Now on ScienceBlogs: HeartlandGate: Anti-Science Institute's Insider Reveals Secrets
You will notice that it lacks definiteness; that it lacks purpose; that it lacks coherence; that it lacks a subject to talk about; that it is loose and wabbly; that it wanders around; that it loses itself early and does not find itself any more. --Mark Twain
Joshua Rosenau spends his days defending the teaching of evolution at the National Center for Science Education. He is formerly a doctoral candidate at the University of Kansas, in the department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. When not battling creationists or modeling species ranges, 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 27, 2010
Category: Policy and Politics
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economyNo hint whether Rachel Maddow picked up this story from the Huffington Post, Science Progress, Think Progress, Bad Astronomy, Pharyngula, or your friendly neighborhood TfK, but the mockery is sufficiently abundant....
Posted by Josh Rosenau at 11:38 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 26, 2010
Category: Culture Wars
I've got a column at Science Progress arguing just that (in my internal accounting, McLean was Scopes II, Kitzmiller was Scopes III): Legislators in South Dakota seem bent on becoming anti-science pioneers. After a century of anti-evolution policies and legislation across the United States, the South Dakota legislature is set to become the only one in the nation to micromanage what teachers should say about global warming. This attack on global warming was prefigured in the announcement last August by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that it planned to gin up “the Scopes monkey trial of the 21st century.” Senior...
Posted by Josh Rosenau at 6:37 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Policy and Politics
Commenter SLC tricked me into violating my moratorium on reading anti-accommodationist blogs, curse him. The discussion, such as it is, focuses on an essay written by Francis Collins introducing a book of essays on religious belief. Naturally, this has various people up in arms, clamoring for Collins to resign from the NIH because he repeated his long-held and oft-stated belief that science and religious faith are compatible (for him, at least). I'm not really interested in engaging the substance of Collins' claims, nor the counter-arguments by the anti-accommodationists. It's boring, no one changes their mind, it generates needless squabbling and...
Posted by Josh Rosenau at 6:03 PM • 23 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Policy and Politics
A year into the administration, after the teabagging parties and record numbers of filibusters, senior Obama advisor Axelrod finally used the magic words: The American people ... all they want is an up or down vote."Up or down vote" is the framing used by Republicans to break the last filibuster crisis, a fight over judicial nominations shortly before Republicans lost control of the Senate. Most Americans don't know what a filibuster is, or why some Senate votes take 60 yeas and some require a simple majority. Traditionally, the filibuster was used to bide for time, and as a show of...
Posted by Josh Rosenau at 11:32 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 25, 2010
Category: Policy and Politics
Shorter Fox's Shep Smith on the President's healthcare summit: Democrats are partisan hacks for inviting the GOP to participate in healthcare negotiations even though they know GOP has nothing to offer.Oy....
Posted by Josh Rosenau at 4:54 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Policy and Politics
This is his actual argument against allowing the Senate to pass healthcare reform by a simple majority: the United States is not going to tolerate a group of people trying apply kind of a Hugo Chavez majoritarian ruleIs that why we hate Hugo Chavez now? Because of his profound commitment to majoritarian rule? Yes, that must be why conservatives dislike him....
Posted by Josh Rosenau at 11:35 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Policy and Politics
There are few things that Richard Dawkins and Matt Nisbet agree about regarding science communication in the internets, but apparently there's a general consensus that you're a douchebag. I haven't got strong feelings on the RichardDawkins.net forum shutdown. Dawkins is right that people were dicks to him and his staff, but the self-righteousness of this opening to his announcement doesn't engender sympathy: Imagine that you, as a greatly liked and respected person, found yourself overnight subjected to personal vilification on an unprecedented scale, from anonymous commenters on a website.Yes, let us all try to imagine someone being mean on the...
Posted by Josh Rosenau at 10:24 AM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 23, 2010
Category: Chatter
Against my better judgment, I've read some posts by anti-accommodationists. If I decide I enjoy banging my head against a wall, I may even respond to some of them. Otherwise, I'll have to distract myself. For the moment, I'm also playing with Twitter, so if you want to see what I've twat, check me out. The creative handle I chose is JoshRosenau. Thus far it's mostly reactions to AAAS. I may use it as a repository for articles and ideas that I want to write about but don't actually have anything to add to at the moment, thus clearing my...
Posted by Josh Rosenau at 10:27 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 21, 2010
Category: Policy and Politics
Even though there's a huge digital divide in Brazil, as many people use the Internet to gain science knowledge as use museums. And no other source approaches either of those. If I had to pick one lesson from this morning's session and the afternoon session, it would be that the internet has arrived, and scientists should do a lot more to take advantage of that. The challenge is getting science content into unexpected contexts, so that people who don't know they want to learn about science still encounter some of it now and then....
Posted by Josh Rosenau at 3:58 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Policy and Politics
There's lots to delve into in Jon Miller's study of civic scientific literacy, not least that US student jump from poor science performance in high school to high science literacy as adults thanks largely to the mandatory year-long science course most colleges require. More important, perhaps, is the fact that (using path analyses controlling for age, education, and other relevant social variables) TV viewership has a negative effect on science literacy, while print media consumption has a small positive effect and internet usage has a substantial positive effect. Could this be thanks to 4chan? Note also that religious fundamentalism/religious activity...
Posted by Josh Rosenau at 2:14 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Orac 02.14.2012
Tim Lambert 02.01.2012
Jason Rosenhouse 02.12.2012
Orac 01.26.2012
ERV 11.26.2011
