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| Two new essays have been added. In
addition to a paper that discusses conservation in eastern gorillas,
the site now also has a paper I have written that compares two
populations of mountain gorillas that inhabit the Bwindi Impenetrable
National Park and the Virunga volcanoes regions of eastern Africa. Mountain Gorilla Comparison,
as it is simply titled, primarily looks at morphological and behavioral
differences in the subspecies G. g.
beringei. I have also added a metaphysics paper to the site that
discusses the problem of universals. Relations of Space and Time is
a short essay that I wrote speculating on the existence of universals.
Specifically, this paper advocates a novel approach to the problem that
reduces universals to, as the title suggests, relations of space and
time. |
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| I have posted a new
essay entitled Charlie
and the Mad Doctor: A New
Thought Experiment in Support of Externalism The essay makes a case
for the philosophical view that mental content
is not purely an internal affair, but is dependent on external matters
as well. In the essay, I look at several thought experiments developed
by Hilary Putnam, and I attempt to improve upon the examples by
constructing my own thought experiment that removes the difficulties
that such examples run into when dependent upon linguistics. Another
update this summer will depend upon whether or not I have time to
research and write; a long essay is unlikely in the near future. I am
enrolled in the summer term for a class in human genetics and a class
in statistics. I also intend to find a job and continue doing research
with one of my professors on Boltonia decurrens, an
endangered plant species found along the rivers of southern Illinois
and Missouri. |
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I have added a page to
the site that I have been meaning to put up for a while. The essay,
entitled The Nature of Belief,
discusses the relationship between memes and belief. The paper is
written as a response to earlier writings of Aaron Lynch
and Derek
Gatherer. More updates may be on there way in the philosophy
category in the weeks to come.
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It has been a while
since I have updated. This is mostly due to the fact that my computer
went down not too long ago. This is the second time that this has
happened to me. After getting pretty aggrevated, I decided on
purchasing a brand new machine built to run linux, instead of
Microsoft. So far my new
laptop is working flawlessly, so I should be able to update this
site much more often depending on how much free time I will have in the
near future. I wrote two papers in an ethics course that I took over
this summer, and one of these papers I feel is good enought to publish
on the site after a bit of tweaking. Hopefully this page will be up
before next week. I have also taken the journal off the site; it was
not being used.
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| Finally I have some new
material published. To the left in the "Other Essays" category you
will notice that I put up a new essay entitled The
Only Model. The essay discusses the
reasons
why evolution alone should be taught in biology classrooms in public
schools.
Although many points are made, the main focus of the paper is
countering
Duane T Gish's argument involving the second law of thermodynamics.
Another
paper should be up in the coming months, but it might be a while until
I
add onto "The Ecology of Memetics" section. I think that will be more
of
a summer project when I have some time to write at my leisure. |
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My apologies for not
updating in so long; things have been busy, but the reason that there
has been nothing in the updates is that my computer blew up. Around
mid-October I received what has been referred to me as the "blue screen
of death." Pretty much everything on my computer was lost; luckily I
have the site and files on a disk. One way or another I am going to
make sure I can
update this site on campus; hopefully my computer will get fixed while
I'm on semester break.
I decided to remove the Literature section from the site. The
section just wasn't fitting in with the rest of the site, and I really
want Mixed Memes to be geared towards science and philosophy.
In addition, the primary reason that the section existed in the first
place was to have more material. It's unecessary now, and my fictional
writing is just not good.
I was able to publish my essay in
the Journal of Memetics. In
the essay, I basically go into depth on the memetic history of the fork
and the paper clip. I wanted to go much deeper in the theory behind the
research of the paper, but the editors at the journal insisted that
journal articles focus on research, not theory. I'm still looking
somewhere to possibly publish material on some more theoretical aspects
of memetics, but this site is good for now. My thanks to Dr. Paul
Marsden with his help in the whole process of getting my short paper
published; you can visit his site at viralculture.com. I also added
another link on the links page
to Brent Silby's site.
Day by day I grow more tempted to buying a domain and some webspace.
Mixedmemes.org or .com has a nice ring to it, and both are available,
perhaps a project for the summer. Either way, I will probably have more
updates in the future. There are at least two essays that I have in
mind to start at some point; hopefully I can get started on one before
leaving going back to school. College has a way of taking up a lot of
time. |
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| After about three weeks
of struggling, I finally gave up and got a new computer. I am on the
campus now and everything appears to be up and running. Although I am
extremely busy out here, I am hoping that I
will be able to publish some new material fairly soon. |
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Well, that was quick. I
have take this site of off the free domain service. The service added
banners that I was not aware of, and I did not like
the way the address bar seemed to mask the actual location of the page.
Through a very generous service, I
now have the domain name of mixedmemes.tk.
You can read more about this service on the link page.
I also changed the introduction at the top of the page. |
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| I have spent most of
my hours in the past few days reading The Blanks Slate by
Steven Pinker. After an interesting chapter entitled "Out of Our
Depths," and a bit of research, I felt the need to correct some of my
essay, Too
Many of Us. |
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| I have taken quite a
bit of time lately learning some more about HTML code, and
how I can improve my webpage. The colors on this site should
be the same for all browsers, and I am trying to make the
code a bit less sloppy. You will notice that there are no
more borders on the tables. The reason for this is because
I find them annoying; the page looks much nicer without them.
Notice also that on the left of the date in this table there
is a link to the top, and on the right is a link to my email address.
Although I like the link to the top, I think the one currently linking
to my email could link to something more useful.
I just need to think of what that is. |
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| At the suggestion of
Martin Willett, I have changed the link colors slightly to
try and make them more readable. I am about one hundred pages
into the The Blank Slate right now. This
is the first time I have read anything by Pinker and so far
the book is very interesting. I am also contemplating adding
some material about education to this site in the near future,
but a lot of my energy is going into research for my next major
essay. |
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A new paper on the conservation of eastern gorillas
has been added. I wrote this paper some time ago for a course that I
took in population genetics. I also intend to add another paper on
gorillas in the near future that compares behavioral and morphological
differencecs in different subspecies of gorillas.
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I have tweaked the layout and color
scheme of the site somewhat. After going over eight months without an
update, I felt it was time for a change. Between work and the
overwhelming course load I had last semester, I was unable to think
much about keeping up with a website. Fortunately, my courses are less
strenuous this spring. I plan on posting at least two papers that I
have written in the near future, and a third should be coming shortly
following. These updates should occur within the next two weeks.
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I have finished a new
paper that was assigned for the Philosophy of
Mind class that I am taking. The paper, entitled Why Mary Falls Short: A Critique of
Jackson's Argument for Qualia, discusses the argument that Frank
Jackson provides in his essay, Epiphenomenal
Qualia, involving Mary, a brilliant scientist trapped in a black
and white world. My paper takes a look at the answers of Daniel Dennet
and Paul Churchland respectively. Both of these responses, I believe,
show some of the flaws that are present in Jackson's thought experiment.
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I have made some changes
to the layout of the site. The categories on the left have changed, and
I think the new ones a are a bit less confusing. I have separated them
according to the subjects of science and philosophy respectively. The
bottom section deals with pages relating to the site itself. I have
also published a new paper in the philosophy section called The Ethics of Intention; this
paper is a defense of a specific critique that is made on act
utilitarianism. I also made a small icon for
the site that I was hoping could be seen to the left of the URL and on
bookmarks, but Geocities apparently does not seem to allow it.
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| Alright, I have a new
paper up on the left entitled Speciest
Views. I also fixed the link to The
Only Model on the left column of this page. I am home for the
summer now, and I will be attempting to write another paper for the Journal of Memetics Online. I am
not sure what sort of updates will or will not be up in the near
future, but hopefully I can get some material off. I am a bit tempted
to make some design changes to the site, but what is up now seems to be
working. I did take away the introductory paragraph at the top; I
really do not think that it was doing much good, except to waste space.
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| Once again, my apologies
for a lack of updates. After sending my computer back home for repairs
and returning from college, I once again find my laptop not working. It
looks like I might just have to purchase a new machine for the fall
semester. While I am home, I will be putting up another essay that I
wrote for my philosophy course at SIUE.
The essay
discusses the reasons for teaching evolutionary biology over
creationism
in public schools. Although the essay is already turned in, my
professor
put a five page maximum on the essay, so I had to cut out a lot of
material
that I thought was relevant. After putting some finishing touches on
the
paper, I will put it up on the site. |
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| I just added another
entry to my journal
on memetics and biology. I am considering doing some memetics research
dealing with simple artifacts, but I will have to write probably to
several companies and do quite a bit of research on statistics and
such. I doubt there will be any new papers published in the near
future. I am trying to get an essay published in the Journal of Memetics online, so I
will be working on that for a good chunk of this weekend. |
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| Yes, I am still alive.
Just got back from vacation where I spent most of my leisure time
reading and playing chess. I have been pondering some new material
though. I have been thinking about doing a new paper with an
environmental message. Although I tried to
take a break from any heavy reading and writing, relaxing
along the lake and hiking in the mountains has a way of sending
the mind wandering. As of yet I do not have anything structured. |
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| I was up very late last
night. I woke up with my desk shrouded with several note cards about
ideas for new papers and such. The only one that I have followed up on
thus far is the Competition
Garden, a somewhat creative way of explaining different levels of
competition amongst different replicators. I am
also quite tempted to do pages on artifact classification,
the selfplex, and transition fossils. |
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| I have made a few minor
changes. I have added a new
page in the "points to ponder" section of the site. The page is a
short pondering on some of the ideas of outlaws
and modifiers in evolutionary biology, and how the general
principles might be applied to memetics. I also made a page
on a short look at the Darwinian
left, a new political philosophy endorsed by the philosopher Peter
Singer. I did not put a link to this page on the left, as I want this
site to be more focused on science, an area that I know much better
than politics. I wrote the page more for myself than for other readers,
but I feel it would be a
waste just to leave it their with no links. |
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I have changed some of
the link properties and colors. I also took off the underlines on the
link; they just look a bit messy, not necessarily for the ones in the
text, but mainly for the links on the left
of the page
I also just added a new
page, a literary analysis of Mark Akenside's poem The Pleasures
of Imagination, as well an essay on the issue of overpopulation,
our biggest ecological problem. |
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| My next essay might be a
bit more than I bargained for, but I think I will put some material in
the "Points to Ponder" section as I work on the essay. Before writing,
I want to read The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker, and some book
about nature versus environment by Matt Ridley which I have yet to
purchase. On a personal
note I have only one final to complete and my year and high
school career will be finished. My zoology final is tommorrow,
so I will be hitting the books tonight. |
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| Okay, I am using
composer for the index page now because it works ten times better than
geocities software, and, unlike netscape's page builder, I can upload
pages without deleting the previous page first. I
only have two more finals so I am very excited about ending my high school career. I also
added a link
page, but currently the only link on the page will take you to Martin
Willett's site The Meme Machine.
Martin was nice enough to link to my site. Hopefully I should have
quite a bit more material in the coming weeks. |
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