February 29, 2008
Category: Creationism
Would someone kindly hire Disco. Inst. lead vocalist Rob Crowther a copy editor? It wouldn't necessarily make what he says any less bogus, but at least his argument would be readable. It took me a long time to even find a grammatically correct interpretation of the title of his latest post "Revisioning Darwin's Theory as above Questioning." Turns out, he isn't failing to make the participle of "revise," he is claiming that there is some sort of re-envisioning. Crowther proceeds to present the case for this "revisioning" in a post replete with sentence fragments ("Except when it comes to neo-Darwinism."),...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 3:11 PM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 28, 2008
Category: Policy and Politics
As Barack Obama clears his millionth individual contributor, the Congressional influence of large corporate donors continues to generate controversy. The fight currently focuses on the question of warrantless wiretapping. The story goes like this: Some time in 2001 (before 9/11), the Bush administration started leaning on telecoms to give broad access to telephone calls involving American citizens, without any warrants.After 9/11, that program ramped up, sweeping up phone calls from innocent Americans, without any evidence that any terrorist activity has been detected.The New York Times revealed this illegal program.Groups like EFF sued the telecoms, since their participation violated individual citizens'...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 4:53 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 27, 2008
Category: Culture Wars
Making Light reminds us of William F. Buckley's greatest hits: “The central question that emerges…is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas where it does not predominate numerically? The sobering answer is Yes—the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race.” —William F. Buckley, National Review, August 24, 1957He continued defending nonsense in erudite ways through his long and often tedious career: What we contend is that everyone should acknowledge creation as an alternative explanation for cosmic...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 6:26 PM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Academia
While Matt Selman's rules of book shelving are clearly insane, Ezra Klein's response is clearly not quite right either. The basic rule, from which all the others follow like a pack of hallucinating baboons, is: It is unacceptable to display any book in a public space of your home if you have not read it. Therefore, to be placed on Matt Selman's living room bookshelves, a book must have been read cover to cover, every word, by Matt Selman. If you are in the home of Matt Selman and see a book on the living room shelves, you know FOR...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 2:20 PM • 10 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 26, 2008
Category: Creationism
Bruce Chapman, president of the creationist Disco. Inst., complains about "young adults talking about politics and making fools of themselves in television and radio interviews." This is already rich, coming from a group that hosts such intellectual lowlifes as Johnny West and Billy Dembski. But the comedy doesn't stop there. Chapman, whose organization encourages school administrators to disregard advice offered by the leading scientific societies, explains that: many no longer learn much history in school, they no longer study "civics" (the way our form of representative government functions) and they are ignorant of the crucial cultural legacies of our civilization...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 5:42 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 25, 2008
Category: Culture Wars
Americans Change Faiths at Rising Rate, Report Finds - New York Times: More than a quarter of adult Americans have left the faith of their childhood to join another religion or no religion, according to a new survey of religious affiliation by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. The report, titled “U.S. Religious Landscape Survey,” depicts a highly fluid and diverse national religious life. If shifts among Protestant denominations are included, then it appears that 44 percent of Americans have switched religious affiliations.… The report shows, for example, that every religion is losing and gaining members, but that...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 2:02 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 24, 2008
Category: Policy and Politics
During Robert F. Kennedy's candidacy, he gave an anti-war speech at K-State. At this comparatively conservative outpost, the crowds went crazy. A speechwriter remembers looking at the wild crowd reaction and saying, "This is Kansas, fucking Kansas. He's going all the fucking way!" I thought of that when I saw a set of new polls comparing Hillary and Obama to McCain in several key states. Surprisingly, Obama has a decent shot at winning Kansas. The results in KS are close to a statistical tie with those in Oregon, a state that swings politically, but usually winds up voting for Dems....
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 11:06 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Policy and Politics
It's two days short of the 5th anniversary of this question: can anyone… give me one single example of something with the following three characteristics: 1. It is a policy initiative of the current Bush administration 2. It was significant enough in scale that I'd have heard of it (at a pinch, that I should have heard of it) 3. It wasn't in some important way completely fucked up during the execution.I still haven't got an answer....
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 10:45 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 22, 2008
Category: Creationism
Bruce Gordon, "Research" Director at the Disco. Inst. has A Few Words about a Long-Winded Breach of Etiquette, his response to Daniel Brooks's exposé of a Disco.-funded conference. Gordon complains that Brooks's account is inaccurate, but never actually says what he got wrong. He complains that Brooks did not "respect the privacy of the conference and the other attendees by refraining from public commentary until such time as the content of the presentations and transcripts of the Q&A periods were made available and could speak for themselves." But he publishes extensive email communications between various people, without stating of those...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 5:00 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Policy and Politics
Kevin Drum notes that Moqtada al-Sadr has extended his cease-fire for another six months. This is abundantly good news, and as the Washington Post points out, this cease-fire is at least as significant a factor in the drop in violence as the "surge". I've updated the figure above from what I posted at the State of the Union. It remains the case that a model of fatalities since the ceasefire is a much stronger fit than a model of fatalities since the surge" began. Coalition fatalities have been flat since last October, and fell substantially in September. The long-term...
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Posted by Josh Rosenau at 4:57 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Joshua Rosenau spends his days defending the teaching of evolution at 
