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 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.
Shorter Richard Sternberg: Beginning to Decipher the SINE Signal: If science fiction weren't fiction, ID would be really good science.In responding tangentially to our earlier criticism of him for employing arguments of a paranoid schizophrenic nature which treated movies as if they were evidence of how science works, Sternberg pens an essay in which we're to pretend that we find monoliths on Earth's two moons and they send us crazy signals that make our computers suddenly intelligent. He quotes a hypothetical critic replying: We think you’re a nice guy, but your arguments are insane.Assuming for the moment he's referring to...
I don't care for North Korea. It's a repressive Stalinist cult, walled off from reality. But sometimes they find a nut: A government official in North Korea blamed for the nation's currency devaluation has been executed by the state. "Pak Nam-gi, who was reportedly sacked in January as chief of the planning and finance department of the ruling Workers' Party, was executed at a shooting range in Pyongyang."Maybe if we stood a few of the banksters in front of a firing squad, we wouldn't have to fix their mess again....
Kevin Drum surveys California politics: It's like living in a Lewis Carroll novel, except with real people. Assuming you still consider California Republicans to be real people, that is.The inspiration? In order to tackle a massive deficit, Democrats were willing to cut a billion dollars out of transit funding — a traditional Democratic priority — and Schwarzenegger vetoes it because they didn't also include a tax cut. As a way of tackling a massive deficit. And the California Republican caucus cheers.It's time for a goddam constitutional convention....
Shorter Ginni Thomas in WaPo: Wife of Justice Thomas starts group for 'citizen activists': Caesar's wife was a pussy.Actual spokeswoman for Mrs. Thomas, who recently started a teabagging group using corporate funds as permitted by her husband's vote on Citizens United: "She did not give up her First Amendment rights when her husband became a Supreme Court judge."Words fail. Sure, she didn't give up her right to speak freely, but that doesn't mean she should profiteer using her husband's decisions. Any corporation donating to her group which doesn't think it's buying access to Justice Thomas should fire its executives and...
One of my colleagues from Scienceblogs.com.br contacted me a week or so ago to talk about creationists and global warming deniers, and I just checked and his story for Brazil's largest paper is online. Frankly, I think I gave him one of my juicier quotes: "Dos negacionistas do aquecimento global, a maioria é motivada principalmente pelos negócios e pela política. Um número chocante de pessoas parece se opor à ideia porque não gostam de Al Gore. Muitos trabalham em empresas petrolíferas ou pertencem a indústrias que teriam de pagar pela mitigação do aquecimento", diz Rosenau. "Então, creio que é uma...
Attention conservation notice: A couple thousand words of reply to questions about why I think NCSE does what it does, delivered in my capacity as a random blogger not as an NCSE staffer. People who don't care about accommodationism or about how I read the NCSE website should probably just go back to pondering diehard scientists. In comments at Larry Moran's blog, I noted what I regard as a serious error in his description of NCSE's position about science and religion. He initially claimed "As you know, it's the official position of the National Center for Science Education" that "science...
Today's Washington Times covers the nexus between global warming denial and creationism, quoting from my ScienceProgress piece to show that: diehard scientists are striking back. Yipee-kay-yay muppethuggers!...
Upchucky award runner-up and Disco. 'Tute staffer Casey Luskin is upset. Last fall, we were on a panel together, and I mocked his defense of the neo-creationist "orchard model" described in Explore Evolution as claiming that life "poofed" into existence. In the course of one of Casey's regularly scheduled bouts of logorrhea, he decides to respond to this claim: I presented some of this information discussed below at the St. Thomas conference last fall, and NCSE staff member Josh Rosenau repeatedly alleged that I was making a “poof” hypothesis for the origin of monkeys. No. That is not what I...
Casey Luskin, intrepid Upchucky also-ran, is aflutter. Last week's New York Times story about creationists and global warming deniers partnering up has the whole Disco. 'Tute in something of a tizzy, but Casey's outrage is of a special sort. Casey, you see, thinks the the Times misdescribed Selman v. Cobb County. The article states: The legal incentive to pair global warming with evolution in curriculum battles stems in part from a 2005 ruling by a United States District Court judge in Atlanta that the Cobb County Board of Education, which had placed stickers on certain textbooks encouraging students to view...
Larry Moran is unhappy with me. This is fine; I knew that posting "On the need for grownups" would get people angry, and it did. I hoped it would spark some productive discussion, and it has, at least via email. What bothers me is that the reasons Larry is upset seem to entirely misconstrue what I wrote: Joshua Rosenau has fired another shot in the accommodationist war. As usual, he focuses more on rhetoric and mudslinging than on the logical arguments that are presented by both sides. In this case, he demeans all those who disagree with him in On...
Joshua Rosenau spends his days defending the teaching of evolution at 
