jlynch | May 1, 2006
As of today, 2,401 US soldiers dead; over 2,150 since "major combat operations" were declared to be finished.
Over 34,000 civilian deaths.
Glad it's working out so well for everyone.
Edit: I'll note that Scott McClellan, when asked today whether the mission has been accomplished, replied "We are on the way to accomplishing the mission and achieving victory."
jlynch | May 1, 2006
A new study of side-blotched lizards [Uta stansburiana] in California has revealed the genetic underpinnings of altruistic behavior in this common lizard species, providing new insights into the long-standing puzzle of how cooperation and altruism can evolve. The study, led by researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, offers the first evidence in vertebrates of an important theoretical concept in evolutionary biology known as "greenbeard" altruism. (source)
From the press release:
The paper describes unrelated male lizards that form cooperative partnerships to protect their…
jlynch | May 1, 2006This more or less encapsulates everything that is wrong with this country. Not only the sheer mind-numbing vapidity of the family, but the fact that this is seen as "news". Argh!
jlynch | April 30, 2006
Seems that Stephen Colbert made things a little uncomfortable for Shrub at the White House Correspondent Dinner on Saturday night. He and Laura Bush were unsmiling at the end of Colbert's wonderful takedown. You can read more here, there is a transcript here, and a torrent of the video here.
As Colbert walked from the podium, when it was over, the president and First Lady gave him quick nods, unsmiling. The president shook his hand and tapped his elbow, and left immediately.
Those seated near Bush told [Editor & Publisher]'s Joe Strupp, who was elsewhere in the room, that Bush had…
jlynch | April 29, 2006One last poem for National Poetry Month. I had a number to possible poems that I was considering, but in the end settled with Donagh MacDonagh's "Dublin Made Me" - I have a love-hate relationship with Dublin in that I loved what it was when I was growing up there and hate what it has become (a generic European city). MacDonagh expressed the arrogance of city-boys like me.
Dublin made me and no little town
With the country closing in on its streets
The cattle walking proudly on its pavements
The jobbers, the gombeenmen and the cheats
Devouring the fair-day between them
A public-house to half…
jlynch | April 29, 2006As usual, GrrlScientist started it ...
Your Theme Song is Comfortably Numb by Pink Floyd
"There is no pain, you are receding.
A distant ship's smoke on the horizon.
You are only coming through in waves."
You haven't been feeling a lot lately, and you think that's a good thing.
The comfortable part is nice... but you should really work on numb.
What's Your Theme Song?
I can live with that. Afarensis, Orac, GrrlScientist and I are all, apparently, introverted screw-ups. It's all a little suspect though - PZ was characterized as "Heartbreaker, superflirt, player... you've been called all of…
jlynch | April 28, 2006I'm procrastinating a little as, like Janet, I have a stack of grading staring at me. The good news is that two of my three classes this semester are over, the bad is that there is still grading to be done, along with end of semester administrivia. Still, two weeks should see it all over and me hanging with a buddy in San Diego for a few days. So, to aid my procrastination, I'll do the ABC meme thingie that Janet and RPM have already completed. See below the fold.
Accent: Irish. It used to be a lot stronger, though compared to many Irish accents it was always kind of neutral. Teaching in the…
jlynch | April 27, 2006From Duke University:
Paleontologists at the Duke Lemur Center have assembled a new picture of a 35-million-year-old fossil mammal -- and they even have added a hint of sound.
By painstakingly measuring hundreds of specimens of a fossil mammal called Thyrohyrax, recovered from the famous fossil beds of Egypt's Fayum Province, the researchers determined that males of this now-extinct species -- and only males -- had oversized, swollen lower jaws shaped much like a banana. Further, the team speculated, the animals may have used the balloonlike structural chamber that shaped their bizarre jaws…
jlynch | April 26, 2006 Mothers are important ... especially if you are a spotted hyena (Crocuta crocuta). From the NSF:
Scientists have discovered that a dominant hyena puts her cubs on the road to success before they are born by passing on high levels of certain hormones that make her budding young leaders more aggressive and sexually advanced.
The report, published in the April 27 issue of Nature, is the first study in mammals to demonstrate a relationship between a female's social rank and her ability to influence her offspring's behavior through prenatal hormone transfer. Previously, this phenomenon had only…
jlynch | April 26, 2006Since GrrlScientist raised the stake by giving a poem by the zoologist Arthur O'Shaughnessy, here's one by marine biologist Walter Garstang (1868-1949) called "Ballad of the Veliger or how the Gastropod got its Twist" from 1928.
The Veliger's a lively tar, the liveliest afloat,
A whirling wheel on either side propels his little boat;
But when the danger signal warns his bustling submarine,
He stops the engine, shuts the port, and drops below unseen.
He's witnessed several changes in pelagic motor-craft;
The first he sailed was just a tub, with a tiny cabin aft.
An Archi-mollusk fashioned it…
jlynch | April 26, 2006Ann Coulter's new book Godless: The Church of Liberalism will apparently deal (in part) with evolution:
Then, of course, there's the liberal creation myth: Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.
For liberals, evolution is the touchstone that separates the enlightened from the benighted. But Coulter neatly refutes the lie that liberals are rationalists guided by the ideals of free inquiry and the scientific method. She exposes the essential truth about Darwinian evolution that liberals refuse to confront: It is bogus science.
Writing with a keen appreciation for genuine science, Coulter reveals…
jlynch | April 24, 2006riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.
So begins James Joyce's Finnegans Wake, a work that makes Ulysses read like Dr Seuss. I just love that phrase, "from swerve of shore to bend of bay" ... reminds me of Dublin Bay.
Famously, Finnegans Wake gave us
Three quarks for Muster Mark!
Sure he hasn't got much of a bark
And sure any he has it's all beside the mark.
a chorus "sung" by seagulls and from which the term 'quark' was taken by Murray Gell-Mann.
jlynch | April 24, 2006Another poem for National Poetry Month, this time by W.H. Auden (my second favorite after Yeats). In this case, it's "Epitaph on a Tyrant" from 1939.
Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after,
And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;
He knew human folly like the back of his hand,
And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;
When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,
And when he cried the little children died in the streets.
Draw your own conclusions.
jlynch | April 24, 2006Haven't had time to read this yet as my print copy only arrived yesterday, but there's a review of Sean Carroll's From DNA to Diversity and Endless Forms Most Beautiful along with Kirschner & Gerhart's The Plausibility of Life in this week's New York Review of Books. For those of you who don't subscribe, it's freely available online. I'm sure PZ may have something to say.
jlynch | April 24, 2006About a week ago, I asked readers to design a banner for the blog. Thanks to everyone who submitted an entry ... it was (trust me) a difficult choice. As you can probably see, we have a winner! The banner was designed by Dora Ng, an ex-student of mine who is a talented graphic designer, and apparently likes badgers as well. Long story.
jlynch | April 23, 2006
In February, I introduced a Sun Catfish (Horabagrus brachysoma) into my tank. Since then, he's probably grown about three-quarters of an inch in length. The species is a member of the the catfish family Bagridae, a widely distributed and speciose (some 30 genera, 210 species) taxon. Bagrids have four pairs of well-developed barbels surrounding their mouth and adipose fins of variable size. While scale-less, they are protected by a spine in front of their dorsal and pectoral fins. "Sun catfish" is an aquarist name; to scientists the species is commonly known as Günther's catfish after…
jlynch | April 23, 2006From the Associated Press:
Scientists have discovered a mutant gene that triggers the body to form a second, renegade skeleton, solving the mystery of a rare disease called FOP that imprisons children in bone for life.
The finding, reported Sunday, may one day lead to development of a drug, not only to treat the rare bone disorder, but more common bone buildup related to head and spine trauma, and even sports injuries, the researchers said.
"We've reached the summit," said Dr. Frederick Kaplan, an orthopedist whose team at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine pinpointed the cause…
jlynch | April 23, 2006Which cell organelle are you?
The ER
You scored 50 Industriousness, 51 Centrality, and 15 Causticity!
You're the Endoplasmic reticulum! The ER modifies proteins, makes macromolecules, and transfers substances throughout the cell. It has its own membrane, and translation of mRNA happens within it.
You tend to have two sides to you - sort of a jekyll and Hyde kind of story. One side of you tends to be rough and tumble, but also very useful. Your other side is less well-defined and slightly more mysterious.
My test tracked 3 variables How you compared to other people your age and…
jlynch | April 22, 2006The philosopher and chemist Michael Polanyi came up in a recent conversation I had with some colleagues, so I though I'd repost the following from last December ...
In 1999, Dembski established the Michael Polanyi Center - an ID institute - at Baylor University. As this article notes, Dembski appropriated Polanyi's name, contrary to the wishes of his literary executor and son, Nobel Laureate John Polanyi, in an attempt to associate Polanyi with a cause he clearly would not have shared. Richard Gelwick, the articles author, should know. He is the author of The Way of Discovery: an…
jlynch | April 21, 2006One of the highlights of the Dover trial was the takedown of Michael Behe that occurred on Day 12, where Behe testified that "the scientific literature has no detailed testable answers on how the immune system could have arisen by random mutation and natural selection" only to be shown such literature by plaintiffs' lead counsel Eric Rothschild.
Nick Matzke was instrumental in putting together the literature that Rothschild used, and he and a number of denizens of the Panda's Thumb (Andrea Bottaro and Matt Inlay) have a paper in the current edition of Nature Immunology highlighting Behe's…