jlynch | April 5, 2007
The BBC is reporting that the Sumatran striped rabbit (Nesolagus netscheri), probably the rarest lagomorph, has been seen again, this time by a camera trap. It is only the third sighting since 1972.
jlynch | April 5, 2007
Over at Fark.com they are discussing this photo of a Goliath tigerfish (Hydrocynus goliath) which occurs in the Congo River basin, the Lualaba River, Lake Upemba and Lake Tanganyika.
jlynch | April 4, 2007Mike Dunford earlier introduced Bush to the Constitution, a document that he has in the past referred to as "just a goddammed piece of paper" and which has been ignored by his regime. Yesterday, he appointed Swift-Boat and GOP financier Sam Fox as
ambassador to Belgium, this despite withdrawing Fox's nomination last week due to insufficient support in the Foreign Relations Committee. Congress leaves town for a week and Bush gets his man in through the back door. As if there was urgency in appointing an ambassador to Belgium.
Let's pay attention to that "goddamned piece of paper," shall we?…
jlynch | April 4, 2007Births
1622 - Vincenzo Viviani, Italian mathematician
1827 - Joseph Lister, English surgeon
1869 - Sergei Chaplygin, Russian physicist and engineer
1929 - Ivar Giaever, Norwegian physicist, Nobel laureate
Deaths
1900 - Joseph Louis François Bertrand, French mathematician
1967 - Hermann Joseph Muller, American geneticist, Nobel laureate
1970 - Alfred Henry Sturtevant, American geneticist
1979 - Eugène Gabritschevsky, Russian biologist and artist
2004 - Heiner Zieschang, German mathematician
jlynch | April 3, 2007
Events
1969 - Denton Cooley implants the first temporary artificial heart.
1983 - Space Shuttle Challenger makes its maiden voyage into space (STS-6).
1996 - Comet Hyakutake was imaged by the USA Asteroid Orbiter Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous and the Hubble Space Telescope (see above).
Births
1688 - Joseph-Nicolas Delisle, French astronomer
1842 - Edouard Lucas, French mathematician
1949 - Shing-Tung Yau, Chinese mathematician
Deaths
1609 - Charles de L'Ecluse, Flemish botanist
1617 - John Napier, Scottish mathematician
1807 - Joseph Jérôme Lefrançais de Lalande, French astronomer…
jlynch | April 2, 2007
Births
1529 - Michael Neander, German mathematician and astronomer
1683 - Mark Catesby, English naturalist
1693 - George Edwards, English naturalist
1715 - William Watson, English physician and scientist
1764 - John Abernathy, English surgeon
1934 - Jane Goodall, English zoologist, who since 1960 has been studying chimpanzees at Gombe (Tanzania)
Deaths
1717 - Jacques Ozanam, French mathematician
1827 - Ernst Chladni, German physicist
1932 - Wilhelm Ostwald, German chemist, Nobel Prize laureate
1998 - Mary Cartwright, English mathematician
jlynch | April 1, 2007
Vasan, a baby Malaysan Tapir (Tapirus indicus) at Edinburgh Zoo.
(AP Photo/Andrew Milligan,PA)
jlynch | April 1, 2007
Haeckel's Primitive Snouter
Archirrhinos haeckelii
For more on the Rhinogradentia, see Darren Naish's recent posts.
jlynch | April 1, 2007
Births
1618 - Francesco Maria Grimaldi, Italian mathematician and physicist
1923 - G. Spencer-Brown, English mathematician
1934 - Paul Joseph Cohen, American mathematician
Deaths
1742 - James Douglas, Scottish physician and anatomist
1827 - Ludwig Heinrich Bojanus, German physician and naturalist
1922 - Hermann Rorschach, Swiss psychologist (see above)
1928 - Theodore William Richards, American chemist, Nobel Prize laureate
1995 - Hannes Alfvén, Swedish physicist
jlynch | April 1, 2007I guess we all fell for it. It turns out that the whole Michael Egnor cafuffle was an elaborate ruse to have us Darwinists make fools of ourselves. Boy, do we feel dumb! Still, Egnor has managed to outdo his parodic self with this:
"materialism is nonsense, because if matter and energy are all that exist, then truth doesn't exist (it's neither matter nor energy). If truth doesn't exist, then materialism can't be true."
Wow.
jlynch | March 31, 2007Well, we know where McCain's priorities lie:
An Arizona Republic analysis of voting records found that McCain has missed 42 votes this session. That's 33 percent of the 126 roll-call votes that had been held before lawmakers left town Friday for a weeklong Easter recess.
Only Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S.D., has missed more votes than McCain, a contender for the GOP nomination. Johnson, who is recovering from a brain hemorrhage last winter, has been absent for the entire session of Congress.
Leading candidates for the Democratic nomination have posted far better voting records. New York Democrat…
jlynch | March 31, 2007
Events
1826 - Samuel Morey patents the internal combustion engine.
Births
1578 - William Harvey, English physician who described the flow of blood though the human body (see above)
1776 - Sophie Germain, French mathematician
1856 - Acacio Gabriel Viegas, Indian physician
1865 - Richard Adolf Zsigmondy, Austrian-born chemist, Nobel Prize laureate
1908 - Abraham Maslow, American psychologist
1919 - Joseph Murray, American surgeon, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
1933 - Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, French physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
1947 - Alain Connes, French…
jlynch | March 31, 2007Given the question, 'Is evolution well-supported by evidence and widely accepted within the scientific community?', 48% of Americans say 'No'. Now, whatever about the "well-supported by evidence" clause (it is), evolution is "widely accepted" and even the anti-evolutionists admit it. Apparently nearly one in two Americans have been hit with the stupid-stick. Really, really hard.
(HT to whomever linked to me from Slashdot.)
jlynch | March 31, 2007
I spent this afternoon giving a public talk to the Greater Phoenix Mensa Regional Gathering. The topic was the history of anti-evolutionism (largely Intelligent Design) in this country over the past twenty years. Slides (without my soft Irish accent) are available here for those that care.
The slide player is a little funky and seems to skip certain parts of the slideshow, but it's probably enough to give you the gist of what I said. Props go to Nick Matzke at NCSE for providing some of the material.
jlynch | March 30, 2007
Events
1970 - Explorer 1 re-enters the Earth's atmosphere (after 12 years in orbit).
1994 - Bill Kimbel, Don Johanson and Yoel Rak report the finding in Ethiopia of the first fairly complete Australopithecus afarensis skull (AL 444-2, see above)
Births
1596 - René Descartes, French mathematician
1730 - Ãtienne Bézout, French mathematician
1777 - Charles Cagniard de la Tour, French physicist
1778 - Coenraad Jacob Temminck, Dutch zoologist
1847 - Yegor Ivanovich Zolotarev, Russian mathematician
1890 - William Lawrence Bragg, English physicist, Nobel laureate
1906 - Sin-Itiro Tomonaga…
jlynch | March 30, 2007
You scored as Existentialism. Your life is guided by the concept of Existentialism: You choose the meaning and purpose of your life.
"Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does."
"It is up to you to give [life] a meaning."
--Jean-Paul Sartre
"It is man's natural sickness to believe that he possesses the Truth."
--Blaise Pascal
More info at Arocoun's Wikipedia User Page...
Existentialism
65%
Justice (Fairness)
55%
Hedonism
55%
Utilitarianism
50%…
jlynch | March 30, 2007
Sea otters "holding hands" at the Vancouver Aquarium. This is especially for PZ as I know he deep down really likes mammals and that whole cephalopod thing is just a front. ( Via Boing Boing.)
jlynch | March 29, 2007
Events
240 BC - 1st recorded perihelion passage of Halley's Comet.
1842 - Anesthesia is used for the first time in an operation by Crawford Long.
1951 - Remington Rand delivers the first UNIVAC I computer to the United States Census Bureau.
Births
1894 - Sergey Ilyushin, Russian aerospace engineer
1910 - Józef Marcinkiewicz, mathematician
Deaths
1559 - Adam Ries, German mathematician
1783 - William Hunter, Scottish anatomist
1949 - Friedrich Bergius, German chemist, Nobel Prize laureate
1965 - Philip Showalter Hench, American physician, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or…
jlynch | March 28, 2007
Events
1807 - The asteroid Vesta is discovered.
1974 - NASA's Mariner 10 becomes the first spaceprobe to fly by Mercury (see above)
Births
1824 - Ludwig Büchner, German philosopher and physician
1873 - Tullio Levi-Civita, Italian mathematician
1927 - John Robert Vane, English pharmacologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
1941 - Joseph Hooton Taylor, Jr., American astrophysicist, Nobel Prize in Physics laureate
1965 - Emilios T. Harlaftis, Greek astrophysicist
Deaths
1772 - Emanuel Swedenborg, Swedish philosopher and mathematician
1873 - Francesco Zantedeschi,…