jlynch | February 4, 2007February 4th
1615 - Death of Giovanni Battista della Porta, Italian physicist
1725 - Birth of Dru Drury, English entomologist
1774 - Death of Charles Marie de La Condamine, French mathematician and geographer
1778 - Birth of A. P. de Candolle, Swiss botanist
1846 - Birth of Nikolay Umov, Russian physicist
1875 - Birth of Ludwig Prandtl, German physicist
1896 - Birth of Friedrich Hund, German physicist
1906 - Birth of Clyde Tombaugh, American astronomer
1928 - Death of Hendrik Lorentz, Dutch physicist and Nobel Prize Laureate
1974 - Death of Satyendra Nath Bose, Indian physicist
1987 -…
jlynch | February 3, 2007February 3rd
1737 - Death of Tommaso Ceva, Italian Mathematician
1754 - Birth of George Crabbe, English naturalist
1817 - Birth of Achille Ernest Oscar Joseph Delesse, French geologist
1821 - Birth of Elizabeth Blackwell, American physician
1862 - Death of Jean-Baptiste Biot, French physicist
1893 - Birth of Gaston Julia, French mathematician
1920 - Birth of Henry Heimlich, American physician
1929 - Death of Agner Krarup Erlang, Danish scientist
1956 - Death of Émile Borel, French mathematician
1966 - The unmanned Soviet Luna 9 spacecraft makes the first controlled rocket-assisted…
jlynch | February 2, 2007A short while back I presented a quote by historian Peter Dear regarding Darwin's ideas about species. Of the quote I commented that it was "so wrong it is not even funny". Professor Dear took exception to that comment (especially after John Wilkins waded in with his view) and commented that "[i]f you want to show that I'm wrong about Darwin here,
give me some evidence from Darwin himself, rather than telling us what biologists and philosophers of biology believe nowadays."
Now John has provided the first of a series of posts on the development of Darwin's writings on species. Speaking of the…
jlynch | February 2, 2007
I hit my deadline a little early (hence the burst of posts today) only to be reminded that the next two weeks is going to be just as bad as the previous ones. Contrary to the impressions of some, academics have to justify their existence and the annual self-evaluations have to be read, judged, and commented upon by their peers. And unfortunately, this year I am one of those peers. So, along with class preps, theses drafts and the normal stuff to take care of, I have to work my way through a bunch of my colleagues'
self-evaluations and the evaluations that their students wrote of them. All to…
jlynch | February 2, 2007A couple days back I passed a link on to Orac regarding the International Alchemy Conference to be held in Vegas this coming October. Now he's gone and devoted his Friday Dose of Woo to it, so wander on over and take a read.
jlynch | February 2, 2007Looking for "cutting-edge research that demonstrates the young earth model, the global Flood, the non-evolutionary origin of the species, and other evidences that correlate to the biblical accounts"? The ICR has launched the International Journal of Creation - "a professional peer-reviewed journal of interdisciplinary scientific research that presents evidence for recent creation within a biblical framework." It's
edited by Andrew Snelling ... who hasn't himself published in a mainstream journal since 1987, so I guess "professional" means "Bible-believing".
jlynch | February 2, 2007
Buddha in Glory
Center of all centers, core of cores,
almond self-enclosed, and growing sweet--
all this universe, to the furthest stars
all beyond them, is your flesh, your fruit.
Now you feel how nothing clings to you;
your vast shell reaches into endless space,
and there the rich, thick fluids rise and flow.
Illuminated in your infinite peace,
a billion stars go spinning through the night,
blazing high above your head.
But in you is the presence that
will be, when all the stars are dead.
Rainer Maria Rilke
jlynch | February 2, 2007February 2nd
1522 - Birth of Lodovico Ferrari, Italian mathematician
1695 - Birth of William Borlase, English naturalist
1704 - Death of Guillaume François Antoine, Marquis de l'Hôpital, French mathematician
1712 - Death of Martin Lister, English naturalist and physician
1768 - Death of Robert Smith, English mathematician
1786 - Birth of Jacques Philippe Marie Binet, French mathematician
1802 - Birth of Jean Baptiste Boussingault, French chemist
1829 - Birth of Alfred Brehm, German zoologist
1841 - Birth of François-Alphonse Forel, Swiss hydrologist
1842 - Birth of Yulian…
jlynch | February 1, 2007
OK, I promise this is the last Comet McNaught photo. But it was too cool to pass up - the comet and the Southern Lights. Here is a larger version.
jlynch | February 1, 2007February 1st
1462 - Birth of Johannes Trithemius, German cryptographer
1761 - Birth of Christian Hendrik Persoon, South African mycologist
1897 - Death of Constantin von Ettingshausen, Austrian geologist
1903 - Death of George Gabriel Stokes, Irish physicist
1958 - Death of Clinton Davisson, American physicist and Nobel Prize Laureate
1970 - Death of Alfréd Rényi, Hungarian mathematician
1976 - Death of Werner Heisenberg, German physicist and Nobel Prize Laureate
1976 - Death of George Whipple, American scientist and Nobel Prize Laureate
2003 - Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrates…
jlynch | January 31, 2007Today I ran a workshop for my freshmen on argumentative writing, so this seems appropriate:
Remember folks, an argument is "a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition" not "the automatic gainsaying of any statement the other person makes."
jlynch | January 31, 2007
The more astute among you will have noticed that I have been awol more-or-less for the past week. I have a major deadline to hit on Friday and once that is done (and I have rested) I will resume my usual posting.
For the moment, check out four books that I am currently reviewing for various print journals:
jlynch | January 31, 2007January 31st
1632 - Death of Joost Bürgi, Swiss clockmaker and mathematician
1868 - Birth of Theodore William Richards, American chemist, Nobel laureate
1881 - birth of Irving Langmuir, American chemist, Nobel laureate
1896 - Birth of Sofya Yanovskaya, Russian mathematician
1929 - Birth of Rudolf Mössbauer, German physicist, Nobel laureate
1958 - Explorer I - The first successful launch of an American satellite into orbit.
jlynch | January 30, 2007January 30th
1720 - Birth of Charles De Geer, Swedish industrialist and entomologist
1822 - Birth of Franz Ritter von Hauer, Austrian geologist
1858 - Death of Coenraad Jacob Temminck, Dutch zoologist
1899 - Birth of Max Theiler, South African virologist, Nobel Prize Laureate
1925 - Birth of Douglas Engelbart, American computer scientist
1928 - Death of Johannes Andreas Grib Fibiger, Danish scientist, Nobel Prize Laureate
1948 - Death of Orville Wright, American aviation pioneer
1951 - Death of Ferdinand Porsche, Austrian automotive engineer
1958 - Death of Ernst Heinkel, German aviation…
jlynch | January 29, 2007January 29th
1688 - Birth of Emanuel Swedenborg, Swedish scientist and philosopher
1810 - Birth of Ernst Kummer, German mathematician
1846 - Birth of Karol Olszewski, Polish scientist
1886 - Karl Benz patents the first successful gasoline-driven automobile.
1926 - Birth of Abdus Salam, Pakistani physicist, Nobel Prize Laureate
1934 - Death of Fritz Haber, German chemist, Nobel Prize Laureate
1947 - Birth of Linda B. Buck, American scientist, Nobel Prize Laureate
1953 - Birth of Hwang Woo-Suk, South Korean biomedical scientist who faked stem cell research.
jlynch | January 28, 2007
In memory of those that slipped the bonds of Earth on this day in 1986.
I was a freshman in college. The flight started at 11:08 EST - just after four in the afternoon in Ireland - and I remember watching the launch on CNN which was the only channel that was showing the event live.
Here James Oberg demolishes seven myths about the Challenger tragedy - including the idea that millions of people saw the "explosion" (and the reason for quotes will become obvious if you read the article) live on television. While some of Oberg's points were not news to me, I had not realized that the "[t]he…
jlynch | January 28, 2007January 28th
1540 - Birth of Ludolph van Ceulen, German mathematician
1608 - Birth of Giovanni Alfonso Borelli, Italian physiologist and physicist
1611 - Birth of Johannes Hevelius, Polish astronomer
1622 - Birth of Adrien Auzout, French astronomer
1687 - Death of Johannes Hevelius, Polish astronomer
1701 - Birth of Charles Marie de La Condamine, French mathematician and geographer
1755 - Birth of Samuel Thomas von Sömmering, German physician
1820 - Expedition led by Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen and Mikhail Petrovich Lazarev discovered the Antarctic continent
1864 - Death of Émile…