computer scientist
1967 - Anatoly Maltsev, Russian mathematician
1978 - Ronald George Wreyford Norrish, British chemist, Nobel Prize laureate