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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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November 29, 2007
Category: Culture Wars
Chris Comer's firing has been getting a lot of attention, and one question keeps getting asked: "What kind of soul-torturing electronic missive about an academic talk could be so dastardly as to result in someone getting fired merely for forwarding it?" Read on only if you are prepared to enter a Lovecraftian world filled with squishy tentacles and phrases like "expert testimony": Subject: Barbara Forrest in Austin 11/2 Dear Austin-area friends of NCSE, I thought that you might like to know that Barbara Forrest will be speaking on "Inside Creationism's Trojan Horse" in Austin on November 2, 2007. Her talk,...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 1:22 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Creationism
The Austin American Statesman reports that Ms. Chris Comer, Texas state director of science curriculum, was fired after forwarding an email announcing a talk about intelligent design in the Austin area. The talk "Inside Creationism's Trojan Horse," was by Barbara Forrest, a historian and philosopher who has studied the ties between ID and earlier generations of creationism. It focused on her work in the Dover trial and her book Creationism's Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design. The Statesman explains: The call to fire Comer came from Lizzette Reynolds, who previously worked in the U.S. Department of Education. She also...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 1:40 AM • 32 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
November 28, 2007
Category: Policy and Politics
Q: Mr. former Attorney General, would you be willing to be waterboarded: A: "The things that I can survive, if it were necessary to do them to me, I would do"Q: Indeed. Can you think of a less awkward way to phrase that? A: Hmm. Q: Friedrich Nietzsche famously claimed "That which does not kill us makes us stronger. " A: Ah. Q: Then again, he went insane....
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 11:16 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Policy and Politics
Julie MacDonald was a civil engineer inexplicably appointed to oversee the Fish and Wildlife Service. During her reign, she rewrote the scientific assessments of Interior Department biologists, sent confidential documents to a virtual friend on an online role-playing game and colluded with developers to block endangered species listings. Then just before the Democratic congress got to rake her over the coals, she quit, making her testimony moot. Seven months later, some endangered species rulings she interfered with have been thrown out: The Fish and Wildlife Service reversed seven rulings that denied increased protection for endangered species, after an inquiry found...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 6:57 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
November 27, 2007
Category: Culture Wars
Billy Dembski, the Isaac Newton of Information, is in trouble. He took an animation that Harvard University commissioned from XVIVO, modified it in various ways (or used a copy someone else modified), put a new title on it, and used it without permission of either Harvard or XVIVO. It appears he requested permission, was denied, and used it anyway. Bad. Alas, the video of the event gets blurry at the precise moment when it might or might not show the copyright and credits for the video, but the video he used certainly is modified without permission and is used without...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 8:54 PM • 23 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Policy and Politics
When did conservatives become moral relativists? It was always a petty slander when they placed that label on liberals, but it seems so odd that the torture debate of the last month resulted in such unambiguous moral relativism from staunch conservatives. For instance, Patterico responded to people's qualms about torture by writing "Admitting any ambiguity kills the sweet, sweet high of self-righteousness." And liked the line so much that he repeated it. Repeated it in the course of offering a circumstance which he claims makes torture acceptable. Of course, the beef is that TORTURE IS WRONG. There is no ambiguity....
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 6:45 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
November 22, 2007
Category: Chatter
While I'll be doling out particular thanks to individuals today, I want to take a moment while the turkey roasts to thank you, dear readers. When I started this blog, it was basically a way to stop clogging the email boxes of family and friends with my frustration at political events in the world. Pretty soon, you all came along, and so did the peculiar focus and voice that TfK has today. It's been a crazy 3 years, and I look forward to many more. Thanks to this blog, and to you readers, I was able to see and to...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 11:18 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
November 20, 2007
Category: Culture Wars
Krauze is confused. How could scientists think the extermination of the human race over the course of a few decades would be bad, bad, bad, while thinking that the gradual extinction of the species over the course of millions of years would be inevitable and of no great concern. It's the same reason that we think murder is a moral wrong, but having a heart attack or dying of cancer is not. Or rather, the reason we treat a 90 year-old dying of lung cancer as a sad part of existence, while we see a 30 year-old dying of lung...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 3:37 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture Wars
While the shirt preshrunk is peddling does nothing for me, I can't argue with this: Now say what you will about zombieism, but at least it’s an ethos. Well, okay — it’s not so much an ethos as it is an unrelenting, ravenous craving for brains.I feel that way about creationism sometimes. I start to respect the IDolators for their attempts at making inhuman silliness seem warm and fuzzy and serious. Then I remember that they're trying to destroy my mind....
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 1:15 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
November 19, 2007
Category: Chatter
I'm very fond of my cute little MacBook. It's faster than my desktop machine, it's light, I can watch movies on it without a problem, and I can use gestures with it. Gestures rock....
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 10:41 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
