For those of you who have access to TimesSelect (i.e. all students and paying members, but I expect the number in group two equals zero), check out: http://conniff.blogs.nytimes.com/ (June 27, 2007 entry). Conniff notes that one of the more persistent problems facing evolutionists is explaining altruism. Thereotically, evolution has always been ( Read more... )

My most recent (serious) books have been Laurie Garrett's The Coming Plague and Adrian R. Lewis' The American Culture of War, and they have me thinking. Laurie Garrett's central thesis is the human "intervention" into the natural ecosystem has produced an evolutionary pressure cooker heretofore unknown. Excessive use and misuse of anti-biotics and ( Read more... )

Bearing with my tradition of writing at irresponsibly late hours instead of sleeping, I decided that I was due a retrospective. I realize that just about everyone who reads this (all 4 of you), I have talked to in the last week, and that your conversations actually form the basis for this entry, so I doubt any of this will be new material. But ( Read more... )

I've been having an on-going discussion of religion and faith for quite a while now, and while nothing has really been resolved, a thought floating around in the back of my mind chose this moment to make itself known. By the dictates of me being me, that means I need to write it down ( Read more... )

As evidence of the weighty matters that have consummed my mind since finishing my thesis, I most bemoan buying mint Listerine instead of orange citrus after my last bottle ran out. This is not to say that orange citrus tastes good, it actually tastes awful. Worse really, than mint, which was why I bought mint instead of orange citrus when I went to ( Read more... )

So I was perusing the NYT (as I am wont to do whenever I don't want to do something), and I changed across this blog entry: http://warner.blogs.nytimes.com/ (5 April 2007, might be behind TimesSelect). In short, it was another of the growing thoughts and ruminations on the sometimes ( Read more... )

For any of you who have had the misfortuen of asking me what I think of both my college experience and of college in general, you are sure to have heard my rants on the inadequacies running rampant throughout the system. Everything from uninspired lectures to minimal expectations to success through lackluster word have all been frequent topics of ( Read more... )

Apparently, other people seem to find my life rather more interesting than I do, since despite spending a good month playing poker, video games, sleeping and hanging out (with all the attendant forgetting-what-day-it-was), I was delinquint in updating my blog. I could wax rhetorical about styles of poker play, new computer games, or the irritating ( Read more... )

...it is stupidly late, I'm still up, and I'm writing about something in the world I don't like. Acknowledging that I am bitching, I shall commence. Today, rather than my usual rants on education (or lack thereof), I get to talk about time. Quite simply, I don't know what time it is. The whole "Spring ahead, fall behind" thing is all well and good ( Read more... )

...which is funny, because half of my classes are really damn cool, 2/3s of the other half are decent, and the last one is just boring. And yet, my life is basically my thesis. Despite all my angst over my topic and indecision over topics (I might have sorta switched again this week...), I love all the reading I am doing and how much I am starting ( Read more... )