jlynch | February 18, 2007H. Allen Orr responds to Dennett's response to Orr's review of Dawkins' The God Delusion and basically captures my position on TGD:
Daniel Dennett's main complaint about my review is that I held Dawkins's book to too high a standard. The God Delusion was, he says, a popular work and, as such, one can't expect it to grapple seriously with religious thought. There are two things wrong with this objection. The first is that the mere fact that a book is intended for a broad audience doesn't mean its author can ignore the best thinking on a subject. Indeed it's precisely the task of the…
jlynch | February 18, 2007PZ lays a smackdown on a neurosurgeon who is one of the Discovery Institute's 700 who are "skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life" and claims:
I am asking a simple question: show me the evidence (journal, date, page) that new information, measured in bits or any appropriate units, can emerge from random variation and natural selection, without intelligent agency.
Predictably, PZ doesn't even have to break into a sweat taking care of this stupidity.
jlynch | February 18, 2007February 18th
901 - Death of Thabit ibn Qurra, Arab astronomer and mathematician
1745 - Birth of Alessandro Volta, Italian physicist
1788 - Death of John Whitehurst, English clockmaker and scientist
1838 - Birth of Ernst Mach, Austrian physicist
1851 - Death of Carl Gustav Jakob Jacobi, German mathematician
1924 - Birth of Humberto Fernández Morán, Venezuelan scientist
1957 - Death of Henry Norris Russell, American astronomer
1967 - Death of J. Robert Oppenheimer, American physicist
jlynch | February 17, 2007This afternoon there was a symposium on "Science Literacy and Pseudoscience" that I had intended to attend but eventually missed. According to this AP story, it was revealed there that
"People in the U.S. know more about basic science today than they did two decades ago, good news that researchers say is tempered by an unsettling growth in the belief in pseudoscience such as astrology and visits by extraterrestrial aliens."
So, science literacy is clearly increasing (from 10 to 28% according to one measure) but at the same time pseudoscientific beliefs are also increasing. It strikes me that…
jlynch | February 17, 2007The problem with the AAAS meeting is that so much is going on that it can be difficult to actually decide what to do. And much of what is good involves stuff happening outside of the sessions. I have run into (and dined with) people from Alliance for Science, the Clergy Letter Project, Evolution
Sunday and Darwin Day. I've hung out with Tara and brunched this morning with Janet, her husband, and the adorable Stemwedel Sprogs (charter members of the Order of the Science Scouts Special Children's Auxiliary). This evening is looking like dinner with some of the crazies from NCSE,
followed with…
jlynch | February 17, 2007February 17th
1723 - Birth of Tobias Mayer, German astronomer
1792 - Birth of Karl Ernst von Baer, German biologist
1796 - Birth of Philipp Franz von Siebold, German physician
1874 - Death of Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet, Belgian mathematician
1888 - Birth of Otto Stern, German physicist, Nobel Prize Laureate
jlynch | February 16, 2007Things are very busy here at the AAAS Annual Meeting, so much so that I haven't had a chance to sit at a computer and write anything. Hopefully, if I get some time together tomorrow, I'll blog on a session on grassroots activism and science education. For now, I'll just note the following:
Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education, and nine science teachers who have been on the front lines of the battle to prevent introduction of "intelligent design" into science classrooms as an alternative to evolution, are recipients of the 2006 AAAS Award for…
jlynch | February 16, 2007February 16th
1531 - Death of Johannes Stöffler, German mathematician and astronomer
1698 - Birth of Pierre Bouguer, French mathematician
1727 - Birth of Nikolaus Joseph von Jacquin, Austrian scientist
1804 - Birth of Karl Theodor Ernst von Siebold, German physiologist
1822 - Birth of Sir Francis Galton, English explorer. biologist, and eugenicist
1834 - Birth of Ernst Haeckel, German zoologist
1937 - Birth of Yuri Manin, Russian mathematician
1980 - Death of Erich Hückel, German physicist
2001 - Death of William Masters, American gynecologist and sexologist
jlynch | February 16, 2007
For All
Ah to be alive
on a mid-September morn
fording a stream
barefoot, pants rolled up,
holding boots, pack on,
sunshine, ice in the shallows,
northern rockies.
Rustle and shimmer of icy creek waters
stones turn underfoot, small and hard as toes
cold nose dripping
singing inside
creek music, heart music,
smell of sun on gravel.
I pledge allegiance
I pledge allegiance to the soil
of Turtle Island,
and to the beings who thereon dwell
one ecosystem
in diversity
under the sun
With joyful interpenetration for all.
Gary Snyder
As today sees me in San Francisco for the AAAS meeting, and…
jlynch | February 15, 2007February 15th
1564 - Birth of Galileo Galilei, Italian astronomer and physicist
1809 Birth of André Dumont, Belgian geologist
1847 - Death of Germinal Pierre Dandelin, Belgian mathematician
1849 - Death of Pierre François Verhulst, Belgian mathematician
1861 - Birth of Charles Edouard Guillaume, French physicist, Nobel Prize Laureate
1873 - Birth of Hans von Euler-Chelpin, German-born chemist, Nobel Prize Laureate
1934 - Birth of Niklaus Wirth, Swiss computer scientist and chief designer of Algol W, Pascal, Modula, Modula-2, and Oberon.
1959 - Death of Owen Willans Richardson, British…
jlynch | February 14, 2007This morning I'm heading off to the Science Fest To Beat All Science Fests - a.k.a. the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in San Francisco. There I hope to at least hook up with Tara, Janet and Chris Mooney and do some blogging along the way (time permitting).
Assuming all goes well, I may try and post later on today.
jlynch | February 13, 2007February 14th
1468 - Birth of Johann Werner, German mathematician
1848 - Birth of Benjamin Baillaud, French astronomer
1869 - Birth of Charles Wilson, Scottish physicist and Nobel Prize Laureate
1894 - Death of Eugène Charles Catalan, Belgian mathematician
1898 - Birth of Fritz Zwicky, Swiss-American physicist and astronomer
1917 - Birth of Herbert A. Hauptman, American mathematician and Nobel Prize Laureate
1943 - Death of David Hilbert, German mathematician
1946 - ENIAC ("Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer"), the first general-purpose electronic computer, unveiled at the…
jlynch | February 13, 2007Reuters is reporting:
The Kansas Board of Education on Tuesday threw out science standards deemed hostile to evolution, undoing the work of Christian conservatives in the ongoing battle over what to teach U.S. public school students about the origins of life. The board in the central U.S. state voted 6-4 to replace them with teaching standards that mirror the mainstream in science education and eliminate criticisms of evolutionary theory.
Predictably, the Discovery Institute is not happy:
"You have a board in Kansas that is so extreme," said John West, senior fellow at the Discovery…
jlynch | February 13, 2007February 13th
1633 - Galileo Galilei arrives in Rome for his trial before the Inquisition.
1672 - Birth of Étienne François Geoffroy, French chemist
1743 - Birth of Joseph Banks, English botanist and naturalist
1787 - Death of RuÄer BoškoviÄ, Croatian scientist
1805 - Birth of Peter Gustav Dirichlet, German mathematician
1880 - Thomas Edison observes the Edison effect.
1910 - Birth of William Shockley, American physicist and Nobel Laureate
1992 - Death of Nikolay Bogolyubov, Russian mathematician
2004 - The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics discovers the universe's largest known…
jlynch | February 12, 2007
The New York Times has run a story about the young earth creationist (and ex-DI Fellow) Marcus Ross who received his PhD in geological sciences. Predictablly, the denizens of Uncommon Descent see this as some sort of victory. Cordova comments:
He serves as a role model for how ID proponents and even young earth creationists can matriculate through Darwinist controlled institutions.
A role model? Perhaps. But only if one believes that it is OK to lie your way through graduate school. As PZ notes:
He was doing "research" on the distribution of mosasaurs 65 million years ago, but what he was…
jlynch | February 11, 2007February 12th
1612 - Death of Christopher Clavius, German astronomer
1637 - Birth of Jan Swammerdam, Dutch scientist
1665 - Birth of Rudolf Jakob Camerarius, German botanist and physician
1785 - Birth of Pierre Louis Dulong, French physicist
1788 - Birth of Carl Reichenbach, German chemist and philosopher
1799 - Death of Lazzaro Spallanzani, Italian biologist
1804 - Birth of Heinrich Lenz, German physicist
1809 - Birth of Charles Darwin, English naturalist
1916 - Death of Richard Dedekind, German mathematician
1918 - Birth of Julian Schwinger, American physicist and Nobel Prize Laureate…
jlynch | February 11, 2007Chis Allen is a weatherman for WKBO in Kentucky. He is also an idiot. Witness:
My biggest argument against putting the primary blame on humans for climate change is that it completely takes God out of the picture. It must have slipped these people's minds that God created the heavens and the earth and has control over what's going on. (Dear Lord Jesus...did I just open a new pandora's box?) Yeah, I said it. Do you honestly believe God would allow humans to destroy the earth He created? Of course, if you don't believe in God and creationism then I can see why you would easily buy into the…
jlynch | February 11, 2007 As most readers are no doubt aware, Charles Robert Darwin, the discover of descent with modification by means of natural selection, was born on this day in 1809. It is probably safe to say that the science blogosphere will be jam packed with posts in Darwin and his ideas and meatspace will be hosting various "Darwin Day" activities.
For my part, I will be introducing Darwin's ideas to my Origins, Evolution & Creation class this afternoon before we sit down to watch the PBS documentary "Darwin's Dangerous Idea" from the 2001 Evolution mini-series.
Rather than waxing poetically about…
jlynch | February 11, 2007Those wild and crazy guys over at SCQ have come up with the Order of the Science Scouts of Exemplary Repute and Above Average Physique, an organization of which I am proud to be a member. Maybe the physique bit is a stretch, but what the heck. Members are:
not opposed to alcohol.
fond of IPCC reports (especially the pictures).
mostly in agreement with the "truth."
into badges.
grieving for the slow and miserable death of the Hubble Space Telescope.
possibly possessed of supernatural powers.
not in the business of total world domination
committed to the constant and diligent presentation of…