jlynch | July 7, 2007Births
1746 - Giuseppe Piazzi, Italian astronomer
1843 - Camillo Golgi, Italian physician and Nobel laureate
jlynch | July 6, 2007
This is interesting - a chart of presidential approval ratings going back to Truman (click to embiggen). Interesting that the highest approval rates occurred in wartime (Truman post WWII, Bush pere in Iraq, and Bush fils post 9/11) and that all of these positive rates plunged significantly. Also interesting is that Clinton is the only president whose approval seems of have actually increased during his term.
(source)
jlynch | July 6, 2007
Wendy the Whippet has a genetic disorder that has resulted in an exceptionally muscular appearance. For comparison, this is what a normal whippet looks like. Story here, ht to Fark.com.
Photograph by Bruce Stotesbury, Times Colonist
jlynch | July 6, 2007In the past, ID supporters have not only attacked evolution, but also the link between AIDS and HIV (witness Phil Johnson, Tom Bethell, and Jonathan Wells) and anthropogenic global warming (witness the expectorations of Dave Springer - a.k.a. DaveScott - over at Uncommon Descent). Now, it appears that perpetual motion (and the apparently DOA Steorn Orbo project) "is perhaps the best physical evidence I have ever seen against the absurd assumptions of materialism." Perhaps we now need to teach the controversy within physics?
The money quote:
These clever Irish researchers have demonstrated…
jlynch | July 6, 2007On his 61st birthday, a July 2-3 Newsweek poll reveals Bush’s approval rating to be a scant 26%, the lowest for any sitting president in 35 years (Nixon sank to 23%). Amazingly, 60% of Republicans are brainwashed enough to approve of Bush’s job performance.
jlynch | July 5, 2007Events
1885 - Louis Pasteur successfully tests his vaccine against rabies on Joseph Meister.
Births
1766 - Alexander Wilson, Scottish-born naturalist
1785 - William Jackson Hooker, English botanist
1903 - Hugo Theorell, Nobel laureate
Deaths
1476 - Regiomontanus, German astronomer
1854 - Georg Ohm, German physicist
1976 - Fritz Lenz, German geneticist
jlynch | July 5, 2007
Events
1687 - Isaac Newton publishes Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica.
1951 - William Shockley invents the junction transistor.
1996 - Birth of Dolly, first cloned mammal. Dolly died in 2003 and now resides at the Royal Museum of Scotland (above)
1998 - Japan launches a probe to Mars, and thus joins the United States and Russia as a space exploring nation.
Births
1888 - Herbert Spencer Gasser, American physiologist, Nobel Prize laureate
1891 - John Howard Northrop, American chemist, Nobel Prize laureate
1904 - Ernst Mayr, American ornithologist and evolutionary biologist…
jlynch | July 4, 2007June was the month of greatest traffic ever here at Strangerfruit with 51,656 page views. That’s a mere speck compared to Pharyngula with 1,411,566, but I’m happy nonetheless.
More details below the fold ...
Top Five June Posts
From Sea to Shining Sea
An international coalition of non-religious ID scientists & scholars
Surprising silence over Behe’s book
66% of Americans may be Young Earthers
Manta birth caught on video
Top Five Posts Overall
From Sea to Shining Sea
An international coalition of non-religious ID scientists & scholars
Polar Bears are threatened
Surprising silence…
jlynch | July 4, 2007Back in October, Afarensis introduced us to the Douc langur (Pygathrix nemaeus), and noted that the species was comprised of three subspecies, one of which was the grey-shanked douc langur (P. n. cinerea). That subspecies is one of the 25 rarest primates in the world and fewer that 1000 individuals were believed to exist in Vietnam. Encouragingly, AFP is reporting that a new population of at least 116 individuals (and perhaps 180) has been discovered in Quang Nam province. Scientists believe that any more individuals may live in the surrounding un-surveyed forest.
jlynch | July 4, 2007
My post-doctoral research was in hybridization among endangered desert fishes here in the American Southwest, so it has made me happy to read that a new population of the endangered Desert pupfish (Cyprinodon macularius, above) has mysteriously appeared in man-made research ponds in Salton Sea, California. Many of the over 1000 specimens are juveniles, which has lead scientists to infer that substantial breeding is going on in the ponds.
jlynch | July 4, 2007
This little cutie (click for bigger version) is the first Maclaud’s horseshoe bat (Rhinolophus maclaudi) ever photographed and the first seen in the wild in 40 years. The species was rediscovered in the highland forests of Guinea and is one of the approximately seventy species of horseshoe bat within the genus Rhinolophus.
Of course, nothing comes close to Centurio senex in batty beauty.
Picture source: National Geographic
jlynch | July 4, 2007Dawkins is "is just another angry atheist, trading on his reputation as an evolutionist and spokesperson for science to vent his personal opinions about religion." So says David Sloan Wilson. That should get some fireworks started on this 4th.
jlynch | July 4, 2007
Events
1054 - A supernova is observed near ζ Tauri. For several months it remains bright enough to be seen during the day. Its remnants form the Crab Nebula (above).
1934 - Leo Szilard patents the chain-reaction design for the atomic bomb.
1997 - NASA’s Pathfinder space probe lands on the surface of Mars.
2005 - The Deep Impact collider hits the comet Tempel 1.
Births
1854 - Victor BabeÅ, Romanian bacteriologist
Deaths
1850 - William Kirby, English entomologist
1910 - Giovanni Schiaparelli, Italian astronomer
1934 - Maria Sklodowska-Curie, Nobel Prize in Chemistry and Physics
1977 -…
jlynch | July 3, 2007
Events
1844 - The last pair of Great Auks (Alca impennis, above) is killed.
Births
1875 - Ferdinand Sauerbruch, German surgeon
Deaths
1672 - Francis Willughby, English biologist
1790 - Jean-Baptiste L. Romé de l’Isle, French chemist
1954 - Siegfried Handloser, German physician
jlynch | July 2, 2007See here. Words fail me at the moment.
Update: Ed makes a good point,
Ethically, it's repulsive but not exactly anything new. The solution is to amend the Constitution to set limits on the president's ability to pardon and commute sentences. At the very least, they should be forbidden from pardoning or commuting the sentences of anyone they know personally or have any substantial involvement with. We do not allow people to serve on juries involving defendants they know or have worked with, nor do we allow judges to preside over trials where there is such a clear conflict of interest. The…
jlynch | July 1, 2007Births
1862 - William Henry Bragg, English physicist, Nobel laureate
1884 - Alfons Maria Jakob, German neurologist
1906 - Hans Bethe, German-born nuclear physicist, Nobel laureate
1946 - Richard Axel, American scientist, Nobel laureate
Deaths
1621 - Thomas Harriot, English astronomer
1843 - Samuel Hahnemann, German physician
1926 - Ãmile Coué, French psychologist
jlynch | July 1, 2007Jerry Coyne has posted a reply to Behe’s reply to his original review of Edge of Evolution. A sample:
Behe excoriates me for claiming that his defeat (and that of intelligent design [ID]) in the Dover case was more damaging than the scientific criticisms levelled at Darwin’s Black Box. His mistake here is assuming that "victory" is more pressing in the scientific than in the social arena. But it is Behe himself who has chosen to take his challenge to the social arena, publishing his ideas in a trade book and thereby bypassing the usual scientific route of having these ideas adjudicated by his…