The only game in town.

[reddragdiva]

• Back in my day, all the hair was this big.

Not doing anything particularly meaningful or productive of late. I could do with a new passing enthusiasm.

I'm reading more books on my phone, using Calibre's command-line tools to convert stuff to .mobi for the one free BlackBerry ebook reader I could find. The main Calibre interface is ridiculously awful, but this way I never have to use it ever.

Today's book is The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins, in which he explains the ridiculously simple and powerful idea of evolution. He is of course ridiculously strident in the first chapter, claiming to be writing for people he then abuses. (My inner PR person was cringing and going "AAAAAAAAA STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT.") Nevertheless, I think his track record has established that such apparently offputting behaviour has, in practice, been quite successful at getting his memes out there. And this book is, after all, on the thing he's actually a world-renowned expert on. He explains it really clearly and simply. I recommend it highly, even if you know this stuff already.

I finally found the USB-B cable, and LMMS talks to arkady's Casio keyboard via MIDI! And crashes lots doing so. Bug report time! But good for input at least. Modulo a really annoying one-eighth-second delay.

For most of the '80s, I did not in fact listen to Severed Heads on headphones. I really should have. If only today's bleepsters bothered to do so.

Comments

[valkyriekaren]

The thing is, he's not really writing for the rabid anti-evolutionists (like you can be anti evolution - it's like being anti-inertia), he's writing against them. It's like those medieval theological texts, Summa Contra Gentiles and so on.

Anyway, I thought the first chapter was hilarious. His frustration with the Creationists' ideas and methods is put with such vehement humour - you can just see him throwing up his hands in mock despair and howling, "Why won't they LISTEN?!"

[reddragdiva]

He calls them "history deniers" then says he is writing the book "for" them. "NO YOU'RE NOT," I actually said out loud on the bus.

[valkyriekaren]

Well no, of course he's not, that's my point. Dawkins is employing a classic rhetorical device, like Thomas Aquinas saying he was writing SCG 'for' heretics to see the error of their ways.

[reddragdiva]

Source material for the rest of us, of course.

[pndc]

I *read* in the iPad and iTunes universe, but i'm quite taken with pandoc for converting stuff between open standards so I don't get burned when Apple turn evil. ePub support is still a bit dodgy and Debian's version doesn't have support at all, but it'll get there.

[greylock]

For most of the '80s, I did not in fact listen to Severed Heads on headphones. I really should have. If only today's bleepsters bothered to do so.

These days all the headphones are *this big*.
Seriously, we developed noise-cancelling ear-buds and.... what do young folk do?
Wear my dad's headphones from the 1970s!]

He is of course ridiculously strident in the first chapter,

He is also bonking Lalla Ward. Advantage: Dawkins.
But, seriously, I don't need to read Dawkins. If I wanted preaching I'd find religiosity. I cringe when I hear him on the radio, even when I agree with him.