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Intelligent Design: The Final Word, Part 2
This is a continuation of my discussion of ID (see part 1). Here in part 2 I have exerpted from Behe’s book in order to summarize his argument. I am using the 2003 trade paperback edition published by Free Press, lent to me by a work colleague.
Mar 12, 2006
3 min read
Personal
Intelligent Design: The Final Word, Part 1
I am finally ready to write some definitive thoughts about Intelligent Design. I just finished reading Michael Behe’s book Darwin’s Black Box from 1996, and I’ve thought about it from the perspective of science, falsifiability, religion, and philosophy.
Mar 12, 2006
3 min read
Personal
Written verbal tics
I’ve been meaning to write this down for a long time. There are two very widespread and very annoying idioms that I see a lot in amateur writing. The main example of the kind of writing I mean is product reviews on sites like Amazon, but I see it also on Macworld, CNet and other more professional sites.
Dec 10, 2005
2 min read
Personal
Contact
I just watched Contact again for the first time in a while. A major theme of the movie is that the goals of science and religion are so hard to untangle that the two main protagonists have a very complicated adult relationship based on it.
Oct 19, 2005
2 min read
Personal
Irrational Design?
There is a great deal of controversy at the moment over Intelligent Design (ID) being taught in science classrooms. I have always felt very strongly about the dangers faced by science in our society, and this crisis is a perfect example of what can happen without careful vigilance on the part of science teachers and practitioners.
Oct 9, 2005
4 min read
Personal
Mac Moments 2
My second Mac moment came when using the text editor TextWrangler to work on ShelfCentered.com. Yesterday I had put my Mac on mute for some reason, and of course I forgot about it and was working away this evening.
Jun 16, 2005
2 min read
Mac stuff
Mac Moments
At my workplace, the Mac platform is often derided by what I consider typical “PC guys.” These are technically savvy folks who for whatever reason feel very strongly that the Mac platform is poor, or should go away, or that Windows has definitively proven its superiority.
May 15, 2005
4 min read
Mac stuff
Poker
I’ve had poker on my mind since last Thanksgiving, specifically Texas Hold’em. At this point, I have special hold’em software, four poker strategy books and one nonfiction book about poker. I mostly study the books and play a bit with the software, but eventually I want to start a real-money account on one of the online poker sites.
Apr 26, 2005
2 min read
Personal
ShelfCentered.com
For the last couple of months, I’ve been working on a new side project that my wife, brother and sister and I came up with, called ShelfCentered.com. I haven’t posted about ShelfCentered.
Apr 25, 2005
2 min read
Tech
MathML
My friend and former coworker, Robert Miner, has written an article about MathML in the latest issue of Notices of the American Mathematics Society, which you can read online [pdf]. MathML is a standard XML representation of math notation and semantics, and has been adopted steadily ever since Robert co-created it in 1998.
Apr 16, 2005
1 min read
Tech
Daylight Savings Time
I don’t understand daylight savings time. No one I talk to has a clear idea of when and why it was invented. What country started it? What countries adhere to it?
Apr 8, 2005
2 min read
Personal
C. S. Lewis 2005
I visited my parents for the holidays again this year, and like last year I decided to read some of their C. S. Lewis collection. I felt like progressing on with his Christian works, and so I chose Mere Christianity.
Jan 17, 2005
4 min read
Personal
The Civil War
I’ve been renting Ken Burns’ Civil War shows lately, from Netflix. I thought I’d share a misconception I learned I had about the Civil War. My memory from school left me thinking that the war would involve a large set of complicated virtuosic battlefield maneuvers, and that I’d come to appreciate how all the famous generals were geniuses.
Jul 17, 2004
2 min read
Personal
Does Tolkien think Good always defeats Evil?
I’ve always thought Tolkien was essentially pessimistic, despite the happy ending of The Lord of the Rings. The power of Evil he describes, and the inevibatle comparisons to the horror of World War I make this a convincing point of view.
Jun 1, 2004
6 min read
Personal
New feature: better links
A new feature on Long Head is the new super-accurate “Greg Links” list on the left. Except for the other langmead.info sites, these links are the sites I’m actually actively reading every day.
Apr 17, 2004
2 min read
Personal
Book review: C. S. Lewis
This winter I read three books by C. S. Lewis: The Great Divorce, The Screwtape Letters and Surprised by Joy. I’ve been introduced to Lewis before, when I was young. I read the first several books of the Narnia series, and I read the whole Out of the Silent Planet trilogy.
Apr 17, 2004
4 min read
Personal
Hello from Clié
I’m blogging this from my new Clié TH-55. It has wireless networking and a full web browser, plus email. I’m still looking fo a free instant messaging client.
Mar 28, 2004
1 min read
Tech
MathType for Mac's out!
After nearly three years of development, MathType 5 for Mac has been released. It’s been a long time coming, and I’m looking forward to moving on to other projects, but for now I’m happy it’s finished.
Mar 26, 2004
1 min read
Personal
Hotspot
I’m blogging this from a Starbucks in Hollywood, near the big shopping center called Hollywood & Highland. Alison is out with a friend nearby, so I decided to try out the Starbucks hotspot system.
Mar 14, 2004
1 min read
Tech
Update on Mac rant
I don’t think I’ll finish my rant against the Mac. I think that primarily I was angry about the state of affairs typically faced by a developer. However, despite the fact that I do think documentation of the Carbon toolkit is flawed, and I have some fundamental problems with the way these legacy facilities have been brought into OS X, for the most part I find I’m still very excited about the Mac, and I’ve had a very positive experience with the much more modern Cocoa environment.
Feb 12, 2004
1 min read
Mac stuff
Coming soon...
I’ll be adding my thoughts soon about three books by C. S. Lewis that I’ve recently finished. Although I had a few false starts with the Narnia books as a youth, these were read more to find out about the real Christian thinker, and because I wanted to branch out from Tolkien to some of his colleagues.
Feb 12, 2004
1 min read
Personal
I'm a pundit, I'm punditing, I pun
A few weeks ago I decided to put some thought into why I have so much trouble getting good at real-time strategy computer games. I went ahead and submitted it to GameSpot, my favorite gaming news site, which does a weekly set of op-ed pieces with a slot for a reader to opine.
Dec 4, 2003
1 min read
Personal
New family additions
I’ve made two changes to my video game family. First, I bought a GameCube and a couple games (Zelda, Viewtiful Joe). Also, a friend with a vinyl cutter made a wood-grain applique for my Xbox.
Oct 12, 2003
1 min read
Tech
Mac Diatribe: Lack of Games
I’m a serious gamer, just below the rank of what the press call “hardcore.” I own an XBox, a GameBoy, and a very fast PC. By way of Mac hardware, I own an aging 1999 Powerbook, and I have no plans to buy another Mac.
Sep 10, 2003
3 min read
Mac stuff
Outline of Mac Diatribe
Please understand I’m of two minds about the Mac, and so my remarks should be taken like those of a concerned parent, rather than, say, a Palestinian suicide bomber. My main points are
Sep 10, 2003
1 min read
Mac stuff
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