Fantastica Tela de Excelencia

Hace unos dias ya que Ben me aviso que, justo despues de un roce con la muerte, Daniel Dennett WP acababa de escribir una carta, Thank Goodness!, en la que respondia a sus amigos que le preguntaban si en algo se habia afectado su largamente publico ateismo.
La carta me impresiono muchisimo inmediatamente, porque atendia varias preguntas que me estaba haciendo en ese momento (recuerdo que ese mismo dia le decia a mi hermana Chepe en el cafe, medio en broma y medio no, que si realmente no queriamos morir por que no nos volviamos doctores ((como Chemito!) y nos poniamos a investigar?)) y porque me emociono tremendamente el estilo conciliador pero firme, tan brillantemente elegante, de Dennett. En cierta forma la carta es una buena y sosegada continuacion a la carta elegiaca ELZR de Eliezer Yudkowsky a su fallecido hermano Yehuda — aquella carta que tanto me marco en su momento, que tanto ame por su cruda rabia y su descarnado optimismo, y que traduje al Español casi por reflejo (reflejo que fue muy gratamente reforzado cuando mi primo Paco me dijo que le llevo la traduccion a sus alumnos de prepa).
He traducido, tambien casi por reflejo, esta carta de Daniel Dennett y se encuentra disponible aqui, como una hoja aparte: * Gracias al bien!.* Fue una traduccion mucho mas dificil por aquellas oraciones increibles y barrocas de Dennett asi que por favor dejen un mensaje si se les ocurre cualquier forma de mejorar la traduccion. (Gracias, por cierto, a Chemito por asesoria medica en la traduccion.)
Ojala lo lean, ojala los haga pensar y ojala nos veamos en los proximos dias con sus opiniones. ((Para ser escritas, las mias tendran que esperar todavia unos dias a que aterrice el desorden de ideas que traigo — esta carta de Dennet me condujo al movimiento de los brights WP, a las ultimas ediciones de Wired, Time, y Newsweek, a los escritos de Dawkins, a Edge, a leer ciencia, a discusiones, coming-outs, y a muchos, muchos pequeños repensamientos propios)).

3 Comments
This is great! I haven’t studied much Spanish since I last talked to you, but I know enough to understand some of what you’re saying. I’ll work on the rest of it when I get off work and back from the AZ On Rails meeting. I saw your translation. I can’t judge the quality of the translation itself, since I don’t know much Spanish, but I like the layout and the use of notes at the end of the page to clarify things for your target audience.
Reading Dennett’s essay has helped me open my eyes to the good in the world. It’s helped me see how many people from diverse cultures are out there contributing to society and helping people in amazing ways. It helps me to be more tolerant of people who have negative attitudes to other cultures, and appreciate what good they bring into the world, while making me want to work harder to fight those negative attitudes both in myself and in others.I’m definitely going to print this out and keep it on my desk for a while and get a better understanding of it.
Thanks for your comments Ben and thanks a lot for pointing me to that letter in the first place. I wouldn’t be in the emotional and philosophical turmoil that I am now if it weren’t for you. :) (Though I reacted like you to the letter itself, it made me see so much good all around me.)
How did the Arizona on Rails meeting go?It went really well. While I was there I decided to make a few slides and throw some ideas out there. Before, during, and after my presentation we had a very lively discussion about all kinds of software, including e-mail, web apps, browsers, and desktop apps. The slides are available at http://www.benatkin.com/static/ben_ideas.pdf but they’re not very self-explanatory.
I’m going to be working on one of these ideas on my own and on another with a couple of people from the group. The group is going to get more exciting as we change the focus into writing code together as a small group starting in January.I tried out pimki ( http://pimki.rubyforge.org/ ) and e-mailed the person who started the project, and am planning to write some code for that.
My job is also pretty interesting. So between all of these things, I’m doing a lot of interesting programming work.