April 30, 2010
Category: Policy and Politics
There were lots of reasons why I wanted to see Affordable Care (née healthcare reform) pass. Ending the tyranny of "pre-existing conditions," of cruel recissions, and insuring more than 30 million uninsured Americans were big reasons. But it wasn't a perfect bill, and there was a vocal group of Democrats on the leftward fringes of the blogosphere who wanted to "kill the bill" and take a fresh stab at it down the road. Doing so, they insisted, would supply us with a better reform of healthcare in the end. I rejected that argument for several reasons, all of which continue...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 7:21 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
April 29, 2010
Category: Culture Wars
Lord love her, S.E. Cupp has posted the first chapter of her book Losing Our Religion: The Liberal Media's Attack on Christianity. That means I've now inflicted two chapters of the damnable thing on myself, and I feel no better for it. You'll recall that the first chapter I saw was her look at evolution. I summarized: S.E. Cupp's handling of science and religion misrepresents the nature of evolution, obscures the science of biology, and dismisses the deeply-held religious views of most Christians outside of the fundamentalist subculture. This is the sort of misrepresentation which leads her to concoct an...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 8:32 PM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
I've been playing around in the Oxford English Dictionary's definition and usage history for "atheism" and "atheist," and found this rather relevant to ongoing discussions. 1876 GLADSTONE in Contemp. Rev. June 22 By the Atheist I understand the man who not only holds off, like the sceptic, from the affirmative, but who drives himself, or is driven, to the negative assertion in regard to the whole Unseen, or to the existence of God. Now, far be it for me to suggest that dictionaries, let alone the particular usages they indicate from 153 years ago, are correct, but I think Gladstone...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 5:36 PM • 21 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Creationism
Yesterday I made the offhand comment, "Say what you will about creationists, some of them have genuine critical thinking skills." I followed that up by adding "garbage in, garbage out." My meaning there may have been obscure, and commenter PhysioProf objected: Dude, I get that you are now fully invested in how mean and shitty some atheists are and how wonderful and enlightening and allegorical religion can be. But all this "splitting the middle" "both sides do it" false equivalency shit is causing you to lose your fucking mind. Which wasn't my point at all. My point is that critical...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 11:15 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Creationism
So Fox News breathlessly reported that Chinese researchers had found Noah's ark. "Has Noah's Ark been found on Turkish mountaintop?," they asked, dumbly. "No," answered slacktivist. Gawker replied at greater length: A group of evangelicals found some 4,800-year-old wood on top of Mount Ararat. They are "99.9 pecent" sure that it's Noah's ark. This is totally real, which is why it's on the front page of Fox News' "SciTech" section.Slacktivist didn't actually just say "no," he expanded on the point by noting: The expedition seems to have found a wooden structure. They hear hoofbeats, so they're "99.9 percent" certain it...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 12:33 AM • 51 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
April 26, 2010
Last Saturday, we put on the first ever SkeptiCal: Northern California Science and Skepticism Conference. It was pretty awesome. The organizers included Bay Area Skeptics and Sacramento Area Skeptics, and we managed to fill a 200 seat auditorium by advertising to our members, other northern California skeptics groups, some email alerts to JREF, CSI, and Skeptics' Society members, and helpful plugs by prominent podcasters and bloggers. Shortly before Genie Scott flew off to receive the highest honor granted by the National Academy of Sciences, she gave a talk about the relationship of science and skepticism. Then NASA's Dave Morrison told...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 5:55 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Jerry Coyne, in the throatclearing before an otherwise reasonable dissection of wankery on the Huffington Post, brings the ahistorical and gratuitous FAIL: I’m coyneing the term “New Creationism” to describe the body of thought that accepts Darwinian evolution but with the additional caveats that 1) it was all started by God, 2) had God-worshipping humans as its goal, and 3) that the evidence for all this is that life is complex, humans evolved, and the the “fine tuning” of physical constants of the universe testify to the great improbability of our being here—ergo God. Two main thoughts occur. First, this...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 5:19 PM • 27 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
April 25, 2010
Category: Physical Science
Via A Continuous Lean, an HD version of origina 16 mm film from the Apollo 11 launch: So awesome....
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 11:42 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
April 21, 2010
Category: Culture Wars
I'm in the Washington Post's book review blog today, offering my take on a chapter from conservative pundit S.E. Cupp's forthcoming book. I haven't seen anything but the 4th chapter ("Thou Shalt Evolve"), but the book as a whole seems like an odd project. Not least that a book titled Losing Our Religion: The Liberal Media’s Attack on Christianity would be penned by a self-described atheist. In other words, when the title calls it "our religion," she isn't including herself. I first learned of Cupp's existence in January, from a Salon.com profile which presented her as a possible bright light...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 7:19 PM • 18 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
April 20, 2010
Category: Policy and Politics
James Grimmelmann considers the Supreme Court's inability to understand the difference between the pager and the e-mail: Reading about the Supreme Court oral arguments in City of Ontario v. Quon makes me sad and angry in equal measure.Why so emotional? Here are the Court's questions, in a case about whether messages on an employer-provided pager are private or the property of the employee: CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: Maybe — maybe everybody else knows this, but what is the difference between the pager and the e-mail? … CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: What happens, just out of curiosity, if you’re — he is on...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 7:25 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Joshua Rosenau spends his days defending the teaching of evolution at 
