"Intelligent" Design

So the ID'ers are stepping up the pressure, here in the UK. They have a shiny new Web site - Truth in Science, no less - that looks jolly impressive in its comprehensiveness. You might think it would require an equal number of pages to counter the arguments put forth there. Fortunately, that is not the case.

It all comes down to the following section:

What is Intelligent Design?

The theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection.

Well, natural selection is not an "undirected process": it is one absolutely directed by a very simple, readily comprehensible mathematical fact: that a system with a greater rate of growth than rival systems will inevitably overtake the latter as time progresses. The graph is steeper, so whatever the starting point, there will come a time when it overtakes every other system's graph. The difference in growth rates is what is known as the "natural selection": in fact, there is no selection, just this gradual but inevitable emergence.

Every change to a system that causes it to grow faster is a change that will be propagated more thoroughly than one that tends to slow down the growth. This means that systems "evolve" - that is, that they change over time in such as way as to maximise their growth (and note that this evolution is not unique or directed at any particular "goal".)

On the other side, the basic fallacy of invoking "intelligent" design to explain "certain features" of the universe, is that it explains nothing. It is a completely circular argument: things are as they are because an "intelligent cause" made them that way.

That is neither explanation nor science, and as such has no place in either schools or universities except as fodder for debating societies who wish to hone their skills in demolishing specious arguments.

How Green Was My PC?

Not very, it seems.

This report contrasts the amount of electricity consumed, and carbon dioxide generated, by two approaches to school computing: one based on conventional PCs, the other on thin clients running open source. The difference is startling:

The Green Model therefore represents a 89% saving in the cost of electricity and a 78% reduction carbon dioxide emissions when compared to the Conventional Model.

And it's going to get worse:

The stated aim of many authorities is to have one computer per child. In addition the exponential growth of the interactive whiteboard in all education sectors is set to achieve one in every classroom.

Bearing in mind that an interactive board runs from a conventional PC with a 600w projector and that there are over 50,000 primary schools in the UK we can predict a ten fold increase in power consumption with concomitant carbon increases over the next five years.

Serious stuff that merits thought and action, quickly.

Open Source in Schools: Could Try Harder

A few months back I wrote about open source's big blunder: its neglect of the education sector. So I was naturally curious when I came across a column that began:

I asked for successes at schools using Open Source Software, and I received a wide variety of them.

Alas, the few examples given show a market is that is still, shall we say, learning its ABC. Overall result: could try harder.