Being More Like Collingwood

Daughter is now known as Emily Strange at school. Not having heard of the name before, I thought it might be some sly insult but after a brief bit of searching, daughter is quite happy to be labelled as such. The picture over there is just like her - scowl and all - so now you know what she looks like. Likes maths and science! She sure does.

What else? Oh yes! I've been meaning to mention something about a colleague's workstation in this office. The desk has an angled laptop stand and a separate, rimless, black keyboard attached over the standard laptop keyboard. The chair is a special one with various extra levers and special counter weighted arm rests which makes the whole area look like a control console from the bridge of The Nostromo. What with our line of work, this is very cool indeed. All of which reminds me - ah yes - the standard blogging phrase of the moment - of last nights design version of The Apprentice - Design For Life with Phillipe Starck - a man who could not be any more French without a beret and onions. The trouble with this show, is that the designers in competition seem unhappy at being in such a position - apart from the standard bad boy of such contests, they all seem to want to work together and given the airy-fairy briefs about helping humanity that Starck gives them , they naturally want to assist each other - so much so that on the rejection of one of the nice guys, the others protested and had his rejection overturned - which was nice.

And now for advance notice of a film. You might guess that this is the one shown shown below and of course you would be right.



The trailer looks a bit sentimental but the film concentrates on Darwin's life rather than his theory. Apparently some of it was filmed in Malvern which will be fun.

Oh Mr. Wallace

I am working my way through A Devil's Chaplain quite well. The first section had shorter pieces of general interest while the second section which I am currently deep into, contains longer essays on various big-issues with Darwinism which of course means I have to concentrate. I suppose that being a collection of various pieces I could just skip the more tortuous ones but after the "discussion" prompted in our house by Dawkins' programme on Channel 4 last night, I should at least try to understand these issues. I have to say that I was quite annoyed by the fading out of various interviewees (however nutty they might appear) just as they appeared to me about to say something relevant. It might me the case that they were talking rubbish of the highest order but in that case just sum up their arguments and let them stand for themselves. Fading out seems to just be an elegant way of talking someone down. The main point of discussion at home last night was not my own level of agreement with Dawkins but rather whether you expect the world's most high-profile atheist to accept any sort of compromise from religion. Obviously he will say in public that he has no truck with any level of belief in God/Gods/Supernatural phenomena. What did you expect. "Oh yes! I've written a book denying the existence of God but I think for the sake of a quiet life I can accept a woolly compromise which leaves my ideas out in the cold.

My tiny contribution to this is that the 39 percent of people (in the UK) who believe in Creationism or Intelligent design as a better explanation for life on earth (or even the 52 percent who don't believe in evolution) are just plain wrong. They don't understand the concept of evolution and that is because it is not taught properly - mainly I have to say because it takes up a tiny proportion of the curriculum but also because some teachers are failing to teach it to the standard required for fear of upsetting parents who would take offence at the subject. Science and Religion cannot be taught in Science classes just as Science and Religion cannot be taught in pure religious classes. To teach them together needs metaphysics or philosophy and see how many schools offer those in the ever-more-crowded curriculum however much "experts" urge.

For years I have stuck my neck out and said that computer packages with a decent link to the API can allow developers to do anything to any bit in a system; it's just a matter of how complicated you want to make things. I have not yet been proved wrong (though I personally may not have had the nouse to accomplish something). The same thing applies to evolution. Enough thought given to working out how something could possibly arise through natural selection will find a method. Where something in life cannot yet be explained, further investigation and some appliance of intellect will always find the solution. Finding few and small examples where you have to posit intelligent design is "God of the Gaps". Occam's Razor applies to this in what I imagine is it's purest form. Evolution is a single entity however complicated and to suggest that just because we cannot explain something using evolution, we must invoke God to give us a nudge is at best adding complexity to an already-complex system and at worst requiring a meta-complexity to explain ALL LIFE. God Over Djinn etc.
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