Runester

Books I’ve Read

Well, I finally finished In Search of Zarathustra … it was part travelogue and part mythological / sociological exploration. What fascinated me the most was how heavily modern ideas of spirituality are based on the very ancient concepts of Zoroastrianism. The principal being the moral duality of the universe. If asked, most people would probably say that there are two opposing forces, good and bad, and the eternal battle between them is played out everyday in human society.

Ironically, this is similar to the Cathar heresy that lead to he execution (by fire) of tens of thousands during the middle ages. The Catholic (and official) version has the situation far from balanced. Satan is not the evil god, equal and opposed to God (Yahweh) … he is only a minor annoyance, allowed to wander free at God’s whim in order to test mankind. He’ll be dealt with decisively at Armageddon.

Interesting how the “official” version doesn’t really represent most peoples understanding of the cosmos … and how the Zoroastrian ideas (3000+ years old) are the more prevalent.

I also finished the book Holes … the movie (which I saw first) was EXACTLY like the book. They were very faithful to the book, and it actually helped me to be able to picture the actors while reading the actions and dialog of the characters.

It was a pretty good book, but definitely “young adult fiction.” Everything from the third-person narrative to the authors asides to the neat wrap-up at the end, smacked of ‘juvenile’. It was a small book, go read it … you won’t be disappointed.

The most recent book I finished (yesterday) was called Go to: The Story of the Math Majors, Bridge Players, Engineers, Chess Wizards, Scientists and Iconoclasts who were the Hero Programmers of the Software Revolution … quite a mouthful, huh? The title is nearly as long as the whole book! It’s actually sort of an unofficial history of software. The cool part, most of the really important players are still around and can be interviewed directly. That’s something that can’t be said of the history of Mathematics, the Automobile, Powered Flight, or Democracy. I am glad someone is writing this stuff down now, before it really becomes “history” in the “old, moldy, and no one is alive who remembers” sort of way.

On the other hand, it a little like writing “the history of the automotive window hand crank.” I am sure you could show the influential engineers and designers, the forward thinking managers that backed them up, and a whole ‘family tree’ of innovations that produced and were produced by the automotive window hand crank. But would anyone care? That was the question I kept asking as I read Go to: … Besides a mild interest in knowing who designed the program that eventually became “Microsoft Word” … why would anyone really care about this stuff?

No matter how ‘beautiful’ or even ’socially disruptive’ a piece of software is, at the end of the day it is important only in as much as it is useful. No one opens up their Microsoft Word and reverential thinks, “Wow … this was once the GUI-less text editing program BRAVO …” People just want to see what they can do with it.

What’s next?

The next movies I am really looking forward to seeing, are Underworld and The Order … but I may be able to sneak out this week and see both Jeepers Creepers II as well as Freddy v Jason Got to love those summer horror movies!