The Study of God, by Thomas Paine.

Contemplating the universe, the whole system of creation, in this point of light, we shall discover that all that which is called natural philosophy is properly a divine study. It is the study of God through his works.

It has been the error of the schools to teach astronomy, and all the other sciences and subjects of natural philosophy, as accomplishments only; whereas they should be taught theologically, or with reference to the Being who is the author of them: for all the principles of science are of divine origin. Man cannot make, or invent, or contrive principles. He can only discover them; and he ought to look through the discovery to the Author.

The evil that has resulted from the error of the schools in teaching natural philosophy as an accomplishment only, has been that of generating in the pupils a species of atheism. Instead of looking through the works of the creation to the Creator himself, they stop short, and employ the knowledge they acquire to create doubts of his existence. They labor with studied ingenuity to ascribe everything they behold to innate properties of matter; and jump over all the rest, by saying that matter is eternal.

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23:33 (utc-5)

 

New Architect: when a language becomes a platform. An article about REBOL IOS Express. "The key to Sassenrath's vision is that holy grail of contemporary distributed computing—an Internet Operating System (IOS). The REBOL IOS line is designed to create enough of a common architecture that sophisticated applications can be built easily for collaborative computing. The IOS consequently is targeted to several different applications, many of which currently exist only as distinct standalone products."

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23:25 (utc-5)

 

Via PHPEverywhere, Developer.com: The Myth of Open Source Security, by John Viega. "The author challenges the notion that 'many eyeballs' are a surefire solution to the problem of creating secure code." Haven't read the article yet (too much else to do), but I'm printing it out for later.

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22:01 (utc-5)

 

Yaysoft: Anti Science in School?. "Well they couldn't get their biblical literalism to pass as science before so they are trying to get a heavily debunked "Intelligent Design" agenda in the science books. Do they not understand the First Amendment? Welcome to the 21st Century....And this isn't coming from a backwater hillbilly bible-belt residin' southern town---it's coming from Columbus, Ohio.

The reason the Intelligent Design movement is gaining traction, it seems, is because it does ask good questions, and brings up problems (macro-)evolutionary theory doesn't account for. I still think this was a great article on the issue.

Here's the article linked to at Yaysoft, from the Cincinnati Post: Critics: No science in intelligent design.

"Ohio should enact no definition of science that would prevent the discussion of other theories," said Stephen Meyer, a philosophy professor and a fellow at the Discovery Institute's Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture in Seattle.

Asked afterward to identify the "designer" of life, Wells responded: "It's fundamentally a theological question. But design itself does not get you to the Christian God. It may be compatible with Biblical creationism, but it is not creationism."

While Intelligent Design isn't quite "man enough" to be a full-fledged theory of origins, it does have some important insights. The point is, people like Behe and Spetner look at reality and say "This couldn't have come about by chance. It's impossible. Look at the design inherent in life. And here's a bunch of proof." Dissent to the current scientific paradigm should be given some voice in the classroom.

Intelligent Design, as a theory, is no more amorphous than (macro-)evolutionary theory is, and is no less scientific. When you're talking about theories of origins, you, in the nature of the case, step outside the realm of science.

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11:42 (utc-5)
edited: 17:21 (utc-5)

 

Via Dane Carlson, another article from Corante.com: The Tipping Blog, "How Weblogs Can Turn an Idea into an Epidemic". These people sure love writing about weblogs.

Now that I'm reading, this is a really cool article. He went over the traffic he got from the first article he wrote about a week ago, and analyzed it in terms of The Tipping Point. He has a theory about how links spread in the blogging community and beyond. Very interesting article.

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09:59 (utc-5)

 

Via Dane Carlson, Google denies ads having any relation to people selling guns or knives? That's not good, I wonder why? Did they have a bad experience, or is that just a "moral" judgement they made?

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09:49 (utc-5)

 

Ask Slashdot: Server Naming Conventions?

I've been thinking about this for awhile. It's neat to see that other geeks think about this stuff too

By the way, Hosting Matters uses a Greek theme for their server names.

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01:29 (utc-5)

 

Via this post on the Hosting Matters forum, Man of Constipation. Odd.

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00:25 (utc-5)

 

Whoa! New design for my hosting company's website. Not sure I like it yet, I'll have to explore. Hey, well they have a link to the helpdesk right on the home page (I don't think they did before), so that's an improvement.

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00:21 (utc-5)
edited: 00:31 (utc-5)