OnACoffeeBreak

I keep a journal. I like to write in a physical notebook, but I miss not being able to search the journal easily. It occurred to me that I could scan the notebook and run some sort of handwriting recognition software on it to get it into text form.

Can you recommend a handwriting recognition application? I would rather not send my journal to the Cloud for privacy reasons. And, for what that's worth, I have an RTX 4070 12GB GPU.

One of my very close friends is very religious and believes that Darwinism does not represent or explain reality because "it's just a theory". I am an atheist and look to science to explain things I don't understand. We have long discussions about religion and sometimes science, but ultimately he sees my predilection for science as something akin to his religious faith. I tried explaining what it means to have a theory or a model for natural phenomena, but he seems to brush those off as "not facts".

Can you recommend a book or a resource that explains the scientific method and addresses some of the common objections to it? Bonus points if it contrasts the scientific method to faith and belief.

To be clear, the book is for me. I want to be more articulate in my description of how and why science works.