Regarding neighbors leaving their wireless access points open for others to share,
Timothy B. Lee, a policy analyst at the
Show-Me Institute - and the guy who invented the World Wide Web,
writes: "sharing your connection is just being a good neighbor. Think of it as the 21st century equivalent of lending a cup of sugar." I think he's absolutely right. So, in the spirit of making my building a nicer place to live, and my sidewalk a faster place to browse the web, I've decided to open my wireless router.
In the two or three weeks before I got my own phone line and DSL, I furtively stole bandwidth from some of my neighbors. I don't know whether they had left their networks open intentionally or not, and I felt more than a little guilty about it. In order to spare any guilt that my neighbors may feel if they borrow some of my bandwidth, I changed my wireless network's name to: "open wifi, please don't abuse."
Labels: technology, wifi
(1) The bait:
Suppose you find a watch in a field.
(2) The hook:
Surely, it is too complex to have been created by natural processes.
(3a) The sinker?
Therefore, you assume it must have been created by a watchmaker (or, perhaps, by more than one watchmaker).
(3b) And just in case you missed "the sinker:"
How then, when we see the infinitely more complex processes of the universe, can we not come to the conclusion that the universe, too, must have been designed by an intelligent being (or perhaps by more than one)? So the universe must have been created by one or more designers.
(-1) Out of the frying pan, over the fire, and back into the lake:
Let's try this again. Suppose you find a watch in a field. It is too complex to have been created by natural processes. Therefore, you assume it must have been created by an intelligent designer. Right? Ok, sure. So you look closely, and sure enough the watch has an inscription, which reads: "I was made by Afshin. He is intelligent. He is a designer. And in case you were wondering, he is not God." So then you see Afshin. He's
much more complex than the watch. So you think, "Gee, Afshin sure is complex. He must have been designed by an intelligent designer or two." So even though you don't see Afshin's intelligent designer(s), you're pretty sure about the designer(s)' existence.
(0) Do you see the problem, yet?
So you've reasoned your way into believing that the complex watch was designed by more-complex Afshin. Then you've reasoned your way into believing that the more-complex Afshin was designed by an even-more-complex designer. Now, why isn't that even-more-complex designer (whose complexity
surely implies an intelligent designer - or a whole team of them) an indication of even-more-than-even-more-complex designer(s)? In other words: for all
x, with complexity
C(x),
x must have been designed by a designer,
y, with a complexity
C(y) greater than
C(x), which leads to an infinite regress.
Labels: evolution, intelligent design, logic, philosophy, religion
. . . (particularly when it involves medicine)
I've been watching PBS's "
Evolution" series, and even though most of you already know this, I want to use this quotation to reiterate one of my reasons for shying away from doctors. It comes from the fourth episode, "The Evolutionary Arms Race:"
TB is just the tip of the iceberg. The microbes that cause malaria, pneumonia, gonorrhea, and scores of other infectious diseases are also evolving drug resistance. Misuse of antibiotics is one cause. Overuse is another. In the United States, nearly half of all prescriptions are unnecessary or inappropriate.
"We've created this problem: multi-drug resistance is a man-made problem. And we do that by putting antibiotics in animal feeds, we have antibiotics running rampantly through hospitals, we have antibiotics in the environment. By developing as many antibiotics as we have over the last fifty years, we've essentially accelerated an evolutionary process. The outcome is that we're going to have more drug-resistant microbes to the point where some of the most dangerous bacteria will not be treatable. We're racing against the microbes every day and, unfortunately, we're losing."
(Barry N. Kreiswirth - Public Health Research Institute)
It's an arms race without end. The more drugs we launch at microbes, the more resistance they evolve. Maybe it's time to change our strategy.
I know that people like to have drugs on hand for any occasion. Everybody has a doctor or nurse in the family, or a friend who has some drugs left over from a prescription, et cetera . . . and all of these casual usages of antibiotics (and other drugs) only compound the problem created by the over-prescription which has led to such a saturated environment. And let's not forget all of the evil "antibacterial" cleaning supplies, lotions and soaps we find everywhere. So please, when I try to recover from the supermicrobes you and your overuse of these products and medicines have created, at least don't patronize me and insist I see a doctor who will most likely prescribe drugs I do not need and should not use. And please stop creating the superbugs who are trying to kill me!
Labels: antibiotic resistance, evolution
