April 2, 2007
Matt Nisbet thinks the Supreme Court made things worse:
Despite the ever growing scientific consensus about the nature and urgency of global warming, Americans remain more divided politically on the matter than at anytime in history. And the Supreme Court just made matters worse.
I'm not exactly…
April 2, 2007
Higher corporate taxes may attract foreign investment | Science Blog:
A team of leading economists has challenged the current political drive to cut corporate taxes — with new research showing that countries with higher taxes and higher social welfare spending are more successful in attracting…
April 2, 2007
Within discussions of environmental issues, there are two broad approaches one can take. On one hand there are those who argue that the goal should be the creation and preservation of wilderness free of human influence. This view can be broadly construed as "preservation."
The other major…
April 2, 2007
SCOTUSblog explains:
Ruling 5-4, the Supreme Court on Monday found that the federal government had the authority to regulate greenhouse gases that may contribute to global warming, and must examine anew the scientific evidence of a link between those gases contained in the exhausts of new cars and…
April 2, 2007
The University of Chicago's Randy Picker discusses the implications:
Apple and EMI announced today that they would start selling higher-quality DRM-free music on iTunes at a price of $1.29 per track, 30 cents more than iTunes’s standard 99 cents price. This is an outgrowth of Steve Jobs’s Thoughts…
April 2, 2007
Every week, a secret cabal of bloggers gather, and quietly select the finest blog posts from and about Kansas.
emaw has a message for the resident of cube 1B963, "well, er, sorry 'bout that." It isn't his banana.
It probably isn't Ed Humes's, though Humes is the author of Monkey Girl. Paul, of…
April 2, 2007
Billy Dembski's "research" assistant Joel Borofsky writes, Don’t teach the Holocaust! It might offend people!:
From the "London Times"
Teachers are dropping controversial subjects such as the Holocaust and the Crusades from history lessons because they do not want to cause offence to children from…
April 2, 2007
Someone told me Muslims don't drink alcohol. Does that include beer? Maybe I need to rethink this whole Yunis Khan deal.
April 1, 2007
The pseudonymous IDolator who wrote this:
I do not make any appeals to personal qualifications, training, or expertise. The reason being is that if I have no qualifications or relevant training, this may cause some to dismiss or overlook a good argument for this reason alone. On the other hand, if…
April 1, 2007
Send in your submissions for the Kansas Guild of Bloggers ASAP.
April 1, 2007
The Discovery Institute almost fooled me with their Michael Egnor impersonation. We know the real Egnor was just testing folks like me out, and that we fell for it. My apologies to the real Dr. Egnor, I almost believed there really were people who didn't think bacteria evolved, that medicine hasn…
April 1, 2007
In preparing myself for Taner Edis's presentation in two days (April 3rd, 7 pm in the Alderson theater), I've done some reading about Islamic perspectives on science.
It turns out that there's a group in Turkey called Harun Yahya. They've worked with American creationists like Ken Ham and Duane…
March 31, 2007
Via Stranger Fruit:
You scored as Justice (Fairness). Your life is guided by the concept of Fair Justice: Everyone, yourself included, should be rewarded and punished according to the help or harm they cause.
"He who does not punish evil commands it to be done."
--Leonardo da Vinci
“Though…
March 31, 2007
Bounce Boyda is very excited. The found a small error in my comments about Congresswoman Boyda. I stated that yesterday was the end of the fundraising quarter when today is the end. That means you can still donate.
This error inspired an error-laden post from them, a post filled with…
March 30, 2007
Bounce Boyda thinks Bancy broke this promise:
Nancy Boyda stood in front of a camera, taped a commercial, and ran it on the air. On the commercial she said, "I'm not going to raise your taxes."
Bounce Boyda, like the RNC and the Kansas GOP, are using a definition of "raising taxes" very different…
March 30, 2007
Today is the last day of the FEC's fundraising quarter. Your favorite Congresscritters and candidates will file forms based on how much money they've raised and spent as of today, and what those numbers look like will shape perceptions of the races in 2008.
If you've got a favorite in the…
March 30, 2007
A few days ago, I mentioned some revisions of the regulations implementing the Endangered Species Act, changes which would gut key provisions. In addition to imposing an arbitrary time limit on what decision-makers could examine regarding potential threats to a species, the new regulations would…
March 29, 2007
One of the great ironies of politics is that the most local offices, the ones that ought to be most responsive to constituent needs, are often the least-known. Presidential elections are hotly debated, even in a state like Kansas where the outcome is fore-ordained. But a local or state school…
March 28, 2007
These are the Democrats Karl Rove wants to unseat:
Nick Lampson, Texas
Tim Mahoney, Florida
Jerry McNerney, California
Zack Space, Ohio
Baron Hill, Indiana
Chris Carney, Pennsylvania
Patrick Murphy, Pennsylvania
Nancy Boyda, Kansas
Joe Sestak, Pennsylvania
Brad Ellsworth, Indiana
Heath Shuler,…
March 28, 2007
I've addressed the absurdity of Denyse O'Leary's analogy between arson investigations and biology before, but she can't seem to stop. Here is how she proposes to address why invoking design doesn't stop research:
Suppose we say: If the fire marshall’s office (FMO) concludes that a fatal fire has…
March 28, 2007
Stay Red Kansas – formerly the proprietors of Fire Kansas Democrats – is excited. A recent Pew Poll showed, in SRK's words:
over 40% of the public believe that the situation is going 'very well.'
According to Pew, however:
Four-in-ten Americans say that the U.S. military effort in Iraq is going…
March 28, 2007
Mike Silverman found this remarkable statement on the website for James Bush, until recently the minister at a Southern Baptist church here in Lawrence.:
I have read the report the City Commission received from the city staff as well as reviewed the comments made by citizens of Lawrence and members…
March 27, 2007
In one episode of Futurama, Fry traps a giant brain in a book he wrote "a crummy world of plot holes and spelling errors." That's what it feels like to read the antics of Dembski and the gang. The latest offense to reason comes from DaveScot (predictably). Upon reading this:
First, the germ-free…
March 27, 2007
David Tyler wonders Would Linnaeus have waved the banner of phylogenomics? He writes:
It may surprise some, but Newton did not pioneer physics with relativity in mind. It is not necessary to presuppose an equivalence between mass and energy to be a scholar working in this field.
Oh, that isn't…
March 27, 2007
78 Republicans opposed a bill placing a 120 day limit on interim appointments of federal prosecutors. The bill removes a provision slipped into the USA/PATRIOT act which allows the President to name interim prosecutors without going through the Senate confirmation process. That provision allowed…
March 26, 2007
Salon reviews a draft of changes to regulations implementing the Endangered Species Act. The major shift is towards greater state control (as opposed to federal control) over the process, a shift that's been a key element of Republican attempts to gut the Act for decades. Salon explains other…
March 26, 2007
Lawrence Small has resigned. He has had an interesting tenure as Secretary of the Smithsonian. His collection of South American artifacts wound up putting him in violation of the Migratory Bird Treaty, and he tried to be allowed to use his community service time lobbying to revise that and…
March 26, 2007
John Holbo wants the deal that the universe of 24 offers:
It would be a good bargain, if the reality-based liberal community could strike it: in exchange for liberal control of actually existing institutions and policy-making, conservatives could be ceded total control of a network of powerful but…
March 26, 2007
The excellent slacktivist discusses the abuse of potentially informative statistics in The Wire, then generalizes:
It happens everywhere. A perfectly useful measurement gradually becomes more important that it has any right to be and soon everyone's life is shaped by the slightest variations in…
March 26, 2007
Lawrence.com's Joel Mathis is blogging Tocqueville, and asks "Is equality still ‘a fundamental condition of America?,’" My argument would be that it is no less so than it was then, but that isn't saying much. Tocqueville has a tendency to use an idealized conception of America as a foil for his…
