16 SEP 2011 by ideonexus
Design As Evidence of Evolution or Creation
It’s important to realize, though, that there’s a real difference in what you expect to see if organisms were consciously designed rather than if they evolved by natural selection. Natural selection is not a master engineer, but a tinkerer. It doesn’t produce the absolute perfection achievable by a designer starting from scratch, but merely the best it can do with what it has to work with. Mutations for a perfect design may not arise because they are simply too rare. The African rhinoce...There's a big difference between how species would look if they were designed or engineered versus how they would look if they evolved. Evolution works with pre-existing traits, and engineer works from scratch.
06 APR 2011 by ideonexus
Newspapers, Unlike New Media, Can be Put Down
The intellectual shortcomings of past and present newspapers are, however, beside the point, because the real difference between today's video and yesterday's print is not content but context--a context in which the proliferating visual images and noises of the video/digital age permeate the minute-by-minute experience of our lives. Newspaper reading was a habit that accompanied the beginning or ending of each workday for millions; it did not constitute a continuous invasion of individual tho...New media intrudes on us perpetually, with RSS feeds, television streaming, and music blaring. Newspapers and books are picked up in compartmentalized time, making them less intrusive and allowing us deeper engagement with them.