I've put down The Secular Conscience which, besides heading in a direction I didn't agree with, began arguing statements that weren't even accurate (what hell do you mean no one's been willing to take the position that zygotes aren't people?).

But, still being inspired by recent board chatter to embrace my atheism, I've picked up The God Delusion. I am certainly the choir for this preacher so it's not really going to do much to make me think, but it's nice to see my own positions so well argued.

Actually, I still found it very thought provoking at several points. Unfortunately, if you are in that choir, it is repretitive because he takes the arguments in favor of god's existence on individually (because frequently the response to an argument against one god is responded to with "well, mine is different" even when it really isn't) and the response is generally the same with at most minor tweaking.

But it put into succinct form many arguments I've made in the past and presses home the point that many "all things are possible" arguments miss in that while all things may be possible they are not all equally probable. Or that the existence of god just pushes back all of the same questions one layer.

Having embraced your atheism, of which I was unaware, are you still planning to ritually take a knife to your son's penis?

As for me, I've just given up on The Wettest County in the World. Sometimes you just know immediately that you're not going to get along with a writing style. I did this time and I don't think I made it 40 pages in. The reviews are generally positive so I'm going to take the blame for this failure.

Started in its place both Sarah Vowell's The Wordy Shipmates about the Puritans and American Lion, the new Andrew Jackson biography from Jon Meacham. Since I consider Andrew Jackson a good candidate for worst person (not necessarily worst president) to hold the office it'll be interesting to see if my opinion changes (I haven't done deep reading on Jackson since college; maybe I've mellowed since).

Also recently read the swanky seeming Me of Little Faith from Lewis Black. I know most comedian books are horrible but I had hopes. They were dashed.

I think I'm over Lewis Black.

We're seeing him in Phoenix on New Years Eve. I'll tell him you said so.

I am currently reading Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris, the first book in the Southern Vampire series upon which the HBO show, True Blood is based.

I'm reading The Death of Vishnu at the moment and enjoying it so far.