I've had my share of exposure to the Christian world and pretty much decided I don't belong there. I haven't had very much to do with the atheist society, and so I've familiarized myself with the ideas through Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris. Granted, when people write books for the mass market, it's sometimes hard to know to what extent they really assert their own beliefs or whether they are just exaggerating on purpose.

Having seen Dawkins in a number of talks, I would say that he is very consistent in the ideas he expresses, and his book is true to this as well. Reading Dawkins I once again feel a little alienated, on several points. There is the notion of being atheist and proud of it which it isn't at all convincing. It is nice to know that one isn't alone in the world with some idea, but the whole thing of some kind of virtual march with banners telling people you're *proud* of what you are just doesn't register with me. Why would you be proud of the way god/evolution determined you would become? What is the accomplishment here? And the second thing is the black and white classification of all things religious. Dawkins won't say that some beliefs are more harmful than others, he just wants to condemn everything under the banner of religion.

Sam Harris, on the other hand, takes a much more nuanced stance. In fact, while his book is provoking and inflammatory, I find his talks to be much more compelling, and the best reflection yet of what I could agree with wholeheartedly. In particular, this talk (transcript) is as close as anyone has ever come to write something I agree with completely.

It's always unpredictable when an idea is developed literally to see just how it will be interpreted. Fahrenheit 451's literalism really goes a long way, and eventually to the point where it becomes silly. But it's an interesting plot all the same.

If you've familiarized yourself with 1984 or any derivative thereof (like Equilibrium), you will find yourself right at home. It's hard to know to what extent Ray Bradbury's vision was recreated faithfully, but the odd thing here is the lack of a totalitarian regime. The one authority we relate to is the Fire Department, whose function it is to burn books. The rationale is that books make people unhappy, and therefore they must be destroyed. Mkay.

From 1984 they reused the tv concept, as a propaganda delivery device (not terribly far fetched in our world anyhow). This is also the only reference to a regime in the plot, where they call the nation a family and citizens cousins. But the tvs do not spy on people. 1984 is truly totalitarian in how every aspect of life is controlled. Here it's just the books they don't like. They bring in the owners to be questioned, but there is no sense of torture or death row punishment for the offense.

The culmination of rebellion, is the notion that every person who loves books picks one and commits it entirely to memory. So that instead of *having* the book they *know* the book. This is where the literalism runs wild. They even take it as far as if a book is published in two volumes then two people will learn it and each recite one volume. This idea is put into practice in a pretty odd way, as we just see people wandering around the woods reciting books without much concern for where they are spending the night or how they plan to feed themselves. I can't say that I see the immediate benefit of this lifestyle. After all it's not the literal content of books that is useful, it is the wisdom.

I get the feeling that Bradbury was much in awe of Orwell and decided not to push the envelope here. Orwell's society is masterfully crafted, whereas Bradbury seems to have limited himself to some reasonable subset without trying to connect as many dots. Of course, one can ask oneself whether topping Orwell is even possible. But not trying obviously won't get you there.

An interesting story, but a bit half baked.

Why? I have no idea. It's a symptom, haven't found the cause yet. The transformation is practically asymptotic, that's for sure. :D

It struck me today that as coders we do what we can to wrap our nasty, complicated code in a neat package that the user will love. They don't realize, and we don't want them to know, just how convoluted and messy the stuff is on the inside. And this holds up for long periods of time. But there comes a time when our neat little illusion cracks up and the ugliness comes into view. Bugs expose it sometimes, but upgrades do this with immaculate regularity.

Why today? Because Wordpress 2.3 was dropped today. The Wordpress people decided to toss out categories in favor of a wonderfully engineered (isn't that what we always believe?) taxonomy system. With the immediate consequence that any code that has anything to do with categories would break. That's two of my plugins. Clearly these guys are not Windows users. Microsoft's Patch and Play strategy with Windows has kept *a lot* of companies happy, as they continually strive to emulate their old bugs to accommodate programs that were written to cope with them. This has seriously handicapped Windows from making progress, because they keep pulling that huge sack of legacy code going back to probably Win3.1 (with Workgroups, yay!).

Posts used to be related to Categories with an in-between table, the classic N:M relational idiom. Now there are 4 tables, all related to each other in interesting ways. It took me quite a while to crack this code. This was introduced to add tagging support, which is quite the annoyance, because I have no interest in tagging. I find it a useless errand. And, of course, for those not tagging from the beginning you always come back to having to post-tag 600 old posts. Forget it.

Tools always help a lot, but it's very difficult to capture all the nuances, and in many cases human review is necessary anyway (particularly when themes change). And this is the sad reality of it. While minor upgrades are now handled routinely, bigger changes will always cause problems.

I find that Sam Harris is a more articulate critic of religion than Richard Dawkins, who is clearly more hostile. His two books The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation raise a lot interesting issues. The latter is not particularly interesting, but the former presents much insight.

The text is actually quite comprehensive at times, and piecemeal reading doesn't do it justice. I think he makes excellent points about the suffocating role of religion as opposed to progress and the evolution of knowledge. And his criticism of religion as a driving force in politics and policy making leaves little to dispute. Furthermore, the distinction of religions in terms of their values is a very relevant point. As is the condemnation of the taboo against criticizing irrational beliefs.

But what ultimately drives his "war on religion" is the premise that unless we do something right now we're going to destroy ourselves. It would be perfectly fine to make all the arguments he does as a crusade for intellectual honesty. And there is certainly enough social and political justification for it. But his bottom line is a doomsday scenario which I find rather extreme.

For more on this (and yes, he's an excellent speaker), youtube it:

• The End of faith (4 parts)
• Sam Harris at Aspen Ideas Festival (7 parts)
• Sam Harris debates Reza Aslan (5 parts)

The talks are rather focused on the struggle between religion and rationality, they don't go into his ideas about world destruction that much.