Web server work
I’ve just updated a bunch of software on the back end.
ID and Suboptimal Design
William Dembski has put up a paper entitled Intelligent Design is not Optimal Design, which purports to counter the argument from suboptimal design (e.g., “Why would Godan intelligent designer wire human retinas backward, when he had done a better job with octopodes?” or “Why is the panda’s thumb such a kludge? Why not use the same thumb design as in humans?”). His conclusion:
This is a fallen world. The good that God initially intended is no longer fully in evidence. Much has been perverted. Dysteleology, the perversion of design in nature, is a reality. It is evident all around us.
I’ve added a section about this to the notes on the Frequently Asked But Never Answered Questions About Intelligent Design.
(Thanks to Uncommon Descent for the pointer.)
Fun With Ooblick
The University of Texas Center for Nonlinear Dynamics has done some very cool research on ooblick (that’s cornstarch and water, for those who didn’t know).
The video shows holes that don’t fill in, holes that merge and split, and “fingers” rising up out of the dish and multiplying.
Category RSS Feeds
Good news for those of you who only like some parts of my self-indulgent bloviating: I’ve updated the so that a category view (such as this one, for the “Fun” category) also includes a link to the RSS feed for that category. So if you only want to read stuff in one or two categories, you can stick those in your RSS aggregator.
Unfortunately, I don’t think there’s a way to create an RSS feed that combines two or more categories. So if you want to read both Religion and Politics, you’ll need to add two feeds. Sorry.
Just in passing, if you like the look of this site, it uses the Tucker theme for WordPress, and can be downloaded .
Avast, Ye Swabs!
Ahoy! September 19th be Talk Like A Pirate Day, so mark it well, ye bilge rats. Ye’ll comment in piratey, if ye don’t want to be keelhauled!
Arrr! Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
Site Facelift
I hope you like the new look. The default WordPress theme is fine, but I wanted something that could be resized, so I hammered the default/Kubrick theme into something I liked.
The theme can be downloaded . Please let me know if you like it.
Grand unveiling
I’ve reinstalled this weblog. I’m not entirely sure what I’ll write here, but keep watching.