jlynch
Posts by this author
May 18, 2009
(I was originally going to hold off posting this until May 31st, but there seems little point)
I've been blogging here at Scienceblogs since January 2006, nearly three and a half years. During that time I have made many good friends - both fellow bloggers and readers - and have enjoyed the support…
May 18, 2009
From a report released by BIO: The Biotechnology Industry Organization:
On average, only 28% of the high school students taking the ACT , which is a national standardized test for college admission , reached a score indicating college readiness for biology and no state reached even 50%.
Only 52% of…
May 15, 2009
NCSE has announced that two remaining anti-evolution bills have died in committee: Alabama & Missouri.
To recap the year:
Mississippi - dead in committee
Oklahoma - dead in committee
Iowa - dead in committee
New Mexico - dead in committee
Florida - dead in committee
Alabama - dead in committee…
May 15, 2009
Finished grading today, so the Spring semester is finally over. I'm out of here for a few weeks. See you sometime in June.
May 11, 2009
So I'm trying to simplify things in real life as I think I am suffering from information overload (among other things).
First task was to clean up my Facebook friends. From here on, it's family, colleagues and (usually graduate) students. Folks I know only in virtual space are likely to have gotten…
May 10, 2009
Turns out that yesterday I posted my 2000th post here at Scienceblogs without even noticing it. Heh!
May 10, 2009
Back in December 2006 I referred to Francis Beckwith as an ID supporter. This resulted in he informing me that he "has never been much of fan [of] design arguments, ever [and that his] interest in the debate focuses on the jurisprudential questions involving the First Amendment and what could be…
May 9, 2009
I spent this morning at a workshop for K-12 biology teachers. The workshop was organized by the School of Life Sciences here at ASU and gave some 20 students to interact with faculty regarding teaching evolution. My presentation was titled "Teaching Evolution One Icon At A Time" and aimed to…
May 7, 2009
Mark Chu-Carroll has done it so that you don't have to ... read the Dembski & Marks paper that I mentioned a few days back. Shorter MC-C: "Same old rubbish." Read his full verdict here.
Update (5/11): Dembski "responds" (and apparently cannot bring himself to actually name who makes the…
May 4, 2009
"Biological imperatives trump laws."
Quick ... who said that? Evil Darwinist? Nazi eugenicist? Liberal professor? Nope to all three.
Answer is Orson Scott Card - sci-fi hack, proponent of guiltless genocide, and anti-Darwinist - in a screed against gay marriage. One is left wondering whether rape…
May 3, 2009
In early 2009, a bunch of folks at UCSB took over the Torpig botnet for ten days. In that time, they observed more that 180,000 infections and recorded over 70G of data that the botnet captured. During that time, over 8,000 accounts at financial institutions were "acquired".
The report is available…
May 2, 2009
The Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine is a sham concocted by Merck and Elsevier. See here and here. I'm sure there are some sort of ethical issues here.
Update (5/3): Janet and Isis have more on this. Janet notes:
Myself, I'm not really moved by the claim that publishing standards…
May 1, 2009
My postdoc was spent looking at hybridization between humpback (Gila cypha, above) and roundtail (G. robusta) chub in the Colorado river system (see here for a publication that stemmed from that - perhaps sometime I'll post on that work). My fieldwork was at the confluence of the Colorado and…
May 1, 2009
In 2000, Baylor's Michael Polanyi Center (Dembski's pet project) hosted a conference title "The Nature of Nature: An Interdisciplinary Conference on the Role of Naturalism in Science". It now looks like the proceedings of the conference are finally appearing:
Bruce L. Gordon and William A. Dembski…
May 1, 2009
Yet another defeat for the anti-evolutionists. NCSE is reporting that Florida's Senate Bill 2396 has died in committee. To recap:
Mississippi - dead in committee
Oklahoma - dead in committee
Iowa - dead in committee
New Mexico - dead in committee
Florida - dead in committee
Alabama - in committee…
April 29, 2009
Earlier this month we celebrated Paul Nelson Day. Today is yet another ID-related (and as it happens, also Paul Nelson related) anniversary. Four years ago, I posted a piece (reprinted a year and a half later here) on Nelson's forthcoming monograph on common descent. By now, it has been "…
April 29, 2009
Mark posted this on Facebook, but is is so wonderful I need to pass it along:
April 27, 2009
My colleague and friend Kaye Reed has a nice remembrance of Charlie Lockwood in the current issue of Evolutionary Anthropology. I had reason to mention Charlie during my "Last Lecture" and will admit to getting a little choked-up. The article is unfortunately behind a paywall, but any good…
April 24, 2009
In the past I have argued that historians of science probably need to get more involved with the fight for good science education. Michael Barton has brought my attention to historian Abigail Lustig giving testimony before the Texas Board of Education.
April 24, 2009
Last night I was honored to be the first of three faculty members to take part in the 14th annual Last Lecture series here at ASU. The other two talks are next week. In the interests of completeness, I'm posting the slides here, though they are even more cryptic than usual. See if you can…
April 22, 2009
PZ gets it right regarding the Huffington Post: It's the People magazine of the lefty blogosphere. Why anyone pay's attention while Jim Carrey spouts on about autism, I don't know.
April 22, 2009
OK, quick question! As regular reader will know, I have migrated to a Mac. I have tons of presentations in Powerpoint which, while written on a PC, open seamlessly on the new machine. However, when I open them in Keynote, some stuff (often charts) get screwed up and I have to regenerate the slide.…
April 20, 2009
On Thursday I will give a "Last Lecture" at ASU. I'm one of three faculty chosen by students to deliver a talk as if it were our last ever. Here is a news story about the event and below is the portion referring to me:
Lynch tells his students that an undergraduate degree is only the beginning of a…
April 20, 2009
My recent talk at the Sam Nobel Oklahoma Museum of Natural History is now available online on iTunes as a podcast. Here is the link to SNOMNH's podcast feed.
So settle down with a fine beverage and watch me for an hour or so. Feel free to comment below. Oh, and here are the slides:
April 20, 2009
The Big Picture has gorgeous shots taken by the Cassini probe. Above is Rhea.
April 20, 2009
John West over at the DI moans:
David Klinghoffer has a provocative essay commemorating the 10th anniversary of the Columbine High School massacre in Colorado. Klinghoffer notes that Columbine killer Eric Harris was inspired in part by his fanatical devotion to Darwinian natural selection, a trait…