Intelligent Design — The Straight Dope
A markerboard-style essay on the current state of the Intelligent Design movement. Click the image below:
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This entire site as a zip file — last updated 2024.08.16
Previous articles
The Two Envelopes Problem, Solved
The Practical Smartphone Buyer
Would Apple Actually Exit the EU Or UK?
Blackjack Strategy Card (Printable)
Swan Device 1956 — Probable Shape
Polygon Triangulation With Hole
One-Point Implosion: “Palm Fan”
Implosion: Were Those Two-Speed Lenses Really Necessary?
Apple Wants User/Developer Choice; Its Enemies Want Apple Ruin
I Was Eating for 300 lbs, Not 220
Action Arcade Sounds and Reality
The Flea Market and the Retail Store
Yes, Crocodiles Are Dinosaurs — Duh
Broccoli and Apples Are Not the Antidote To Donuts and Potato Chips
Prager University and the Anti-Socialists’ Big Blind Spot
In Defense of Apple’s 30% Markup, Part 2
In Defense of Apple’s 30% Markup
Make Your Own FBI Backdoor, Right Now
The iPhone Backdoor Already Exists
Vizio M-Series 65" LCD (“LED”) TV — Best Settings (IMHO)
Tasting Vegemite (Bucket List)
The Surprise Quiz Paradox, Solved
Apple, Amazon, Products, and Services — Not Even Close
Vivek Wadhwa, Scamster Bitcoin Doomsayer
Backwards Eye Wiring — the Optical Focus Hypothesis
Nothing More Angry Than A Cornered Anti-Apple
The Ultimate, Simple, Fair Tax
When Starting A Game of Chicken With Apple, Expect To Lose
iBook Price-Fixing Lawsuit Redux — Apple Won
It’s Not A Criticism, It’s A Fact
Michigan Wolverines 2014 Football Season In Review
Why There’s No MagSafe On the New MacBook
Sundar Pichai Says Devices Will Fade Away
The Question Every Apple Naysayer Must Answer
Apple’s Move To TSMC Is Fine For Apple, Bad For Samsung
Method of Implementing A Secure Backdoor In Mobile Devices
Fire and the Wheel — Not Good Examples of A Broken Patent System
Nobody Wants Public Transportation
Seasons By Temperature, Not Solstice
FaceBook Messenger — Why I Don’t Use It
Happy Birthday, Anton Leeuwenhoek
Simple Guide To Progress Bar Correctness
Answering the Toughest Question About Disruption Theory
SSD TRIM Command In A Nutshell
iOS Jailbreaking — A Perhaps-Biased Assessment
Embittered Anti-Apple Belligerents
What A Difference Six Years Doesn’t Make
Stupefying New Year’s Stupidity
Fitness — The Ultimate Transparency
Millions of Strange Devotees and Fanatics
What Was Christensen Thinking?
The Grass Is Always Greener — Viewing Angle
Is Using Your Own Patent Still Allowed?
Motive of the Anti-Apple Pundit
Security-Through-Obscurity Redux — The Best of Both Worlds
Dominant and Recessive Traits, Demystified
Yes, You Do Have To Be the Best
Four-Color Theorem Analysis — Rules To Limit the Problem
Five Times What They Paid For It
Bypassable Security Certificates Are Useless
I’d Give My Right Arm To Go To Mars
Free Advice About Apple’s iOS App Store Guidelines
Understanding IDC’s Tablet Market Share Graph
Product Naming — Google Is the Other Microsoft
App Anger — the Supersized-Mastodon-In-the-Room That Marco Arment Doesn’t See
Why Microsoft Copies Apple (and Google)
Investment Is Not A Sure Thing
Exercise is Two Thirds of Everything
Manual Intervention Should Never Make A Computer Faster
Zeroth — Why the Century Number Is One More Than the Year Number
John C. Dvorak — Translation To English
Free Will — The Grand Equivocation
What Windows-vs.-Mac Actually Proved
Amazon Won’t Be A Big Winner In the DOJ’s Price-Fixing Suit
Infinite Sets, Infinite Authority
Strategy Analytics and Long Term Accountability
Why 1 Isn’t Prime, 2 Is Prime, and 2 Is the Only Even Prime
Hanke-Henry Calendar Won’t Be Adopted
Collatz Conjecture Analysis (But No Proof; Sorry)
Microsoft’s Uncreative Character
Microsoft’s Alternate Reality Bubble
Society’s Fascination With Mass Murder
PlaysForSure and Wikipedia — Revisionism At Its Finest
The Size of Things In the Universe
The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy That Wasn’t
Nobody Was In Love With Windows
Apples To Apples — How Anti-Apple Pundits Shoot Themselves In the Foot
Apple’s Premium Features Are Free
Why So Many Computer Guys Hate Apple
3D TV With No Glasses and No Parallax/Focus Issues
Waves With Particle-Like Properties
Why the iPad Wannabes Will Definitely Flop
Wait and See — Windows-vs-Mac Will Repeat Itself
Dishonesty For the Greater Good
Beach Bodies — Who’s Really Shallow?
Number of Companies — the Idiocy That Never Dies
Sideloading and the Supersized-Mastodon-In-the-Room That Snell Doesn’t See
App Store Success Won’t Translate To Books, Movies, and Shows
Five Rational Counterarguments
Reaganomics — Like A Diet — Works
Humans Are Special — Just Not That Special
Life = Survival of the Fittest
Excuse Me, We’re Going To Build On Your Property
How To Really Stop Casual Movie Disc Ripping
The Solitary Path of the High-Talent Programmer
Why Blackmail Is Still Illegal
Designers Cannot Do Anything Imaginable
Everything Isn’t Moving To the Web
The Punishment Defines the Crime
What Heaven and Hell Are Really About
A, B, C, D, Pointless Relativity
Stephen Meyer and Michael Medved — Where Is ID Going?
If You Didn’t Vote — Complain Away
What Free Will Is Really About
The Case For Corporate Bonuses
Quantum Cognition and Other Hogwash
The Problem With Message Theory
Bell’s Boring Inequality and the Insanity of the Gaps
Paying the Rent At the 6 Park Avenue Apartments
Primary + Reviewer — An Alternative IT Plan For Corporations
Microsoft About Microsoft Visual Microsoft Studio Microsoft
Forest Fair Mall and the Second Lamborghini
Intelligent Design — The Straight Dope
Maxwell’s Demon — Three Real-World Examples
Einstein’s Error — The Confusion of Laws With Their Effects
Fulfilling the Moral Duty To Disdain
The Two Rules of Great Programming
Poverty — Humanity’s Damage Control
Berners-Lee’s Rating System = Google
The Secret Anti-MP3 Trick In “Independent Women” and “You Sang To Me”
ID and the Large Hadron Collider Scare
Life Sucks When You’re Not Winning
The Old People Who Pop Into Existence
Theodicy — A Big Stack of Papers
The Designed, Cause-and-Effect Brain
The Capitalist’s Imaginary Line
Avoiding Conflict At All Costs
Behavior and Free Will, Unconfused
Suzie and Bubba Redneck — the Carriers of Intelligence
Everything You Need To Know About Haldane’s Dilemma
Where Real and Yahoo Went Wrong
Eradicating Religion Won’t Eradicate War
The Changing Face of Sam Adams
Why Quintic (and Higher) Polynomials Have No Algebraic Solution
Translation of Paul Graham’s Footnote To Plain English
Free Will and Population Statistics
Dennett/D’Souza Debate — D’Souza
Dennett/D’Souza Debate — Dennett
The Non-Euclidean Geometry That Wasn’t There
Defective Attitude Towards Suburbia
Keeping Intelligent Design Honest
Failure of the Amiga — Not Just Mismanagement
Maxwell’s Silver Hammer = Be My Honey Do?
The Digits of Pi Cannot Be Sequentially Generated By A Computer Program
Communism As A Side Effect of the Transition To Capitalism
Google and Wikipedia, Revisited
National Geographic’s Obesity BS
Is Apple’s Font Rendering Really Non-Pixel-Aware?
Humans Are Complexity, Not Choice
Moralism — The Emperor’s New Success
The Dark Side of Pixel-Aware Font Rendering
The Futility of DVD Encryption
Rich and Good-Looking? Why Libertarianism Goes Nowhere
FUV — Fear, Uncertainty, and Vista
Malware Isn’t About Total Control
Doomsday? Or Just Another Sunday
The Real Function of Wikipedia In A Google World
2007 Macworld Keynote Prediction
FUZ — Fear, Uncertainty, and Zune
No Fear — The Most Important Thing About Intelligent Design
Napster and the Subscription Model
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