I’ve been mulling the almost infra dig treatment that One Web Day received. Oh, there were a gaggle of Berkmanites, past and present, who touted it and seemed genuinely jolly about the prospect. David Isenberg rolled out a nice party in Vienna! But in general it didn’t seem to get the broad positive attention that you would expect a purely altruistic effort to receive. It’s been rolling toward us for a year or more, progressing merrily like a marble on a track. Why didn’t more people know about it? Why wasn’t there a broad celebration cutting across all socio-economic classes, all ages, breaking down gender barriers, banishing ethnic distinctions, just a Mardi Gras of whoop-tee-do with festive netizens around the globe all flushed with endorphins, smiling out of their eyes and open to a wealth of new webular experiences?

Naturally I blame myself.

What did I do besides slap a dorky sticker on my laptop and sort of nibble around the edges of the occasion? Why didn’t I get out there and promote it like a cure for cancer? I don’t know. I’m sorry. Maybe I was too tied up with my PhoneCon 2.0 efforts. I’ll try to do better next year.

After that lame jumping-on-the-bed reintroduction, Ms. Congdon has served up three for three interesting pieces.

Ironic that the ICANNographers would declare a “OneWebDay” to create, maintain, advance, and promote a global day to celebrate online life. HTML and DNS are a swell combination, but people who conflate the Internet and its magnificent potential with the World Wide Web have blinders on.

Is September 22, 2024 the day that the revolution was lost and the vested interests declared themselves victorious?

How many of the celebrants are interested in “what’s next” for the global network? How would the entrenched investors frame a discussion around rebuilding the net? Are browsers and the web the end of the journey?

Irony or conspiracy? How likely is it that an organic food company named Natural Selection would deliver e coli 0157:H to the dining tables of millions of Americans at precisely the same time that the Pope was defaming muslims worldwide? Not likely. No, these seemingly unrelated events are obviously part of a vast global christian conspiracy digging in to protect what remains of their tattered empire in the face of challenges from science, competing superstitions, and health food nuts.

The Armies of God are on the march and we had better watch out!

Enter Richard Dawkins. The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science has brought online a web site aimed squarely at encountering religious superstition just at this critical moment when God’s rottweiler is barking loudest and the domestic religious fundies are spreading cow poop in our spinach.

Dawkins’ latest book, The God Delusion, is just out. The book is a profoundly intolerant look at god, a book that treats theocentric superstitions the same, be they baptist, catholic, or shiite. If I was him I’d duck and cover before the Papal scourging and the fatwas start flying.

The God Delusion may be one ray of light shining into the xtian darkness that has fallen on America. I’m looking forward to reading it.