jlynch

Over at the World's Fair, Ben and David have posted results from their taking of the Earth Day Ecological Footprint quiz. Here are my results: CATEGORY / ACRES FOOD / 5.4MOBILITY / 1.7SHELTER / 6.9 GOODS/SERVICES / 7.9 TOTAL FOOTPRINT / 22 IN COMPARISON, THE AVERAGE ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT IN YOUR…

Just got back from a pleasant evening spent with my fellow SciBling Chris Mooney. Chris gave a great talk here in Tempe which not only gave the gist of his book, The Republican War on Science, but also detailed positive ways in which things can be changed. Needless to say, scientists bear some of…

So the Arizona Cardinals moved out of Sun Devil Stadium (home of the ASU Sun Devils) and got themselves a new state-of-the-art facility in Glendale, a city in the west valley. By all accounts it is a sweet stadium. With Super Bowl XLII in 2008 on the horizon, the naming rights for the new stadium…

Bumping this up so as to give Chris some Tempe loving ... Changing Hands is a legendary bookstore here in Tempe, and tomorrow it will host Chris Mooney at 7pm for a talk on his wonderful book The Republican War on Science which is now available (updated!) in paperback. Chris' book is an eye-opening…

Today marks the birth (in 1791) of Théodore Géricault, one of my favorite painters. Best known for Raft of the Medusa (see above, properly titled Scene of Shipwreck), Géricault's short career came to an end at the age of 33, not before his completion of a haunting series of portraits of asylum…

In November 1920, the celebrated author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle announced the beginning of a new "epoch in human thought." He believed that he was presenting "a strong prima-facie case" for the existence of fairies, based on photographs taken by two pseudonymous young girls in July and September…

Over at Fark.com someone posted a link to a game called Line Rider (you can play it here). Then someone posted the movie below. Someone has too much time on their hands!

ASU (#18) are playing the Cal Golden Bears (#20) at Berkeley. The first half has just ended and the Devils are down 42-14. After a good opening scoring drive, ASU have just collapsed, with the only ray of sunshine being the running effort of (third-string RB) Ryan Torain, a JC transfer from Kansas…

An Atlantic tripletail caught in the Bristol Channel this week may be the first recorded occurrence of the species in Britain. The Atlantic tripletail, Lobotes surinamensis, is found in tropical and subtropical waters around the world, but is exceptionally rare north of the Mediterranean Sea.…

Pure Nerd73 % Nerd, 26% Geek, 30% Dork For The Record:A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia.A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one.A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social…

The Eagle He clasps the crag with crooked hands;Close to the sun in lonely lands,Ring'd with the azure world, he stands. The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;He watches from his mountain walls,And like a thunderbolt he falls. Alfred, Lord Tennyson Picture is of a Pallas' Fish Eagle (Haliaeetus…

Elif Shafak, the Turkish novelist accused of "denigrating Turkish national identity" under Article 301 of Turkey's penal code, has been acquitted. Shafak, a professor at the University of Arizona, had faced charges for comments made by characters in her novel The Bastard Of Istanbul, specifically …

A number of my SciBlings has already covered the discover of the three-year old Australopithecus afarensis skeleton that has been dubbed "Little Lucy" (see, for example, PZ's post). I'm just going to point out the the specimen was discovered and described by individuals associated with Arizona…

From Declan Butler in this week's Nature: Lawyers defending six medical workers who risk execution by firing squad in Libya have called for the international scientific community to support a bid to prove the medics' innocence. The six are charged with deliberately infecting more than 400 children…

It's going to be one of those weeks, so I don't know how much I'm going to get to post. I do, however, want to share the editorial from this week's Nation (emphasis mine): George W. Bush's decision to move Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and thirteen other "high value" Al Qaeda captives from secret CIA…

Hemiscyillum sp., recently discovered off the coast of Indonesia. This little puppy walks on its pectoral fins as do other epaulette sharks of the genus. For more on the find, see here. Apparently, epaulette sharks make good aquarium denizens.

ASU beat a mediocre Colorado 21-3 to go 3-0 for the season so far. Defense worked well, and certainly has improved compared to last season, but the offense was, frankly, crap and Rudy Carpenter (QB) never really got his act together. It has been a long time since ASU has gone into a Q4 with only…

From the Washington Post: After the fall of Saddam Hussein's government in April 2003, the opportunity to participate in the U.S.-led effort to reconstruct Iraq attracted all manner of Americans -- restless professionals, Arabic-speaking academics, development specialists and war-zone adventurers.…

Arizona has unfortunately been a hot-bed for Young Earth Creationism (YEC). Some of the smaller church-affiliated schools here teach YEC, and there are a number of groups that run creationist tours to the Grand Canyon. Up north, the Creation Research Society maintains the Van Andel Creation…

Over at the Panda's Thumb, Nick highlights the following quote from Wiker and Witt's, A Meaningful World: How the Arts and Sciences Reveal the Genius of Nature: Strange though it may seem to neo-Darwinists, Darwin's assumption that the terms species and variety are merely given for convenience's…

  An Irish Airman Forsees His Death I know that I shall meet my fate Somewhere among the clouds above; Those that I fight I do not hate, Those that I guard I do not love; My county is Kiltartan Cross, My countrymen Kiltartan's poor, No likely end could bring them loss Or leave them happier than…

One of the unexpected pleasures of blogging here at ScienceBlogs is that publishers send us books, hoping that we might offer some publicity. The problem with this is, for me at least, once the semester starts, I have little opportunity to read books that are not at least partially related to my…

Where in the world is this, and why have I posted this image today? Answers later, but post your guesses. Update: Yes, it is the Galapagos Islands (though South is "up"). On today in 1835, the HMS Beagle, carrying the young naturalist Charles Darwin, arrived at the islands. To quote Darwin: The…

Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA): "In light of the rantings that went on for 30 minutes by two colleagues from the other side, I'd like to state for the record that America is not tired of fighting terrorism; America is tired of the wrongheaded and boneheaded leadership of the Republican party that has…

Your life-jacket can be found under your seat, but please do not remove it now. In fact, do not bother to look for it at all. In the event of a landing on water, an unprecedented miracle will have occurred, because in the history of aviation the number of wide-bodied aircraft that have made…

Sort of busy today with teaching stuff, so in lieu of anything I have to say, here are some things to check out: John Wilkins has a four part post on why creationists are what they are [1] [2] [3] [4]. He also takes on the Pope's latest expectoration on evolution.  RPM takes on PZ regarding evo…

A fisherman who speared a protected species of grouper while diving off Florida has been killed after the fish swam into a hole and entangled him in the line attached to the speargun. < A 42-year-old Florida man, who has not been named, was free-diving in 7.6m/25' of water off the lower…

But it's not desecration when we do it.

Once again I find myself agreeing with Ed Brayton, in this case over PZ Myers' comments on Ken Miller. Frankly, some of the comments in the original thread at Pharyngula show a shrill insistancy that characterizes many real creationists. Atheism, it seems, coats the mind in a wonderful certitude, a…