Archives for February, 2007
Bill Richardson and 4 other western govs form climate pact
Posted by Josh Rosenau on February 28, 2007 Western States Agree to Cut Greenhouse Gases: Five Western governors agreed yesterday on a plan to cut their states’ emissions of gases linked to global warming and to establish a regional carbon-trading system, though they stopped short of saying how drastically they will seek to reduce greenhouse gases. The governors — [from] California,? Arizona, Oregon,…
Where they stand on the domestic partnership registry
Posted by Josh Rosenau on February 28, 2007 Red Letter Day rounds up the six City Commission candidates’ statements on the proposed registry. The three progressives are for it, the two growth-for-growth’s sake candidates are wishy-washy, and the pastor is predictably less wishy than washy. Given the demographics involved, it would be bad mojo for even a Southern Baptist minister to be entirely…
Copyright is broken
Posted by Josh Rosenau on February 28, 2007 In a world in which public domain speeches by government officials on government time are copyrighted, it’s hard to conclude anything other than that copyright is broken. If it is not “fair use” to present film shot by CSPAN’s cameras of congresscritters at work for educational purposes and with attribution, copyright is broken. Historically, the…
Statistics in sport?
Posted by Josh Rosenau on February 28, 2007 Chad is bemoaning the increase of “stat-geekery” in sports: I’ll admit that I’m somewhat torn about this. I am, after all, a professional nerd, and enjoy working with numbers, so I can see the appeal of quantitative data. And a lot of the regular statistics used in basketball are pretty crude measures, so I can…
Lawrence primary results
Posted by Josh Rosenau on February 27, 2007 The unofficial results show that the City Commission race will be between progressive candidates Highberger, Schauner and Maynard-Moody and aggressive growth candidates Dever, Chestnut and Bush. The major issues of the race will be “smart growth” versus growth without an adjective. That will translate into differences on the extension of K-10 through the Baker Wetlands,…
Hugs vs. spears: You be the editor
Posted by Josh Rosenau on February 27, 2007 Imagine you were an editor, and two stories came across your desk. One shows that chimpanzees use spears, giving insight into the origins of weaponmaking and violence in human society. The other article shows that spider monkeys hug to avoid fights: Hugging diffuses the tension when two bands of monkeys meet, say the British researchers…
GOP strategy: stop the vote
Posted by Josh Rosenau on February 27, 2007 Despite Tony’s endorsement, I’m not loving Stay Red Kansas. Tony thinks it’s written by insiders, but I see a lot of juvenile errors, and I almost suspect that it’s a new venture by the gang from Fire Kansas Democrats. The mistakes they make are basic, like claiming that the RNC would kick in funds for…
Fame! or The Company We Keep
Posted by Josh Rosenau on February 27, 2007 The New Scientist reviews Conservapedia. Along with our own Dr. Myers and Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, the article quotes one: Joshua Rosenau, a graduate student in evolutionary biology at the University of Kansas and contributor to Science Blogs claims the site has a darker side. “On some level it’s also reflective of a harmful…
Primary season
Posted by Josh Rosenau on February 26, 2007 It never ends, does it. KC mayoral candidates are on TV. I confess I haven’t watched those races at all. Read Tony or whatever to find out who’s who. I’m with Red Letter Day on the Lawrence City Council elections. You get to vote for 3 candidates, the top six votegetters go on to the…
John McCain’s friends
Posted by Josh Rosenau on February 26, 2007 Bruce Chapman writes about “encouraging signs in Baghdad” at the DI’s blog: The days you do not hear on the news of some new killing of American troops in Baghdad is a day when the news really should announce: “No Americans Were Killed in Baghdad Today” or even “In Iraq Today.” That’s right. In addition…
Joshua Rosenau spends his days defending the teaching of evolution at the