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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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Repost:
Category: Culture Wars
Reposted from the old TfK because it's fun. In KU's introductory biology lab about evolution, the students are asked (not my phrasing): In the vertebrate animal clade, jaws have evolved from cartilage-like rods associated with gills. In jawless ancestral vertebrates, as well as extant jawless species such as hagfish and lampreys, the function of these skeletal rods was/is to support the gills. Jaws function to grasp and chew, their success is notable, as jaws are still present in most extant vertebrates. If an engineer were put to the task of designing "jaws," would the outcome be the same as the...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 1:10 PM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Biology
Reposted from the old TfK, in honor of the late, great Greg Beck. Over at Death's Door, there is a certain degree of consternation about the possibility that mallard ducks would be gang raping each other. There is a bunch of confusion wrapped around that so let's start slow. I also wasn't aware that duck's had duck cocks to gangbang with. I never eaten a duck but I've eaten a lot of chicken, and when you buy the chicken in the store and pull out that little pouch of giblets and shit, I've never seen a tiny chicken cock sittin...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 12:47 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Biology
Reposted from the old blog. Last week we discussed endosymbiosis, the hypothesis that mitochondria and chloroplasts originated as free-living bacteria captured by another cell and essentially enslaved. This week's Science has evidence of this process at work today. A Secondary Symbiosis in Progress? -- Okamoto and Inouye 310 (5746): 287 -- Science. The figure labeled A shows the normal adult Hatena. It has a flagellum, an eyespot (the arrow), and all that green chlorophyll. Turns out, as shown in figure B, the eyespot is inherited by only one daughter cell, as is the green. All that stuff is from a...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 2:15 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture Wars
Reposted from the old TfK, for your enjoyment while I drive out to the NCSE. I don't mind creationism. I know this comes as a bit of a shock, but I don't. For our purposes, creationism is the belief that a supernatural force or being created, designed or otherwise shaped the universe and life in it. I don't have any broad beef with that idea. I don't necessarily buy it, but I'm not necessarily against it. I say this because Billy Dembski has expanded on his Vise strategy (previously discussed in "Beware the simple machines")....
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 9:32 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Chatter
It isn't Passover right now, but several people recently commented that this is one of our better posts from the old blog, so enjoy....
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 9:51 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Physical Sciences
Reposted from the old TfK, while I Travel from Kansas. Everyone is answering Seed's Question of the Week: If you could shake the public and make them understand one scientific idea, what would it be? I'm down with this answer: I want people to understand that there is no law of averages. There are no laws of probability (at least not if you mean something like "Really improbable things don't happen"). You can't prove just anything with statistics.My inclination would actually have been phrased the exact opposite way, though getting at the same point....
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 9:46 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Biology
Reposted from the old TfK in honor of this story at BoingBoing. Botflies are disgusting. Horrible, horrible little things. We get their larvae on the white-footed mice we trap here in Kansas. The picture to the right is a white-footed mouse botfly that I caught here in Kansas. These are fairly rare in collections because the adult is only active for a short time. Many species lack mouthparts because of their short adult life. It flies around, it mates, and the females lay eggs on grass stems. The mouse brushes against the egg, the heat of the body causes the...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 3:26 PM • 14 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Philosophy of Science
Reposted from ye olde site, in preparation for another post soon to come. Ed Brayton asks Is Risk of Theocracy Overblown? His answer is a slightly qualified "Yes." And he highlights why I don't rail against theocracy, but against "religious authoritarianism." While he may be right that Dobson and Falwell (or Fox and Johnston in Kansas) aren't theocrats in the strictest sense of wanting to replace the Constitution with the Mosaic Law, they do want to impose their own religious values on the entire society, which is authoritarianism. This problem is one shared by many battalions arrayed on conservative flank...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 2:47 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Repost
Reposted from the old TfK. Various people are asking Are We Fighting 'Islamic Fascists'? This in response to the President's claim that, "This nation is at war with Islamic fascists who will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom." David Ignatius (linked above) says "I have been pondering since [last week] his description of the enemy. What are 'Islamic fascists,' and does this phrase make sense in describing America's adversaries?" Ed Brayton chimes in that, while he isn't wont to agree with the President, he sees the similarity. I confess that I do not think that...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 9:47 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Repost
Reposted from the old TfK. Two recent comments on the 25th anniversary of AIDS took up a similar call, one in the New England Journal of Medicine, the other from Scienceblogger Tara Smith. Both essentially argue for the broadening of HIV testing in American society. The NEJM piece largely recycles the history of debates about testing for HIV in the general population, and state limitations on what testing can be mandated. Tara explains: Currently, the testing paradigm in most areas is patient-instituted, and involves the three C's: consent, confidentiality, and counseling (generally before and after the test). If HIV testing...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 5:16 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
