jlynch | May 18, 2006In today's New York Times, A.O. Scott has a wonderful review of The Da Vinci Code which is described as "Ron Howard's adaptation of Dan Brown's best-selling primer on how not to write an English sentence". The review features a number of observations that you don't read every day, for example "movies ... rarely deal with issues like the divinity of Jesus or the search for the Holy Grail. In the cinema such matters are best left to Monty Python."
In short, the movie gets panned. Not surprising really. I thought the book was overated, pseudo-historical, chewing gum for the brain.
jlynch | May 18, 2006Ed linked to a set of 45 "SIgns you might be an ID supporter" and this caught my eye:
35. You resent the implication that ID assumes the Designer has to be supernatural. After all, He could have been a space alien, right?
34. You believe that the laws of Nature, the fundamental constants of physics, and the configuration of the solar system with respect to the rest of the cosmos, all show signs of having been intelligently designed to make it possible for us to exist and to study Nature.
33. You believe both of the above simultaneously, though you can't quite explain how a space alien could…
jlynch | May 17, 2006This little guy is Brachylagus idahoensis (Merriam, 1891), the Columbia Basin pygmy rabbit, the smallest rabbit species in North America, and found in Douglas County in north-central Washington.
Sadly, the species is doomed. The last male purebred rabbit died March 30th, leaving just two females in a captive breeding program; none are believed to exist in the wild..
Another picture is here.
jlynch | May 16, 2006The mothership asks "Will the "human" race be around in 100 years?"
I answer, yes.
I'm not really too taken with the question, hence my brevity.
jlynch | May 16, 2006Interesting research coming out of Arizona State University:
Researchers believe that dynamic regions of the human genome -- "hotspots" in terms of duplications and deletions -- are potentially involved in the rapid evolution of morphological and behavioral characteristics that are genetically determined.
Now, an international team of researchers, including a graduate student and an associate professor from Arizona State University, are finding similar hotspots in chimpanzees, which has implications for the understanding of genomic evolution in all species.
"We found that chimpanzees have…
jlynch | May 14, 2006I've been away for a while, visiting friends in San Diego and wont be back in circulation in meatspace for a few days. However, I hope to resume regular blogging in a day or two. In the meantime, you could do worse than checkout Jason Rosenhouse's blog EvolutionBlog which has joined us here at ScienceBlogs. Jason's a mathematician, but we don't hold that against him :)
jlynch | May 7, 2006On CNBC, Bush has claimed that actions of the passengers on UA 93 "was the first counter-attack to World War III."
World War III ... didn't he get the memo from Podhoretz. World War III is so 1980's.
jlynch | May 6, 2006What happens when about 80 people wearing blue shirts and khakis enter a Best Buy store in New York? Confusion.
jlynch | May 5, 2006"All foreign wars, I do proclaim, live on blood and a mother's pain."
Mrs McGrath - an old Irish song, recently covered by Springsteen.
jlynch | May 5, 2006As Janet and RPM have noted, the mothership has initiated an "Ask A ScienceBlogger" feature - a weekly question that us SBers will (briefly) tackle. This week the question is "if you could cause one invention from the last hundred years never to have been made at all, which would it be, and why?"
Like Janet, my first impulse was to answer "cell phones" and (also like Janet) I then realized that it wasn't the phones but the idiots who use them (loudly) in public or when they should be concentrating on something else (driving, child care, listening to people ...). RPM's answer - nuclear weapons…
jlynch | May 5, 2006
Steven Colbert claims the current administration is "soaring, not sinking. They are re-arranging the deck chairs - on the Hindenburg". Today, Porter Goss resigned as Director of the CIA. And today, in 1937, the Hindenburg was destroyed in Lakehurst, New Jersey. Apt.
jlynch | May 5, 2006Caught "Jazz at Lincoln Center Presents: Music of Miles Davis" last night at the Mesa Center for the Performing Arts. Great show, with Eddie Henderson (trumpet/leader), Jimmy Cobb (drums), Wayne Escoffery (tenor saxophone), Dave Kikoski (piano), Edward Howard (bass), and Steve Wilson (alto sax), featuring such Davis classics as "So What", "On Green Dolphin Street", "Someday My Prince Will Come" and "'Round Midnight." All very laid back and a great way to end a semester. Jimmy Cobb was the drummer for the Kind of Blue sessions (1959) and at 76 is the only surviving member of the band, so that…
jlynch | May 3, 2006No Se Nada highlights (and RPM picks it up) a picture of a statue of Louis Agassiz head-first in the ground after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. All very well. The piece goes on to say:
In response, David Starr Jordon [sic] - Stanford first president, a renowned scientist in his own right, and a frequent sparring partner of Agassiz's on the Darwin/evolution question said, "I always knew he was very fine in the abstract, but he's no good in the concrete."
Unfortunately, David Starr Jordan did not say this. It was a certain "Dr Argyll" who expressed a preference for Agassiz in the abstract…
jlynch | May 3, 2006
This little beauty is Vespa mandarinia, up to two inches long with a three inch wingspan, and a quarter inch stinger. The latter injects venom so strong that it can dissolve human tissue, but they normally feed on honeybees; "Just one of these hornets can kill 40 European honeybees a minute; a handful of the creatures can slaughter 30,000 European honeybees within hours, leaving a trail of severed insect heads and limbs." More here and here. There's another pic below the fold.
(Hat tip to Ocellated)
jlynch | May 1, 2006Coturnix says:
Teaching Biology without Evolution...
...is like teaching English without verbs. What is left are nouns and adjectives. DNA, enzyme, long bone, ductus arteriosus, pretty bird. Rote memorization. The reason why my (adult education) students are afraid of and bored with science to begin with.
I am starting my biology lectures tomorrow. I have no control over the syllabus. The pages and chapters on evolution were removed from the syllabus. Sorry, but I am starting with evolution tomorrow night. I cannot speak English without verbs.
And I agree. Having had the same experience about…
jlynch | May 1, 2006PZ says:
I'm willing to get along with and even support the religious, as long as they don't threaten to suborn secular institutions to privilege religious belief.
And I agree.