jlynch | December 28, 2006
Over at Bad Astronomy, Phil Plait has his top ten astronomical images from 2006. The winner is above, but do drop over and checkout the rest.
jlynch | December 28, 2006I don't really have time to write anything on this at the moment as I'm busy with another project, but I will note that American Naturalist is making available an interesting paper that uses the AVIDA system to study ecological specialization in digital organisms.
The transition from generalist to specialist may entail the loss of unused traits or abilities, resulting in narrow niche breadth. Here we examine the process of specialization in digital organisms--self-replicating computer programs that mutate, adapt, and evolve. Digital organisms obtain energy by performing computations with…
jlynch | December 27, 2006
On this day in 1829, Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, Le Chavalier de Lamarck died penniless and blind in Paris. Lamarck is, of course, popularly remembered as the father of Lamarckism. But let us remember a few things - Darwin accepted "Lamarckism" (the inheritance of acquired characteristics) and Lamarck was an evolutionist at a time when the likes of Georges Cuvier were vehemently anti-evolution. Yes, he was wrong about spontaneous generation. Yes, he was wrong about the inheritance of acquired characteristics.
Yes, he was wrong as a teleologist. And perhaps he was wrong about the…
jlynch | December 27, 2006June 2006:
Microsoft senior vice president Bob Muglia opened up TechEd 2006 in Boston Sunday evening by proclaiming that Windows Vista was the most secure operating system in the industry. But a bold statement can only go so far, and much of this week's conference has been spent reinforcing that point.
December 2006:
About a month after the business release of Windows Vista, and a month before its consumer release, hackers and security researchers have uncovered at least six major security flaws in Microsoft's brand new operating system, the New York Times is reporting.
Considering this,…
jlynch | December 26, 2006
Today in 1831, Charles Darwin left Plymouth on board the HMS Beagle for a voyage that would be epoch-making in the history of science. He would return to England on the 2nd of October 1836. In 1837 he would begin a series of notebooks that would culminate in his 1842 "pencil sketch" of his theory of transmutation through natural selection.
jlynch | December 26, 2006
Note: Since I'm getting a lot of queries about this photo ... I don't own copyright for the photo and don't have the contact information for the source of the picture. I got the photo off the web and neglected to note the source. Googling "polar bear" should result in the original, but that may mean you have to browse many pages before you find it. Good luck!
The Washington Post is reporting that the Bush Administration wants to list polar bears as threatened under the Endangered Species Act,
"We've reviewed all the available data that leads us to believe the sea ice the polar bear depends…
jlynch | December 26, 2006At the risk of restarting the arguments of last month (and,
oh, what fun they were!), I will note that Richard Dawkins writes:
Congratulations to P Z Myers on this brilliant piece of satire. It applies not just to Allen Orr's review in NYRB, but to all those many reviews of TGD that complain of my lack of reading in theology. My own stock reply ("How many learned books of fairyology and hobgoblinology have you read?") is far less witty.
Far less witty indeed. And also somewhat problematic.
I want to stress here that I am not going to discuss the truth of the claim that The God Delusion may…
jlynch | December 25, 2006
From AP:
Reaching into the back of a truck, U.S. anti-immigration activist Don Pauly [founder of the Emigration Party of Nevada] grabs a Mexican flag, a can of lighter fuel and an aluminum baking tray and heads to the curbside outside the Mexican consulate. As a small group of police officers, protesters and puzzled bystanders look on, he douses the green, red and white flag with fuel and spits on it for good measure, while an eye-patch wearing accomplice [Laine Lawless, founder of the Arizona-based Border Guardians]
strikes a match. ...
In one recent Internet posting [Pauly] called for…
jlynch | December 25, 2006ASU got beaten by Hawai'i 41-24 in the Hawai'i Bowl, Leading 10-3 at the half, but down 24-10 late in the third, ASU rallied for two touchdowns and had a third negated by penalty to nearly pull out a final win for Koetter. But no joy. You can't win a game if you allow the opposing QB throw for 559 yards and five TDs, while your All-America tight end Zach Miller (in what might be his final ASU game) has just one catch for three yards. We finish 7-6 for the season. Let's see what Dennis Erickson can do with this.
jlynch | December 25, 2006
Isaac Newton was born on Christmas Day 1642 (Julian calender). As Alexander Pope famously said. "Nature and nature's laws lay hid in night;, God said 'Let Newton be' and all was light."
jlynch | December 23, 2006
I'm going to be force myself to remain offline for the next few days, so I just want to take the opportunity to wish all my readers a peaceful holiday season. Back soon ...
jlynch | December 23, 2006
Over at Pharyngula, PZ has a nice story about how the Doushantuo fossils (example on right), thought to be cleavage-stage animal embryos from 580 mybp, may in fact be fossilized bacteria (example on left). Check it out.
jlynch | December 22, 2006
With the recent bad news about the vaquita and the Yantzee river dolphin, it is good to have some positive news to report about cetaceans. This press release, from the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, reports
that four elusive Arnoux's Beaked Whales (Berardius arnuxii) have been spotted. As the release notes:
The Arnoux's Beaked Whales is one of the least known species of the Beaked Whales family (Ziphidae), itself poorly known in general. Arnoux's is one of the biggest species amongst beaked whales. The ones observed were probably 9 metre long. These deep-sea…
jlynch | December 22, 2006Seen at TPM:
According to Network World's Paul McNamara, the communications director for U.S. Rep. Denny Rehberg (R-MT), Todd Shriber, hired two 'hackers' to break into the computer of his alma mater, Texas Christian University, and change his college grades.
He went trolling for the law-breaking 'hackers' on a computer security website. But instead of finding anyone to do his dirty work he came across a couple non-criminally minded techies who proceeded to chat him up about his scheme, draw out in explicit detail that what he was asking them to do involved mulitple felonies and then posted…
jlynch | December 22, 2006So I survived jumping out of a perfectly good plane.
All I can say is what a rush once you get over the "what the hell am I doing here"-feeling that is inevitable. Twenty of your closest friends squeeze into a Twin Otter, climb to 13,000 feet, and amazingly quickly decant themselves (as harnessed pairs) into the void. You rapidly accelerate to approximately 120 mph, freefall for a minute (feeling as, I imagine, a dog must do with its head out the window of a speeding car). At 5000 feet,
you pull the rip cord. You jerk up. All goes quiet. The ride down from here takes about three minutes, and…
jlynch | December 22, 2006
I'm not going to be around today. As a present to my wife, I'm taking her sky-diving for the first time - a harness jump from 13,000 feet with approximately one minute of free-fall. It's a surprise, so shhhhhhhh! Actually, by the time you read this, we will be beginning our short orientation before hitting the skies.
Perhaps the real surprise is that I'm going to be jumping as well - I'm not a huge fan of heights (though I like flying), so this may be interesting.
Pictured above, via Google Earth is Eloy (AZ) at 13,000 feet, looking SE towards Tucson. The airport (and thus the starting…
jlynch | December 21, 2006While some may be blogging about large extinct beasties, it's also worth remember the little ones. AP is reporting:
The discovery of fossilized remains of a mouse-like animal that lived at least 16 million years ago is the first hard evidence that New Zealand had its own indigenous land mammals, a researcher said Thursday.
New Zealand paleontologist Trevor Worthy and his team say they discovered two parts of a jaw and a femur (thighbone) -- about the size of a fingernail -- during digs in New Zealand's Central Otago region from 2002 until 2004. Their findings were published in the…
jlynch | December 20, 2006
Regular readers may remember that I have a softspot for catfish and earlier this year purchased a lace catfish (Synodontis nigrita), a species native to many African countries. The genus Synodontis (Cuvier 1816) is interesting for a number
of reasons. For example, S. multipunctatus (the gorgeous fish pictured above) is the only fish known to practice brood parasitism: it manages to mix it eggs with those of mouthbrooding cichlids in Lake Tanganyika, its larvae grow faster than those of the host and feed on them.
Lake Tanganyika is, of course, famous for the cichlids which have been studied…
jlynch | December 20, 2006
National Geographic is reporting:
The recently declared extinction of the Chinese river dolphin has focused attention on the plight of another imperiled marine mammal--the world's smallest porpoise.
Found only in waters off Mexico, the vaquita [Phocoena sinus] may now be the most endangered of any whale or dolphin species, due to the animal's frequent and fatal entanglements in fishing nets, experts say.
The International Committee for the Recovery of the Vaquita (CIRVA), a conservation research group, estimates only 250 to 400 of the elusive marine mammals remain.
Those numbers, if…