I don’t know what “genius” figured having corporate parties after business hours or on weekends was in any way a good idea. How is it a good idea to ask your employees to take an evening out of their lives to spend even more time with the coworkers in some enforced “fun” filled venture? It’s even worse when they provide you with a “prize” which amounts to spending a week elsewhere with those self-same co-workers. It’s like a booby prize or form of punishment. I  have even heard of one firm that offered “dinner for one” as a “prize”. I guess they figure anyone stupid enough to spend enough of their spare time attempting to win said prize would no longer have a spouse or significant other willing to actually go out to dinner with them.

I know some will claim I’m just being a party pooper, but how many normal people actually want to spend an entire evening — and we’re talking 5 – 6 hours of your own time — with your coworkers? You’re not getting paid to go to this function. The music will be lame. The food will be passable if you’re lucky, you will have to “dress up” because some pinhead in HR figured it would be “fun” to make it formal, and you might have to find sitters, etc. Then, when you get there, the “entertainment value” for the evening will consist of the company drunk doing something expected and various management types babbling endlessly about goals and how proud they  are of you. These folks figure by annoying their employees by having them attend the event is preferable to simply giving them a monetary award, some actual recognition during work hours in front of their peers, some paid time off, or, God forbid, a dinner for two so as to actually show respect for the person and the significant other in the relationship, the very people who have had to put up with the long hours that the drone at the microphone is going on and on about.

Another insipid detail of these “events” is that they now tend to have a “rah rah” session. I know where these things have come from, our cousins to the south. Americans seem to love this cheerleading garbage. They seem to love having someone cheer them on, spout inanities to which they all grunt and cheer to: “We’re the best, yes we are, ooooga”. Crap! Most of the rest of the world finds this rather odd, moronic, and somewhat neanderthal. If I have no pride in my work, no pride in my job, no respect for my coworkers or my firm then a rah-rah session isn’t going to instill it in me or anyone else. What it will do, for anyone with brains or the smallest bit of self-respect, is make you wonder if you’re back in high school. And most of us hated high school, what with the posturing and the cliques and the jocks and princesses along with teachers who seemed more intent at keeping the inmates in line than anything else. We had enough of that rah-rah shit then, we don’t want it on the job and we don’t want to be forced to go to some insipid “pep rally” on a Saturday night when we could be with our spouse or  friends enjoying something that will actually make us happy and make us relax.

Oh, I can hear some claim they relax at these events. Really? You can fully be yourself when your boss is in the same room? You can sit there and not fake smile or pretend to be interested in what’s going on? I know some can, but most will sit there politely so as not to offend. But deep down you can see that they’d rather be anywhere else. They’d rather have a wolverine in their pants than sit through another “motivational talk” from the VP. At least with the wolverine only one of you are in pain and at least one of you is getting something out of it. With a corporate dinner and pep rally no one gets anything out of it and it’s an uncomfortable feeling all around.

So, if any corporate “adults” read this and wonder what to do next time here’s some advice. Get rid of the President’s Clubs and the corporate Christmas Party and all the other stupidity that forces employees to come together during non-office hours. Hell, get rid of any rah-rah shit during office hours, too — it’s a waste of money. Instead, take the amount you were planning on spending on those events and put it to useful purpose, say a local shelter, some decent chairs, free coffee and soft drinks, etc. That way the money will be well spent and people will actually benefit from the money — and you will instill some pride in the company as it’ll show it cares. Furthermore, as to things like “President’s Clubs”, just offer the top performers all expense paid vacations or cash or days off. They’ll be much happier going someplace with their spouse rather than having to spend a week with the people they share a prison cube with.

And don’t get me started on “team building exercises”.  Or cubicles. Or …

First off, hate the name. iSlate would have been better, especially as this is truly a clean slate for many applications and how people will interact with a computer.

Now, I’ve been reading all kinds of rants from folks on the web about the iPad. I think they’re all full of it. The iPad represents a proper computational device for the masses.

Why? Simple.

Most people just want something that works, that does not require endless dicking around with, that does what it claims to do, is light and functional and attractive. They don’t want to program it and they want the applications all to behave in standardized ways. The attitude from some people is that it’s closed and makes you use the iPhone/iPod Touch touch interface. Well, duh. Most people can figure out using something based on touch, but the mouse, keyboard, etc. aggravate people.

What Jobs and crew have done is create a device that replaces paper in a number of instances:

• notebook
• calendar
• contact list
• books
• etc.

Thus, you suddenly have a single device that does all those things. And does them elegantly and consistently.

I look upon the reaction of some kids I know. They quickly realized that it would replace their textbooks, a huge savings in weight. And, it can hold their music, their calendars, pictures, etc. Sure, the iPod is nice and small, but when you’re in class taking notes or wanting to read the text book or some journal or a web page, the iPad will do all of that efficiently.

Therefore I see a huge uptake in this device. Especially from students in university, business people, and geeks. Geeks will use it to dump their docs onto, business people will use it to take notes, track their calendar, check mail, etc. without having to lug around a computer, a notebook, etc. A Blackberry might be handy, but you can’t respond in any intelligent way via a Blackberry or iPhone. You need access to a keyboard. And various documents will just be there for you in a readable way. Not so with small handheld devices. With an iPad you can keep up-to-date versions of documents of interest, books, contracts, etc. for quick reference. I see this device helping declutter the corporate world. And it’s about freaking time!!

So, I doubt Apple will be able to build enough of these things. They’ll sell millions upon millions of them. And I think this will kill the netbook completely, except for those few who want a general computational device they can code in Linux or the like. But for the vast majority of people it’ll be just what they want. Something attractive, something that works, and something that is consistent. For the Linux crowd, they’ll foam at the mouth because they will continue to not appreciate that most people don’t give a rat’s ass for Linux on the desktop. They want something that works, does not require any customization, and that has someone they can call when it doesn’t work.

I know I’ll hear laments all summer about the “idiots buying closed hardware”. And to aggravate some of those people I intend to buy myself one, once the first few bugs are out.

How I wish the media firms would come to their senses and realize that the consumer isn’t their enemy and that what the consumer wants is convenience.

I really would love to rid my house of DVDs, CDs, magazines, etc. and have most of that stuff digital. Books, at least for me, are the sole exception. I like having a physical book. But even there, in some cases, I’d take a digital volume. One case that comes immediately to mind is technical books that I use for reference. They’re huge, usually go out of date quickly, and weigh a ton. I’d prefer those puppies in digital form.

So, here’s to hoping the media firms come to the realization that they have to come up with a utility-style structure wherein we can get what we want and the folks generating what we want get compensated. It’s not as if the Internet and computers can’t do this, it just requires a certain amount of collective will to build a new distribution solution as opposed to suing folks or making it difficult to get what you want in a digital format. Aggravating the consumer is not good business sense.

Besides, storing our music preferences, for example, in the cloud so that we can listen to the music we want whenever and wherever we want is much more efficient from a consumer’s point of view than trying to maintain a digital library or dealing with a gazillion CDs and DVDs.

For example, why can’t I just watch Mythbusters on demand? Put in the commercials for those unwilling to pay a premium. For the rest of us, provide the means by which we can pay a premium to watch it without the commercials. Again, our time is money and if I can save 20 minutes in TV watching I’m willing to pay for that. It’s why many times I wait and simply buy the DVD set for a TV show I like. No commercials. My own pace. My own schedule. Well worth it, but I’d rather not have to store the DVD box set, nor have to dust it bimonthly or even try to remember where I left it when the urge comes to watch a particular episode.

Personally, I think the utility model built into the way ISPs deliver the internet to everyone would resolve much of the problem. I, for one, would happily pay a reasonable premium to have access to everything on the internet from music to TV shows to movies to news to journal articles in a metered fashion. To me it would only be a good thing as I could look upon such a result as the beginning of The Big Declutter my home is in long need of.

As I look around my book and CD cluttered office I so wish the new Apple tablet, supposedly to be announced tomorrow, provides at least part of that solution. If it does, I’ll be one of the first people buying one and hopefully replacing many of my paper textbooks with digital ones. The savings in space for that alone will be well worth it, so long as the media firms don’t try to gouge me for a digital version. In which case, I’ll just stick with my paper-based model as much as I might loathe it.

Going on more than 30 years of dealing with keyboards I’ve gotten fairly picky. Same holds for mice. Keyboards, that major interaction device with the computer, is something a lot of people are very passionate about. I know I tend to get more than a little agitated whenever I have to go buy a new keyboard when my latest favourite dies.

I’ve watched friends rant on about things such as key click sensation, noise, speed of input, flexibility, layout and ability to absorb various spills. Although I’ve never spilled anything on my keyboards, I do know that it seems that quite a number of people do spill all kinds of things onto and thus into them. In fact, there are a number of keyboards that are designed with spillage in mind. I know of one Logitech keyboard that is designed so as to allow the liquid to pour through strategically placed holes. I guess you can wash it out that way, too, supposing you use distilled water. Pretty handy if you’re a bit of a land klutz or are just to spastic from drinking way too many caffeinated drinks during your latest round of WoW.

So whenever I have a chance I listen to what friends are going through re: keyboards and mice, especially if they touch type as I do or are similarly brutal to their keyboards.

And the opinions vary. Some still like the rectangular layout, but I find it confining. I’m 6’3″ and thus a rectangular keyboard is rather hard on my wrists. I prefer the ones with at least a subtle curve to them. I remember the original Microsoft Natural keyboards. They were brilliant. I went through a number of them over the years and they worked and were a joy to use. Unfortunately, Microsoft figured it important to change how they felt and operated and I fell out of love with them. I then moved onto the Logitech NewTouch. It was a monster of a keyboard, complete with a built in trackpad. I used them for a number of years until, it seems, Logitech stopped carrying them or, perhaps, the structure of my office disallowed the use of such a huge keyboard and a mouse. Thereafter I moved back to Microsoft keyboards, especially the various Comfort keyboards, none of which I was overly happy with. And then I found Microsoft’s Entertainment keyboard, the 7000 in particular. Ah. Heaven. Easy to type on. Great response. sleek and small. The only drawback is the lack of a number pad. However, after more than 2 years of using this keyboard I’ve not missed the number pad often. And, after 2 years of use, I’ve not had a single problem with the keyboard. Even the lettering is mostly still on, which is impressive.

But mice are another matter. I’ve mostly vacillated, as with keyboards, between Microsoft and Logitech mice. Of late I’m using the mouse that accompanies the aforementioned keyboard. Before that I used whatever mouse was reasonably comfortable and inexpensive, usually opting for Microsoft optical mice.  As a keyboard jockey the mouse is useful but it’s the keyboard that drives my decisions.

It’s why I’ve never liked Apple keyboards or mice for that matter. I’ve found the keyboards horrid — though they’re passable on their notebooks. And the mice are atrocious. Too small for my huge hands they result in some pretty impressive pain. Thus imagine my surprise when the new mouse from Apple turned out to be decent. It may be small, but it seems it so small that it’s like not having a mouse under your hand. Thus, the curve is more natural and I don’t get pain from it. I’d be willing to switch to this mouse full time in the future.

Now, if Apple could spend that kind of time building a proper, curved keyboard I’d be happy. I’d have 2 choices again — since nothing from Logitech works for me — I don’t like how their keyboards feel anymore. At the moment I’m rather trapped into using Microsoft’s keyboards and mice. Fortunately, that’s not a bad place to be trapped as their keyboards and mice are excellent!

I do, however, wonder why it is so hard for companies to make good keyboards. Or at least ones that I consider good. Of all the things that can make or break your relationship with the computer the keyboard and mouse are the most important. And Apple, of all companies, you would think would go out of their way to create decent keyboards for those, like myself, who prefer a curve. They finally got the mouse right, now maybe they can focus on the keyboard…

I recently finished reading Coders at Work by Peter Seibel. You can pick up a copy at your local bookstore or on online at places like Chapters or Amazon. You can read Peter’s blog here, also well worth visiting.

I found it a great read, though there are a number of typos, format errors, and grammatical mistakes. I do also find he should have cleaned up the format a bit. It’s in an interview format, which is fine, but there are places where it could have flowed better. Sometimes there’s a single interjection by either the author or the coder being interviewed. I didn’t quite see the point as those small interjections didn’t offer much, if anything.

However, overall, I really enjoyed the book. There are some nice tidbits, including the overall dislike of C++ — with which I can sympathize.

While reading the book I decided to tag passages I thought were insightful or interesting. Here’s a summary.

• Jamie Zawinski   (7)
• Brad Fitzpatrick  (7)
• Douglas Crockford  (12)
• Brendan Eich  (7)
• Joshua Bloch   (7)
• Joe Armstrong   (9)
• Simon Peyton Jones    (4)
• Peter Norvig   (4)
• Guy Steele   (14)
• Dan Ingalls   (7)
• L Peter Deutsch  (13)
• Ken Thompson   (9)
• Fran Allen   (4)
• Bernie Cosell   (6)
• Donald Knuth  (14)

Obviously I found Douglas Crockford, Guy Steele, L Peter Deutsch, and Donald Knuth the most interesting.

The above stats are rather meaningless since they apply to my particular read of the book and reflect my interests or where the interviewee is actually stating something that makes me take notice. Others may not be so enamoured with what a given interviewee stated at a given point, but no matter.

Ultimately, the book was a satisfying read. I like reading up on computer history from a personal perspective. I think the lack of computer historians is rather troubling as we’ll lose these first person reflections as folks retire and then pass on. Knowing why things are the way they are is important to understanding how we can fix them, improve upon them, or when it’s time to throw something out.

In fact, I think that last is a big problem. We seem unwilling to walk away from something and simply say that it’s past its best before date. That it’s time to rework a system or solution or redo it entirely. Instead, we patch and patch and fix and extend until we end up with totally unmanageable messes on our hands. It’s totally aggravating. And having been in the computer industry for 30 years now I bemoan how bad its gotten. Seibel is right in asking many of his interviewees whether or not they could be a programmer today. That one question resonated most with me. Today I find computer science rather infuriating, frustrating, and depressing. Instead of getting smaller, better, more efficient, more expressive I see bigger, more cumbersome solutions and languages. I thought by now systems would be much much better. But it just isn’t so.

Thus, I can’t recommend the book highly enough. It’s a great read. You get historical perspective from a variety of people. You can read some fairly blunt assessments of where we are and what some are trying to do about it. And yet you can’t but help hear an underlying lament over what’s become of the field. That somehow we’ve seriously lost our way. That it just isn’t what we all thought it would be 30 years ago and that that is highly depressing for all involved.

For the nerd or geek in your life, this would be a great present. I’d actually recommend it along with Founders at Work.

I’m reading the to-and-fro and what’s shocking from the AGW proponent camp is this fixation that “there is no conspiracy”. That’s not the point of what seems to be evident in the emails and source code. What seems to be the problem is that science was corrupted. Science requires openness to both the theories and the data. If new data comes to light that contradicts a given theory then the theory must be modified.

Same holds for any given model. If data suddenly shows the model to be faulty, the model needs to be reworked. That’s just good science.

A lot of the noise going back and forth can be resolved if both sides would just come the realization and agreement that what we need is a neutral body to simply store all the data, all the algorithms, all the models, etc. That way no one is ever going to be pestered with access to information requests and anyone who wishes to use the data and software can and if they feel there’s something worthy of publication it can be so presented.I do note some on both sides of the argument are already espousing a fully open structure. This is commendable since a hallmark of science is skepticism. In fact, a scientist must be most skeptical about his or her own work. If ever a bias is to sneak into someone’s work, it’ll be one’s own.

Besides, science that cannot be independently verified is not science. It’s dogma. And the sooner the scientists return to science the better it will be for all of us.

And please, find some computer scientists — good ones — to create models that are decent. Computer scientists judge people’s skill and the quality of the code by looking at the source. From the snippets I’ve seen the code is horrid and requires a serious rework by someone who actually is trained to work properly with computers — like a computer scientist. It’s much easier to make statements about the validity of a model if the model as coded is actually well done.  Poorly done code is not maintainable, not extensible, difficult to understand, difficult to prove that it works even remotely correctly, and is a long term liability. So, fix up the code guys. It’s not like we’re short of CS-types in the Western world.

As a security guy I’ve been pinged by the news about the East Anglia hack, the one about the climate site that was hacked with a slew of emails, data, and code swiped.

Whenever something like this happens people wonder if it can happen to their site. Of course, the answer is yes. But we don’t have the full context of the hack. Was it really a hack or was it an inside job? There’s a big difference. An inside job doesn’t necessarily require actually breaking into the system while a proper, outside hack does. Until we find out what actually transpired we won’t know if the systems were truly compromised or not. Unfortunately, if the hack was well executed it might be very difficult to tell if it was an inside job or an outside hack. Such is the problem with modern computer systems and the complexity that arises from their high interconnectedness.

All that said, there is another issue: the data that was taken. Leaving aside the legality of whether or not the data should have been released publicly or not, either via this supposed breach or via an FOI, the fact is that it has raised the hackles of both sides of the climate debate. And reading the back-and-forth from the various proponents of whichever side I note that the solution is rather simple: publish the data and work on creating a proper, well developed climate model.

There’s a certain amount of suspicion that arises when scientists work on something and the algorithms and data they’re using is not generally available. Without the algorithms and data others can’t check it to see if something fundamentally was overlooked, done incorrectly, what-have-you. Thus, having a public, open set repository for all climate data, algorithms, and code seems the logical and right thing to do. And, working on a model that is well written — by computer scientists — also seems the right thing to do. It would provide the means by which anyone could check the science and silence a lot of the arguments and bickering that is currently ongoing. Neither side should fear such an open forum since it is the very bedrock of science itself.

In other words, I’d recommend the entire climatology community take a huge huge hint from the Open Source community and go open source with their data and how their models operate, including code publication, algorithm publication, statistical assumptions, etc. These can then be viewed from a much more scientific and open perspective, and the cries of foul because of supposedly hidden information pertaining to something that might be crucially important to all should diminish.

What I’m saying is, I’m rather perplexed at the closed nature that some climatologists seem to take. Much of what they do is publicly funded. What they claim in terms of impact is something that will impact us all. Thus, we should have the science fully in the open. And we should expend money on creating proper models as opposed to having each group have their own models. Doing this in an open source manner would only benefit both sides — AGW skeptics and proponents alike. After all, it’s much easier to defend the science when the actual science is out in the open for all scientists to examine. Otherwise, if much of the backing material for a specific “science” is hidden then is it science or is it dogma and religion?

I came across this article titled The Last Days of the Polymath. It’s an excellent article that got me thinking about my day job. I’m a generalist, though, ironically, my title proclaims me a specialist albeit in an artificial construct called “complex solutions”. Generally, what I do is think about the problems our clients inform us about. Our clients have a variety of problems. A single solution isn’t going to cut it, otherwise they’d already have purchased said solution. These clients usually have compelling and complex problems that are (usually) ahead of what the industry norm is currently focused upon. That’s OK, that’s cooler in my mind.

However, to address the problem requires the outlook of a generalist and not a specialist. The problem at hand is never so narrowly focused or defined that a single, simple, and deep approach can be applied. The problem is usually one where you want to apply a “good enough” solution. One that may only resolve 50% of the issues at hand, but that’s better than what the client currently is dealing with which is a 0% solution to the problem. True specialists usually come in before us and proclaim how their given product will resolve the problem. Unfortunately, it’s usually a pathetic attempt to restructure the problem into the specialized capability of the given solution being pushed. Rarely does this do more than aggravate the client who knows better — since, as I’ve said above, if it were as trivial as buying a point product they’d have done this already themselves.

Thus, upon reading the article on the last of the polymaths I realized that the same statement holds true to some extent to generalists. There’s this odd mystique about specialists, probably because of the word and because it requires arcane knowledge of a specific area of interest and a vocabulary typically determined to confuse anyone not in the know. However, many times the problems we all face are actually those that require not a specialist but a generalist. Someone who is well versed in a variety of problems and knows what they are and are not well versed in. And someone who is able to take a good step back and absorb what the true problem is and then formulate a way forward — which may include research into areas that, at the time of study, were unknowns and require research of either existing technologies or how technologies will need to be developed to address the gaps.

A specialist simply cannot do the aforementioned. It’s impossible for a specialist in an area of, say, cryptography to not view the entire spectrum of security problems with their cryptographically tinted glasses. A generalist can see the folly of their ways. And yet, if I were to arrive at a client site and proclaim myself as a generalist I would be considered inferior to the specialist. Thus, my title as a specialist in those very complex problems my client faces.

I don’t know how we got into this mess where we look down upon general knowledge while glorifying the specialist. I think  it’s just more comfortable for most people to comprehend that any given person is good at one thing. Someone who might actually be good at more than one thing probably feels intimidating, or just plain wrong. Perhaps improbable is the correct term.

Unfortunately I don’t know a way around this other than by using marketing tricks and rebranding “generalists” as “specialists” but in generic areas of interest such as “complex solutions” or some such. It’s all rather odd, but you have to go with the flow. But I fear it also gives the false perception to up-and-comers that you have to specialize to matter meaning we may well lose out on generalists in the future. And that is going to be both a calamity and a travesty.

I read a very limited number of mostly nerdy/technical blogs. I’ve been more than a bit surprised that over the past 8 – 12 months many have slowed down appreciably in posting and some haven’t had updates since the spring. And it’s not that these blogs were erratic before, they were regularly updated. Now, even some which had fairly prolific authors seem to be posting less. And it’s not like with me, who looks at this as just an idle curiosity and as something to use to post some thoughts now and again. Instead, they were rather interesting sites.

Now, the one that truly surprised me was Marc Andreeson’s blog. It was great. And then it stopped. He’s explained the stoppage. He started a fund. Good for him! He’s down to earth and a nerd so he gets it. It’ll be good for the startups of Silicon Valley. But I miss his posts. And he seems to have cleansed his blog. I have no idea if this is so he can start fresh or that’s he’s abandoned the blog. I’m hoping he’s just resetting. His blog was always full of nuggets.

Which reminds me, I watched  this interview with Andreeson. Excellent. My favourite part is where he humbly admits the role of luck in the success of any startup, and that it’s highly underrated as an actual influence on success. He gets what part luck plays, as opposed to many who think that a good idea will trump all. And, sure, you can claim to “make your own luck” but in the end it’s much more complicated than that. You need to have a decent product, a good, technically sound, management team, good technical team, and a hungry sales team. You need to have investors with the horizon to wait for the technology to properly be digested — especially today when the ideas being pushed aren’t as obvious to buyers as was true years ago. Plus, you need to have timing and luck on your side. You need to be able to scratch that itch and match up with clients in such a way as to provide them with what they need so they’ll provide you with what you need — namely, paying customers.

That’s why I hope Andreeson continues his blog, It had so many good points for entrepreneurs and that’s something that’s seriously lacking. And today, with entrepreneurs not being as clustered within one geographic area due to the power of the internet we need to have broader access to the insights of folks like Andreeson who knows it’s not just the money you know, but the fortune that may befall the company that gets that cash.

So, here’s to hoping Andreeson, at least, starts posting again.

Probably the best description of what most irritates me about Dawkins is his constant harping on his dislike of religion. Randy Olson in his review of Dawkins’ latest endeavour points out how bad it has become, asking “But in the end, you have to wonder why Dawkins wastes so much time trying to argue with creationists. We all know that creationists are not rational thinkers. They are driven by beliefs, not by logic.”

There is some kind of deep rooted hatred or anger that drives Dawkins. He seems incapble of accepting that someone can believe in evolution and God. He also ends up being massively condescending, which turns way too many people off. And his either-or stance re: God and evolution is simply absurd. Not everyone is as smart as Dawkins, but making them feel stupid isn’t the answer to getting them to see your point of view. In fact, taking an absurdist either-or stance drives those on the fence towards the absolutist religious fundamentalists, losing entire generations in the process! It’s the worst thing that can be done. Especially in a democracy where those now deluded, irrational creationists will demand their “theory” supplant science and scientific theories in the classroom!

He seems to want to convert creationists, but for the most part it’s probably a wasted effort. Instead, I have to wonder why he has to be so antagonistic towards anyone who believes in religion. That turns off those that wish to believe in God but also wish to believe in the advances of science. “Implying that your audience is stupid …” does nothing to get those who have faith to believe in your message. And as Dawkins well knows, many scientists believe in God. They aren’t all stupid, yet Dawkins’ stance proclaims them thus … though the evidence shows his stance to be grounded in sand.

But do go read the review. It’s well stated. Well stated enough to make me want to read some of Olson’s books. In the end, Olson’s best statement is one that Dawkins should take to heart:

Though Dawkins says from the outset, “This is not an anti-religious book”, he can’t help but knock religion throughout, For instance, he writes: “God, to repeat this point, which ought to be obvious, but isn’t, never made a tiny wing in his eternal life.” Young Earth creationists are, he writes, “deluded to the point of perversity”. You get the sense that Dawkins just can’t control it. It’s as if he suffers from an anti-religious form of Tourette’s syndrome.

And that final sentence  better defines what aggravates me about Dawkins and his ilk than anything I’ve ever read by anyone. Even when he doesn’t want to go on about it, he does. I wish he’d just go back to focusing on the science. Those that are steadfast in their refusal to believe in the science are a lost cause. Arguing with a fool only makes you the bigger fool.

Unfortunately, because of Dawkins decline into anti-religious zealotry I’m disinclined to buy or read any of his post The God Delusion books. His case of anti-religious Tourette’s is just too much to handle. Simply too distracting. Pity.