So Tim Bray was giving a larger architecture argument why AJAX was good, as opposed to the usual user experience goals: Better distribution or resources - you can do simpler faster requests on the server if the server doesn't have to render the interface, but can leave that to the client. To help in that process Brian IngersonIngy has moved even more processing onto the client by adding an implementation of the Template Toolkit common in perl web applications.
Of course it really gets crazy when people start taking the various "Javascript as VM" seriously. The perl 6 via Haskell effort Pugs has a javascript backend so you can run your entire application client side.
It's interesting that all of this can actually sensibly be combined with web linkyness and RESTful principles to make a truly application dissociated web - like the one we've been dreaming of for a couple of decades.