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Agreeing with STACLU

Glib Fortuna has a post at STACLU about a recent ruling in an Oklahoma ten commandments case that went against the ACLU. And in this case, I'm going to agree with him (not with the ridiculous "oh my god, the ACLU is so evil" rhetorical style with which he and every other STACLU devotee writes, but with the conclusion). This is a case that should never have been brought, and the judge was correct to rule against them. Here are the facts of the case. On the county courthouse grounds in Haskell County, Oklahoma there are numerous monuments to various things, including monuments to those who died…

Balkin on Surveillance Powers

I could not agree with this post by Jack Balkin more: I don't know whether NSA domestic surveillance programs were important in providing needed intelligence to stop the bomber's plot. I will assume that they were. What lesson should we draw from that fact? The right lesson is that these programs are important and that some version of them will be part of our country's governance for the foreseeable future. The wrong lesson is that because they helped us they should continue to operate outside the law. As we move toward a national surveillance state, government officials will convert what…

The crazy billboard lady is back again

Julie Haberle, the born-again who splattered Minnesota billboards with creationist apologetics, has revamped her website. It's prettier and twice as stupid now; it still has the very clumsy bulletin board that was utterly ruled by evolution supporters poking holes in her bad arguments. What the site primarily has, though, are the quote mines — this place is a gold mine of quote mines. For instance, right up front and center they have this: "To take a line of fossils and claim that they represent a lineage is not a scientific hypothesis that can be tested, but an assertion that carries the…

The New ScienceBloggers

As all the new folks settle in, I want to draw particular attention to a few of them. This should not be taken as a comment on any blogs I don't mention, but merely as a boost to the ones I've already been a fan of in their previous homes or have some connection with. The others I am eager to get to know as well. The first one that jumps out is The Loom, the blog of Carl Zimmer. I was excited the moment I heard that Carl would be joining us here because, simply put, he is the best science journalist in the nation. Hands down. I'm not sure there's even a close second. The rest of us are…

The Christian Program

Are you confused over all the different types of Christian groups there are out there? It's easy to lose track of them all. Your eyes can glaze over trying to distinguish between fundamentalists and evangelicals, and don't even get me started on the difference between infralapsarian Calvinists and supralapsarian Calvinists. Sometimes you can't tell the players without a program. Thankfully, Zach Wendling over at In the Agora has linked to just such a scorecard, and it's pretty funny stuff. A few examples: Premillenialism This is the belief among some Christians that, ever since Jan. 1, 2000,…

Gregg Easterbrook: Even his sportswriting bores me

Oh, no…not Easterbrook. Haven't I dealt with him sufficiently in the past? He's got a long-winded column in which, while quantifying the nudity in the latest issue of Sports Illustrated, he also whines about those godless authors that have offended him so much. Regarding the "Golden Compass" volumes, in them God is a central character -- but is actively evil, obsessed with causing people to suffer. The plotline of the books is that Christianity is a complete fraud and the source of all that is wrong with society; the final "Golden Compass" volume concerns a desperate attempt by the heroic…

Open Mouth, Insert Foot

Okay, this is just funny. After my post yesterday about the Jesus cartoons in an Oregon newspaper and the Catholic League's attempt to censor them, someone named mnuez left the following comment. My regular readers will no doubt find this as ridiculous as I do: Boy, you sound pretty upset. Now, I haven't read every one of your pieces but I'd love to see whether you're as angry and tantrumesque about the worldwide Muslim response to cartoons of Mohammed that were a whole lot less insulting. Did you have balls enough to reprint tyhe Mohammed cartoons? I did. I, my friend, am a free-speech…

Christian Coalition Flounders

The Washington Post had an article today about the shrinking influence, membership and budget of the Christian Coalition, Pat Robertson's political wing that at one point controlled more than half of the state Republican party committees in the nation. The once-mighty Christian Coalition, founded 17 years ago by the Rev. Pat Robertson as the political fundraising and lobbying engine of the Christian right, is more than $2 million in debt, beset by creditors' lawsuits and struggling to hold on to some of its state chapters. In March, one of its most effective chapters, the Christian Coalition…

Former DI Attorney Makes a Real Whopper

Wes Elsberry has caught a major falsehood in an article published by the American Enterprise Institute, written by one of their research analysts (who either failed to do his research or chose to lie about it) and Seth Cooper, formerly of the DI and the attorney who worked with the Dover board on their ID policy in 2004. They accuse Bryan Rehm, one of the plaintiffs in the Dover case who was later elected to the Dover school board just after the trial wrapped up (but before the ruling came out), of having a conflict of interest and of helping to defeat a school board motion that would have…

John Lofton and the Liberty Debate Team

Here's an amusing coincidence of two things I've written about lately, John Lofton (the loony Christian theocrat who runs theamericanview.com) and the Liberty University debate team. It seems that Lofton is quite upset that a few years ago Falwell gave the okay for the debate team to debate in favor of abortion when they had to (the subject was the right to privacy and some teams ran cases to ban abortion, so when they were negative they would have to argue for abortion or just give up the debate program for that year). For openers, the "rules of college debate" which O'Donnell, obviously,…

New NRC Report: AMO, Amas, Amat...

Via Inside Higher Ed, the National Research Council (a part of the National Academy of Sciences) has released a new report calling for a renewed federal committment to AMO science. AMO here meaning "Atomic, Molecular, and Optical," namely the sort of physics I do. The federal government should reinforce its commitment to research in atomic, molecular, and optical (AMO) science -- the study of atoms, molecules, and light, and related technologies such as lasers and fiber-optic communications -- says a new report from the National Academies' National Research Council. The report, which…

This Isn't SportsCenter

Miscellaneous sports-related items (mostly soccer talk, because other than the World Cup, there are no sports going on now worth watching): Before getting to soccer, some really important sports news: Williams College won its tenth Sears Cup in the last eleven years, as the best athletic program in Division III. They also topped the US News rankings for liberal arts schools. Eat our dust, Amherst. On to soccer: I didn't get to watch any of Tuesday's games, because I have a day job, but Monday's games were pretty ugly. Australia lost to the Italian national diving team on a late penalty kick…

Ask a ScienceBlogger: This IS My Hobby

This week's Ask a ScienceBlogger question deals with blogging itself, and not so much with science: How is it that all the PIs (Tara, PZ, Orac et al.), various grad students, post-docs, etc. find time to fulfill their primary objectives (day jobs) and blog so prolifically? I have a slightly more serious response to this than many of my co-bloggers, simply because I half expect the issue to come up at my tenure review in the fall. I don't make any real effort to hide my blog (obviousy), but I also don't advertise it on campus. I know a few of my students are aware of its existence, and a few…

This Is Not the Blog You're Looking For

It's a grey and rainy weekend morning, and I'm facing a day at work trying to put things in order before I leave for DAMOP on Tuesday, so I'm not in a big hurry to get moving. Of course, I'm not feeling all that inspired, blog-wise, either, so I'm going to fall back on one of the staples of lazy bloggers everywhere: funny search engine requests. There's something a little odd about the way Google Analytics counts these, as "probability+of+fixation+of+neutral+mutations" comes in at #2, which is just sad-- searches for things relevant to this blog are completely dwarfed by PZ's sloppy seconds.…

Sea ice betting report

And not before time, you might say. Sea ice this year reached a new record minimum in the Arctic (though not in the Antarctic, which begins to look wind-driven. And before you think the two trends might be opposite-and-nearly equal, look at Tamino's convenient analysis which I can never find). Which means I lost some of my bets. Now, what exactly was I betting on? Crandles helpfully points me at Betting on sea ice: $10,000 although the $10k doesn't fall due until 2016. But in the comments (the one from 2011/07/04, since perma-linking here remains invisible to all but me) we agreed: we are…

Attacked!

h/t to JM for More on the Iconography of IPCC 1990 Figure 7 - scroll down for the breathless prose. First the background: why does anyone care about figure 7.1.c of the IPCC '90 report? Well, if you're a denialist you care, because it represents the true uncorrupted state of climate science before the evil taint of the hockey stick crept in. I suppose if anyone doesn't believe that and challenges me I'll have to go crawling in the slime for references, so please don't make me do it. So, the septic storyline is "true uncorrupted state" -> "corrupt hockey stick". That works OK with a naive…

Junk from von S

A tedious detail in the fall-out from the latest Lovelock nonsense. If you're not following, our favourite electron-capturing emeritus has recanted, or perhaps not, who knows. Klimazwiebel has a thread in which, clearly over-awed by his early reputation, they delicately tip-toe around the fact that he has been talking nonsense for years. Apparently we are to believe that But Lovelock is unique in his self-critical attitude. Twaddle. Lovelock knows precious little about climate science, and is merely flip-flopping around, lost. I pointed this out to von S, and got a pile of garbage in return.…

I'm famous

You knew that, obviously, or you wouldn't be here. I have an entry on Conservapedia, you don't get much more famous than that. Compare that with so-called climate "scientists" like James Annan - even his tippling great-uncle only gets a few lines (and no invective, how dull). I see that a while ago I mocked Conservapedia for being dumb but said that, whilst nearly fact free, it was "not really even very funny". I'm pleased to see that they've corrected that: now Global warming is the liberal hoax[2][3] that... and so on. Conservapedia is so risible that no-one (not even the WUWT folks) would…

Is that David Horowitz I smell?

The beautiful state of Washington, my native home and still home to many of my family members, has some people ready to enact some major legislative stupidity. David Horowitz was a right-wing nut who was making noise a few years ago with his witch hunt for evil leftists (Hi, Michael!) and his promotion of an Academic Bill of Rights, which was basically a ham-handed attempt to force academia to grant special privileges to intellectually bankrupt ideas, all under the guise of "fairness". The Washington bill reeks of that familiar stench. This bill aims to impose the ideological biases of…

New erg

I didn't promise to cull all the boring rowing stuff off this blog, only the routine stuff. And obviously Anticipation of a new ergs arrival, The is far from routine. Let alone the actual arrival. Here we see Darling Daughter pulling down firmly into her stomach in violation of all the best practices, but never mind, she is but young. It comes in a nice cardboard box, and isn't even especially large - foolishly, I got it delivered to home, which meant I got a phonecall in the middle of the day and had to rush off. Argh. I should just have got it sent to work - it would have fit easily into…

Kkinky again

mt discusses Denialism, Informational Conformity and New Coke. Go read it now, if you didn't when he first wrote it. Paul Graham propounds the concept of the top idea in your mind which might partly explain why rolling out a broken AUP is a really bad idea; less for the policy itself, which people will just make jokes at, but because it distracts. Can't remember where I got the pic from now (M-san has found the source). Listening to Peter Gabriel - I have the touch. Rabbett attacks that dork Cuccineli but the links to the docs are interesting. Out in the cold says Nurture, The parlous state…

Poachin' Pope

Not Vicki this time. No, its the one about those naughty left-footers poaching the bums on our seats. Speaking of bums, apparently the apostates say: "The Church of England is, in the view of many of us, ceasing to be the church of Jesus Christ and becoming the church of political correctness, not only the ordination of women to the priesthood and the episcopate - to which we object - but also in many attitudes to human sexuality from divorce and remarriage, to homosexuality." As an observer of all this, I find it confusing. Suppose I was to believe in Christianity - Jesus Christ is the Son…

Wildfires and global warming

Off on an email list we've been discussing wildfires and their connection to global warming. I've always been somewhat cynical about the connection, which appears in the popular press [1] to amount to "fires are hot, global warming is, err, warm, so they must be connected". However, I really do know well enough to ignore the popular press. This kind of thing: There are many reasons for any particular fire, but basically the (wildfire) pattern is reflection of two things related to higher temperatures - earlier spring snow melt and also higher spring and summer temperatures," he added. [2] isn…

He turns everything he touches to dross

Ben Stein must be on a campaign to make himself look stupid. Everyone here knows about his association with creationism, but it turns out this former student of economics at Yale is clueless about everything…but he still gets published in The New York Times. First, let me begin with a first. I have never warned readers away from any one columnist or journalist, but after reading his column this weekend in The New York Times , I feel obligated to tell readers to never read Ben Stein again. In indicting traders and lackeys in the press for the subprime selloff, Stein offers not one shred of…

The Bottleneck Years by H. E. Taylor - Chapter 13

The Bottleneck Years by H.E. Taylor Chapter 12 Table of Contents Chapter 14 Chapter 13 Olivia, August 30, 2055 All of a sudden I had a whole lot of woman on my hands. It was a whole new ballgame. Olivia was smart, sexy and a lot of fun. I stayed at her suite the first night and the next we spent at mine. Matt and Jon just laughed when I explained why I had stood them up. Jon went back to Ottawa. The Senate was not in session, but the Senator had research and PR jobs lined up to keep him busy for a month. A week later, Matt came around to say goodbye. He was heading to the coast. "I'm…

The Differences Between Republicans and Democrats

As incredible as it seems, there are still those among us who think it clever and above it all to say that in America there is only the Republicrat Party. If you're one of those people who persist in saying that there is no difference between the parties, I would urge you to read this article from today's Washington Post: Yesterday's House debate on same-sex marriage was pure dead horse: The Senate last month rejected -- emphatically -- a constitutional amendment that would allow Congress to ban same-sex marriage, so there was zero chance the amendment could be approved this year. But…

Physics Blogging Round-Up: August

Another month, another set of blog posts. This one includes the highest traffic I think I've ever seen for a post, including the one that started me on the path to a book deal: -- The ALPHA Experiment Records Another First In Measuring Antihydrogen: The good folks trapping antimatter at CERN have now measured the hyperfine spectrum of hydrogen, which is a good excuse to explain what that is and why it matters. -- 7 Suggestions For Succeeding In Science In College: It's the time of year when lots of people give unsolicited advice to the college-bound, and who am I to buck that trend? -- How To…

Physics Blogging Round-Up: July

Another month, another collection of blog posts for Forbes: -- The Physics Of Century-Old Mirror Selfies: Back in the early 1900's there was a brief vogue for trick pictures showing the same person from five different angles; this post explains how to do that with mirrors. -- Why Research By Undergraduates Is Important For Science And Students: A reply to an essay talking up the products of undergraduate research projects, arguing that the most valuable part of research is the effect on students. -- What Does It Mean To Share 'Raw Data'?: Some thoughts on the uselessness of much "raw data" in…

This must be some kind of race

Texas has McLeroy driving pro-science people out of the Texas Education Agency, so Florida must be feeling left behind: a member of their state board of education has recently declared her opposition to evolution in the schools. State Board of Education member Donna Callaway says she'll be voting against the proposed new state science standards because evolution "should not be taught to the exclusion of other theories of origin of life" and says she hopes "there will be times of prayer throughout Christian homes and churches directed toward this issue." "As a SBOE member, I want those prayers…

Physics Blogging Round-Up: Jocks, Lasers, LIGO, Admissions, Nano-Movies, and Philosophy

It's been a few weeks since my last summary of physics posts I've been doing at Forbes, so here's the latest eclectic collection: -- Football Physics And the Myth Of The Dumb Jock: In honor of the Super Bowl, repeating the argument from Eureka that athletes are not, in fact, dumb jocks, but excellent scientific thinkers. Of course, the actual game tat night was horribly ugly, not a compelling display of anything in particular... -- How Can A Laser Make A Plane Turn Around?: A quick post on the optics of lasers, spinning off a news of the weird story about a flight that had to return after a "…

037/366: Morning Star and Moon

One of the few problems with the new camera is that the Canon software that talks to it only runs on my laptop, not my home desktop. This is an issue partly because the laptop has less disk space (I got it with the biggest SSD available a few years ago, which is small compared to the spinny-disk drives in the desktop), but a bigger issue for image processing is the display, which shifts colors dramatically as you change the viewing angle. This isn't a big issue for daylight photos of the kids, where the camera does pretty well already and the GIMP auto-level tool handles the few color issues…

Weekend Diversion: And Here Come the Robot Zombies...

"Listen, and understand. That terminator is out there. It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead." -Kyle Reese, the Terminator Sure, they may look innocent now.  Maybe you think they'll even live peacefully with us and create nothing but beauty, as Florence + the Machine might have you believe with their song, Cosmic Love. But the apocalypse will soon be upon us.  And I think that this cute fella may be just the thing that ushers it in. NAO robot, courtesy of Aldebaran Robotics,…

Eastern Pacific Hurricane Season: Carlos tours the coast?

Blanca is the second named tropical storm in the Eastern Pacific. I'm pretty sure Blanca was originally a disturbance with a low probability of becoming a named storm, but I may have missed something. Blanca is intensifying rapidly and will reach hurricane status shortly if it has not already, and will likely develop to become a major hurricane. The storm is heading towards the Baja, but may weaken before it hits anything big. Meanwhile, the first named storm of the season, Andres, is still a hurricane. Over the next few days, Andres will make a sharp turn almost in place and weaken.…

Arctic Sea Ice Decline in 2015

The surface ice in the Arctic has been melting to historic low levels every year for the last several years. The graph above shows the first ten years in the National Snow & Ice Data Center records, meant to indicate what Arctic Sea Ice "normally" does as it melts off during the northern warm months. The thick black line is the average over 1981-2010, and grey shaded area shows two standard deviations above and below that line. The blue line tracking along the lower end of the 2SD shaded area is the ice extent this year. During the period when sea ice is at its maximum, this year's ice…

Finally, TV Meteorologists On Board with Climate Change

There was a time when I picked which local TV news station to watch based on the way the TV meteorologist addressed global warming. There were two stations in the running. One of them had a guy who frequently disparaged climate science, and the other had Paul Douglas, who no longer does TV meteorology (I no longer watch local TV news) but who has become a major spokesperson for reason and science (see: Paul Douglas on Climate Change and A Q&A with Paul Douglas, the evangelical Christian Republican poster boy for climate change). Paul and I have become colleagues and friends. In 2011,…

On Sea Level Rise

Sea levels are rising with increasing global temperatures. It seems that whenever there is a new estimate of the rate of melting of one or more major parts of the polar ice caps, that estimate is higher than previously thought. By the end of the century, the most aggressive estimates suggest that we will have close to 2 meters (6 feet) of sea level rise along the coasts. So,here are three sea level rise items for you. First, the Obama Administration will begin to plan for sea level rise in all major federal projects to which this variable pertains. See this item in the Washington Post.…

Hedy Lamarr

Just a note to celebrate the life and times of Hedy Lamarr, who died on this day, 2000, at the age of 85. Lamarr had a very interesting career that involved major acting accomplishments, milestone acting events, and direct involvement in the invention of the technology that now forms the basis of WiFi, BlueTooth and other similar modes of communication between electronic devices. The story of Lemarr's life is complicated and understanding that story is made even more difficult because of the way it has been told in the past, with multiple versions of multiple events told by biographers (…

How many lakes are there?

How many lakes are there? We don't actually know. Lakes are often undercounted, or small lakes ignored, in larger scale geophysical surveys. It is hard to count the small lakes, or in some cases, even to define them. A recent study (published in Geophysical Research Letters) examines this question. We want to know how many lakes there are, and how much surface area they take up, in order to understand better the global Carbon cycle (and for other reasons). From the Abstract of this study: An accurate description of the abundance and size distribution of lakes is critical to quantifying…

Vote For Jeanne Shaheen, New Hampshire Senate

This is an endorsement by Climate Hawks Vote, which I support. We’re working our way through scoring Senate Democrats on climate leadership, using the same lodestar that we’ve used on House Democrats: who’s leading on climate by engaging the public? It’s slow going - results might not be final until mid-October or later. However, given the intense interest in certain races, we’re releasing a few scores early. Jeanne Shaheen has earned a high score, and thus our endorsement, for her deep commitment to energy efficiency. Jeanne Shaheen, New Hampshire Senator, has earned a very high score on our…

Interview with Michael Mann

Last Sunday, I interviewed climate scientist Michael Mann on Atheist Talk Radio. I do occasional interviews there on science related topics (see this list of previous shows). You can listen to the interview here: Play Now I'd like to take this opportunity to thank Minnesota Atheists for giving me the opportunity to do these science interviews, which are admittedly different from the usual topics covered by the show. Prior to the show, I wrote a post indicating that we would be doing this interview, noting that people were welcome to past questions I might ask Mann during the interview. I…

Update on West Africa's #Ebola Outbreak: Getting worse

The news is bleak. I don't have a lot of confidence in the reported numbers. At one time it was said that on a nice Saturday in the summer, four out of five cars driving around in downtown Boston were looking for a parking place. This is somewhat like the situation in Liberia and possibly other affected areas. There may be as many Ebola victims driving around in taxis looking for a clinic as there are in clinics. Or maybe a fewer. Or, maybe more. Maybe a lot more. But, we have to work with the data we have. There are two charts based on the information provided by WHO for up through…

Penguins: The Ultimate Guide

There is a new book out on Penguins: Penguins: The Ultimate Guide written and edited by Tui De Roy, Mark Jones, and Julie Cornthwaite. It is a beautiful coffee table style book full of information. All of the world's species are covered (amazingly there are only 18 of them) and there are more than 400 excellent photos. The book covers penguin science (science about them, not by them). There is also quite a bit about their conservation. The layout of the book is interesting. The last section of the book, by Julie Cornthwaite includes portraits of each species, and a compendium of…

Should it be "math" or "maths"?

Do the math: There are actually two answers to this question. First, "maths" looks plural and is preferred by some because "mathematics" is plural. The problem with that is "mathematics" is no more plural than "physics" or any other compound noun. It is a rational sounding utterly incorrect argument. If we said "mathematics are cool" then there might be a case. But we say "mathematics is cool." Second, some people say maths and some people say math, and that's how language works. That is a valid argument, but if you are walking around in the US saying "maths" instead of "math" be aware…

If you hurry, you can vote in the Climate Primary (Closes March 8th)

Climate Hawks Votes is running a primary in which you can chose either Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, or No Endorsement. The web page where you can vote is here. You are required to enter some identifying information in order to eliminate or significantly reduced gaming of the poll, so the results should be reasonably fair. There is a tendency for climate hawks (using the term generally, not in reference to this specific group) to favor Sanders on climate over Clinton, because Clinton is not 100% anti-fracking and anti-methane, while Sanders is. However, I think this is a bit unfair.…

How Machines Work Zoo Break: Excellent New Macaulay Book

David Macaulay is famous for his "how things work" books. How Machines Work: Zoo Break! is a new book that is really fun. So fun that it took me a long time to get it back from Amanda and Huxley so I could review it. The concept is simple. A story, a simple story, is constructed, that has nothing to do with machines. Except it has everything to do with machines. Two critters, Sloth and Sengi, are in a zoo and trying to escape. Their various escapades lead to situations that allow the exploration of all those interesting mechanical concepts, such as inclined planes, levers and fulcrums and…

It's still going on?

I was interviewed on a website over a month ago, and unfortunately John A. Davison and his infected polyp, VMartin, took over the comments there and went on and on in their ridiculous way. They're still going at it. Even more absurdly, the droning duo are bragging on ISCID, in an awesome example of pretentious self-delusion: 658 comments and going strong again. Are there any brave souls here that are willing to join Martin and myself in this incredible demonstration that there are still those who believe that life in all its manifestations was an accident? Are Martin and myself the only ones…

Global Warming: Record Breaking October Heat

The Earth's surface is warming primarily because of human generated greenhouse gasses, mainly CO2, being added to the atmosphere. Several agencies and organizations track this by combining data from surface thermometers and sea surface temperature measurements. The Japan Meteorological Agency is one such group, and they have just released their updated monthly data for October. The graph above shows the average surface temerature for the month of October for the entire period of their data set (1891 to the present). Not only is October 2015 the warmest October observed, but it is way…

An Astrophysicist Gives Thanks

"The Sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do." -Galileo So tomorrow is American Thanksgiving, and it's one of our traditions that I'm most happy to take part in. So without any ado, let me give thanks with you. Thanks not just for the wonderful world we have, with its glorious skies and all the secrets it slowly reveals to us, but for everything that allows us to have the world we have. Thanks to the atom, with its massive, compact nucleus and its oppositely-charged, much lighter…

Enjoy a Real Harvest Moon Tonight!

"But now it's gettin' late And the moon is climbin' high. I want to celebrate See it shinin' in your eye." -Neil Young The full Moon, beautiful as it is, isn't really all that rare! Once every 29-30 days, the Moon returns to a completely full phase, where the entire "day side" of the Moon (the side lit up by the Sun) faces Earth. In fact, our word "month" is named after the Moon, and -- unsurprisingly -- each of our 12 months has a special name for its full Moon. And traditionally, September's Moon, which typically (but not always) is the Moon closest to the Autumnal Equinox (for those of…

Roger Pielke Junior, I forgive you for this one thing

Hi there, folks. This post should have been a tweet in response to Roger Pielke Jr (@RogerPielkeJr), professor of political science at the University of Colorado Boulder, the guy who got fired by Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight for, as I understand it, his anti-science positions on climate change. This is a response for a tweet by Junior designed to offend, nay, attack, both Professor Michael Mann and moi. But Roger blocks me (and everybody else) on twitter, so this has to be a blog post. Roger is not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I suppose I can't blame him for getting every single…