Bits and Pieces
jlynch | February 25, 2006When I was growing up in Ireland, the Olympics were something worth watching; amateur athletes not getting monetary compensation, giving it their all, and happy to do so because it was the Olympics. Perhaps a major factor was the fact that Irish athletes were often outside shots to win, and when they did medal, it was priceless.
Since coming to this country in 1994. I have to say that any love of the Olympics has been slowly but surely bled out of me. It's hard to choose why - the constant jingoism of the commentators, the human "interest" stories that go on longer than the actual events,…
jlynch | February 23, 2006Given the fact that Henry Thoby Prinsep has appeared twice on these pages over the past few days, and that Nick referred to him as a "footnote in history with a weird name" (I'm not picking on you Nick!), it only seems right that I share some information on him.
Prinsep (1792 - 1878) was a civil servant that work for the British government in India and eventually served as a member of the important Council of India for sixteen years. As an obituary for his son, Val, noted, Prinsep was "one of the ablest of Indian Civil Servants of his time; he was Persian Secretary to the Government, and was…
jlynch | February 21, 2006This is just too funny for words. This weekend, Boingboing ran a story about a woman who lost her camera while on holiday, and of a Canadian family that found it, but refuses to return it because doing so would upset their son. Cory received this letter:
Hello doctorow,
I am sure that you must have have proof that this camera was stolen and that you just would not be accusing someone of something that you know nothing about ? I am a lawer and am interested infinding out your response please respond as I am interested in finding out what proof you have.
Regards
Don Deveny Queens council 2006-…
jlynch | February 19, 2006Rob Skipper is a philosopher and historian of biology whom I had the pleasure of spending some time with last year at the Dibner Institute Seminar at Woods Hole. So, I note that he and his group at the University of Cincinatti have a new blog, hpb etc. Drop by and say hello!
jlynch | February 15, 2006I like Firefox and have been using it since it was a very early beta. However, of late I've noticed that it is really hogging memory. Turns out, it's a "feature" (see this Slashdot article). More importantly, you can fix the "feature" but page loading will take a little hit.
jlynch | February 13, 2006Over at Slashdot, there is a story discussing readers' first computers. The first computer I owned was a ZX-81 with an 8k ROM, 1k RAM and a Z80A cpu (more specs here). I learned to program in BASIC and assembly on it and stored programs on audio tape. That was 1982. In 1984, I got a Commodore 64 - a whooping 64k of memory, great graphics (sprites, anyone?) and sound. I think it was 1990 before I bought a computer that ran Windows. My next machine wont.
jlynch | February 11, 2006Went and bought some new fish for my tank today - a sun catfish (Horabagrus brachysoma) and a lace catfish (Synodontis sp.). I admit to having a certain liking for catfish species. These two will join my peppered corys (Corydoras paleatus) and common plec (Hypostomus punctatus) at the bottom of the tank, while the top and mid-layers have a mixture of danios, guppies and swordtails. I think I need a bigger tank :)
jlynch | February 1, 2006 Some quick blasts as it's mid-week, I'm busy, and probably wont do much blogging until the weekend.
Last night Bush said: "[W]e need to encourage children to take more math and science and to make sure those courses are rigorous enough to compete with other nations." Rigorous ... as in "I think that part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought. Youâre asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, the answer is yes"? Chris comments here.
Over at Uncommon Descent, Dave Springer loses it and probably gets bitch-slapped by Dembski. Details here…
jlynch | January 22, 2006Over at Pharyngula PZ has a nice post on sexual selection in Swordtails (Xiphophorus helleri). By a strange coincidence, I bought a couple of male neon swordtails yesterday for my tank and was reminded why the staff in many pet stores know nothing about their stock. Male swordtails have an elongated caudal fin - hence the name - and I asked the clerk for two male fish. He disappeared off to the front of the store, came back after a minute, only to announce to me that "We can't tell which ones are male." Ummm. So I set him straight, showing him that the tank contained two visiblly different…
jlynch | January 21, 2006Scienceblogs got a mention on BoingBoing - which if you don't know, is well worth checking out daily - and I'm seeing a spike in visits from that site. So, welcome one and all!
jlynch | January 13, 2006I didn't really have time to blog anything today, primarily because I was preparing a talk on the Cambrian explosion that I am giving tonight. The weekend will likely be quiet as well, as I need to finish preparations for the new semester which starts on Tuesday. So, for those of you who are perhaps new to stranger fruit, here's a list of some of my favorite old posts to keep you amused until I write something new.
Revisiting Rivista
A Sermon on Sermonti
Testable ID? Close but no cigar?
"Methodological naturalism does not yield answers"
Peer Review and ID
A man for this season ⦠research for…
jlynch | January 11, 2006So I've finally decided to move the whole blog over to here ... at least until I get sick of MoveableType :) You no longer will have to check my old blog, except when I link back to old articles. Here's hoping this works out.
jlynch | January 10, 2006With my move over to ScienceBlogs I have been thinking about the direction I want to take my blogging. Readers of my old blog will remember that I spent a lot of the time their ranting about intelligent design, politics, ASU sports, etc. I have decided to continue doing so over there, so if you are new to me, you may want to check it out. This site will just be me on science, history of science, and the teaching of both of those. Occasional cross-postings may occur from the other site as needed. I expect to probably blog in the region of four or five times a week here, and who knows how…
sb admin | January 10, 2006So what do you see? A groove and some lines? Truth be told, this is possibly the oldest recorded chordate fossil (or, should I say, one of a number of seventeen specimens of same). It dates from the pre-Cambrian - i.e. before 543 million years ago - during a period known as the Ediacarian. Found by Ross Faraghar seven years ago in the Flinders Range of Australia, the specimens represent our earliest view of chordate evolution, that is, the evolution of the group that we belong to (along with a few squishy things, and the more familiar fish, amphibians, reptiles, and mammals). Unfortunately,…
jlynch | December 11, 2005Relaxing at the moment, listening to Charles Mingus' Dynasty [amaz] and was reminded of a quote that is attributed to him: "Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity." In many ways, Darwin made the complicated awesomely simple.