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Joshua Rosenau spends his days defending the teaching of evolution at the National Center for Science Education. He is also a graduate student at the University of Kansas, completing a doctorate in the department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. When not modeling species distributions or battling creationists, he writes about developments in progressive politics and the sciences.
The opinions expressed here are his own, do not reflect the official position of the NCSE. Indeed, older posts may no longer reflect his own official position.
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February 28, 2007
Category: Planet Earth
Western States Agree to Cut Greenhouse Gases: Five Western governors agreed yesterday on a plan to cut their states' emissions of gases linked to global warming and to establish a regional carbon-trading system, though they stopped short of saying how drastically they will seek to reduce greenhouse gases. The governors -- [from] California,… Arizona, Oregon, New Mexico and Washington -- said that within six months they will set a regional target for lower emissions. A year after that, they pledged, they will devise a regional cap-and-trade system allowing polluters to buy and sell greenhouse gas pollution credits.These states join a...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 11:58 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Policy and Politics
Red Letter Day rounds up the six City Commission candidates' statements on the proposed registry. The three progressives are for it, the two growth-for-growth's sake candidates are wishy-washy, and the pastor is predictably less wishy than washy. Given the demographics involved, it would be bad mojo for even a Southern Baptist minister to be entirely against it. Bear in mind that all the city would be doing is providing a central repository for companies to refer to in executing their own decisions about granting domestic partner benefits. The registry would not conflict with state law as it stands, and the...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 4:08 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Policy and Politics
In a world in which public domain speeches by government officials on government time are copyrighted, it's hard to conclude anything other than that copyright is broken. If it is not "fair use" to present film shot by CSPAN's cameras of congresscritters at work for educational purposes and with attribution, copyright is broken. Historically, the idea was that works were in the public domain unless Congress, exercising a right granted by the US Constitution in order "to promote the progress of science and useful arts," grants a copyright, patent or trademark. In our age of corporate mass media, content producers...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 1:32 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Physical Sciences
Chad is bemoaning the increase of "stat-geekery" in sports: I'll admit that I'm somewhat torn about this. I am, after all, a professional nerd, and enjoy working with numbers, so I can see the appeal of quantitative data. And a lot of the regular statistics used in basketball are pretty crude measures, so I can understand trying to develop better statistics.Very, very crude. And that is where my beef comes from. Can you think of a sports' statistic that includes a measure of error?...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 12:18 PM • 24 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 27, 2007
Category: Policy and Politics
The unofficial results show that the City Commission race will be between progressive candidates Highberger, Schauner and Maynard-Moody and aggressive growth candidates Dever, Chestnut and Bush. The major issues of the race will be "smart growth" versus growth without an adjective. That will translate into differences on the extension of K-10 through the Baker Wetlands, disagreements over industrial zones, and almost surely contentious debates over the domestic partnership registry. On April 3, voters will pick three of these six candidates. Highberger and Schauner are incumbents. Bush is a pastor at First Southern Baptist Church, and is seen as a stealth...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 9:49 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Biology
Imagine you were an editor, and two stories came across your desk. One shows that chimpanzees use spears, giving insight into the origins of weaponmaking and violence in human society. The other article shows that spider monkeys hug to avoid fights: Hugging diffuses the tension when two bands of monkeys meet, say the British researchers who made the discovery. Without these calming embraces, the situation can escalate into aggression and even physical attacks, they report. The researchers studied wild spider monkeys (Ateles geoffroyi), which live in the forests of Central and South America. These monkeys live in large groups, but...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 2:51 PM • 10 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Policy and Politics
Despite Tony's endorsement, I'm not loving Stay Red Kansas. Tony thinks it's written by insiders, but I see a lot of juvenile errors, and I almost suspect that it's a new venture by the gang from Fire Kansas Democrats. The mistakes they make are basic, like claiming that the RNC would kick in funds for a Senate race, when the National Republican Senate Campaign would do that. One thing that isn't juvenile is their distaste for voting: In fact, the voting process is so ridiculously unregulated in our humble state of Kansas, that so long as a name, address and...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 9:43 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture Wars
The New Scientist reviews Conservapedia. Along with our own Dr. Myers and Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, the article quotes one: Joshua Rosenau, a graduate student in evolutionary biology at the University of Kansas and contributor to Science Blogs claims the site has a darker side. "On some level it's also reflective of a harmful attitude that some people – especially those on the far right – tend to have about science and truth," he told me. "They are re-defining their own truth and seem to think facts are malleable."If the article didn't also quote Andrew Schlafly, Concerned Son of...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 12:35 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 26, 2007
Category: Policy and Politics
It never ends, does it. KC mayoral candidates are on TV. I confess I haven't watched those races at all. Read Tony or whatever to find out who's who. I'm with Red Letter Day on the Lawrence City Council elections. You get to vote for 3 candidates, the top six votegetters go on to the general election: Dennis 'Boog' Highberger David Schauner Carey Maynard-Moody This is the progressive group of candidates. The handy-dandy LJ World candidate selector says those are the candidates whose statements I liked best. In Johnson County, you get to vote for the JCCC Board of Directors....
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 7:32 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Policy and Politics
Bruce Chapman writes about "encouraging signs in Baghdad" at the DI's blog: The days you do not hear on the news of some new killing of American troops in Baghdad is a day when the news really should announce: "No Americans Were Killed in Baghdad Today" or even "In Iraq Today."That's right. In addition to its advocacy for creationism, the DI also has fingers in other pots on the far right wing of the political spectrum, including the quagmire in Iraq. John McCain dedicated his DI sponsored speech to Iraq and other foreign policy. And all they can think of...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 6:08 PM • 4 Comments •
