July 2015

ISIS and the Lonely Young American – The New York Times
The NYT has a story about radical Muslims attempting to convert an American Christian and convince her to travel to join them in Syria, all done via the Internet, mainly Twitter and Skype.
(tags: isis islam internet twitter religion radicalisation)
Start-up Costs: ‘Silicon Valley,’ ‘Halt and Catch Fire,’ and How Microserfdom Ate the World «
It’s 20 years since “Microserfs” was published. Here’s an article looking at the changing portrayals of the tech industry in fiction, from Microserf’s optimism to a more cynical view today.
(tags: microserfs douglas-coupland technology silicon-valley programming)
A Quite Long Review of Edward Feser’s Aquinas: A Beginner’s Guide | Thing of Things
Ozy reads Edward Feser so you don’t have to.
(tags: aquinas thomist edward-feser metaphysics teleology causality)

Stephen Law: ‘Skeptical Theism and the Pandora’s Box Question’ – YouTube
Stephen Law did a half hour talk on the sceptical theist response to the Problem of Evil (“you can’t know that God doesn’t have good reasons for allowing some apparently gratuitous evils merely because you can’t think of such reasons”), and how adopting such a response leads to more general scepticism about just about everything (the Pandora’s Box objection, as he calls it).
(tags: theodicy theology religion philosophy problem-of-evil stephen-law epistemology)