!(alignright)http://www.sensoryoutput.com/wp-images/postings/stateoffear.jpg(Michael Crichton’s State of Fear)! Last week, I stopped by my local book place, “Sundance Bookstore”:http://www.sundancebookstore.com/, to pick up the “New York Times”:http://www.nytimes.com/ to get a look at that great community-supported “Mozilla Firefox”:http://www.mozilla.org ad “as seen here”:http://www.mozilla.org/images/nyt_ad_large_2004.png. While there, I remembered that I had heard mention that Michael Crichton had a new fiction book out, _State of Fear_, and I bought it without hesitation. I enjoy a good diversion, and this weekend provided the perfect opportunity.

I read half last night and the rest this morning, devouring and then pondering the various questions and ideas thrown at the reader. Before I get too deep into an analysis, perhaps I should warn you that this may contain a few spoilers, but not many. For the most part, I would like to discuss the scientific details and some of the grander notions of research, society, and the media.

To begin, this novel serves, in my mind, two purposes: one being purely entertainment and the other being opinion/thesis/argument against the recent western societal uproar surrounding global warming. While the plot is interesting and has a very intricately woven pattern of deception, greed, power, chase scenes, and climax action, Crichton uses his characters, primarily MIT professor gone undercover agent Kenner, to persuade the reader against the juggernaut that is global warming. From the outset, one should recognize that this book is proving rather unpopular, as can be seen “here”:http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=74, “here”:http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=76 and “here”:http://www.wunderground.com/education/stateoffear.asp. That is not to say that these people do not have any basis for their frustration with Crichton’s stance. Of course there is room for argument on these facts, but Crichton goes further, elucidating how both sides overstate their positions and neither side admits to the simple fact of life: we can never be 100% sure.

For one, Crichton makes a clear point that people often get caught up in what they hear and what they stand for, allowing their personal convictions to be used as definite proof a particular phenomenon is real. Hence, people often ignore evidence contrary to their beliefs or will attempt to spin the new evidence as either flawed, wrong or misinterpreted. Certainly, this has some validity: people are stubborn and hate change. Life would be chaotic if people did not have some firm beliefs, but our intransigence should not override facts of science. Mix in this observation with the global warming movement and politics and society really starts to get out of hand because now people are using politics to shape shared knowledge (on both sides). This is dangerous, as Crichton points out, because the people collecting and analyzing the data are now subject to those that fund their research. Crichton hints several times though exchanges between the characters’ various Q & A sessions with Kenner that such funding should be blind and not be given on the contingent of an end result but rather simply for continuing work. As he points out, people, including scientists, can be influenced by beliefs in how the results could turn out. Put simply, people hate to be wrong.

Crichton’s primary thesis is rather simple and is directly stated at the end of the book as an afterward: the complexity and countless variables that affect climate cannot be reliably predicted or controlled; therefore, in short, global warming is not a great concern and even if true, may or may not be due in part to human activity or normal waxing and waning of Earth’s climate in general. This is interesting that he would have the audacity to challenge an arguably, mainstream position. His statements are, however, quite convincing on some levels. For one, Crichton spent a great deal of time researching the data himself, and provides footnotes while reading and an extensive bibliography at the end of the book. In addition, he presents some societal evidence for people accepting basic truisms doled out by the media including rapidly rising usage of words like catastrophe since global warming was outed by scientists and the environmental movement in the late 80s. As noted on some web sites, he has some “scientific errors”:http://www.wunderground.com/education/stateoffear.asp with regards to weather and climate.

Although frustrated by the apparent politicization of the issues, Crichton does not dismiss environmental responsibility outright. Of course human beings, as the dominant species on this plant, must take some control over our activities and understand how what we do alters the fragile ecosystems of this world that we call home. To not do so would be criminal. Maybe the entire global warming argument is moot altogether because it really does not matter either way who or what is to blame for it: we still have a responsibility to understand this world and be conscious of our impact on it.

At the end of the day, there are several points that I must concede:

* I am often distressed when the media, corporations, environmentalists, and other organizations simplify the issues discussed here to simple, catch-all phrases. Dispersing such euphemisms is a detriment to the end goal most should have in mind: limit our effect on the environment by careful, thoughtful regulation of emissions, etc.
* Of course there is evidence that our species has altered the atmosphere of the planet in some manner (elevated levels of CO₂, increased CFCs and aerosols, more particulate matter), but why do so few realize that the Earth is a dynamic place. People often speak in grand terms of “maintaining our ecosphere” without even realizing that maybe some changes are bound to happen. Crichton did an excellent job at the end of the book in raising this very point. The Earth has gone through three different atmospheres in its long billions of years in existence and has undergone cold and warm periods. It stands to reason that these changes are still happening, and we may be seeing such changes.
* Science should be de-politicized. Period. End of sentence. Of course, it would naïve to believe this were possible, but one should say that it ought be done, and efforts need be made to that end.
* Being environmentally conscious is not in contradiction to beliefs either way about global warming: global warming is a scientific question and should remain one. By realizing this, we can proceed with learning more about the Earth, its ways, and how we can stop pollution regardless of current Earth climate patterns.

As any moron who follows politics could foresee, there are those that have “lined”:http://www.nationalcenter.org/2004/12/michael-crichtons-state-of-fear-takes.html “up”:http://www.everythingiknowiswrong.com/2004/12/michael_crichto.html quite nicely behind Crichton’s work. I hope Crichton protects his work by now allowing it to be used as fodder by either side of this ferocious debate. The work should stand on its own and be debated. Some of the sites to which I have linked do a better job of it than others at this, so please take note. In conclusion, I would say that this book evokes thought and imagination, reviving a debate replete with banality and rejuvenating it with new ideas to ponder. This, in itself, is reason to read this book. Beware, however, the preaching that tends to occur through the character I noted above, as he tends to dance circles around his fellow conversationalists _vis à vis_ climate talks.

!(alignright)http://www.sensoryoutput.com/wp-images/postings/angelsanddemons.gif(Angels and Demons, by Dan Brown)! Just one week after finishing my last book by “Dan Brown”:http://www.danbrown.com/, I have completed another: “Angels and Demons”:http://www.danbrown.com/novels/angels_demons/. The famed Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon makes his appearance again in this science versus religion thriller involving a long-lost secret brotherhood, blind piety, and half of a gram of antimatter.

Brown once again proves his aptitude for captivating the reader with unimaginable twists, unraveling secrets in the plot while intermixing true facts about science, religion, and the Illuminati—an ancient society that promoted science over religion. The depth of detail in all facets is truly remarkable, yet the author really shows his true colors with the hidden pagan symbols intermixed in the center of modern religion.

Brown does show a bit more fictional drama here than in “The DaVinci Code”:http://www.sensoryoutput.com/archives/2004/09/04/the-davinci-code/, speaking of X-33s, slush hydrogen, bio-entanglement physics, and portable antimatter traps. Still, he includes information that is fairly accurate with respect to the rest—antimatter is real, CERN(Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire) and its particle accelerators exist, antimatter traps are in the works. Brown fails to mention the “symmetry violation”:http://www.cnrs.fr/cw/en/pres/compress/cpviolation.html that scientists know exists (oddly enough, the scientists at CERN proved this), a violation that allowed matter to rule over antimatter, despite their presumed creation in equal amounts during the “Big Bang”:http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/academy/universe/b_bang.html. Also, at the very end, a character goes on to mention how she wants to prove the neutrino has mass, but this has “already been done”:http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/sudbury-results.html by scientists in the real world. Upon close inspection of the dates, however, the last revelation was not yet made by scientists at the time of publication of this book.

_Angels and Demons_ is definitely worth a read. It consumed all my time today, as engrossed in it as I was. I could not even put the book down, opting to read instead of completing important tasks. It was worth every minute, allowing me to escape into my imagination and hold on for the wild adventure that unfolded in my mind.

I often come across words that I know, but rarely use. These words are sophisticated and show off a bit of erudite by the user, and I often jot them down in the hopes of remembering the word. This has proven really ineffective, as my choice of paper for notation is usually my classroom notes. I write it once during a lecture and forget about it thereafter, only to recognize it in the corse of studying at a later date. After the course is over, I rarely go back to the notes, so the words fall back into a state of disuse.

To solve this problem, I want to code a simple PHP/MySQL solution that will allow me to quickly enter new words, search for words, and automatically pull the definitions upon displaying said words. I could include a script to randomly pull a word from the database and display it along with a short definition on my home page. (The wheels in my brain commence turning.) This really should require minimal effort, so conceivably, I should be able to turn around the idea quickly.

I think this would be cool, as I love words that have nuanced meanings. Few people (in the whole spectrum of educated persons), in my opinion, really discern the minute differences between synonyms—words that have a small amount of contextual meaning or usage. I cannot think of an example at the moment, but I trust you get the drift of my argument.

Mass media, television, and the Internet present a great deal of information and entertainment, but the value of words in books and literature has fallen dramatically in recent years, it would seem. So few young people (especially in their teens and twenties) seem to read for pleasure, instead opting to occupy their time with other forms of less stimulating entertainment (although probably not by their standards). There was an interesting news story somewhere about this phenomenon (related more to dropping vocabulary sizes) that reported a statistic that teenagers today have about half the average vocabulary size of teenagers ten years ago. Whoa! If alarms are not going off in your head, then perhaps you should re-read that last sentence. Clearly, there is a problem here.

Personally, I enjoy reading and wish I had more time to devote to it. In the meantime, though, I plan to try and remember interesting words that I happen upon with a bit of computerized help.

I finished it, revealing Dan Brown’s exquisite attention to detail and mastery of suspense. The story unfolds in a spurious manner, keeping its protagonists on the precipice of failure and possible death over a quest to solve heady puzzles left by the just-killed curator of the Louvre museum in Paris. Mr. Brown’s clever insight and meticulous research shine through his characters, revealing a lie perpetuated by the Church for over two millennia.

The introduction to symbols of femininity and female Pagan deities the Church campaigned against is made convincingly as the story unfolds. Many examples are woven into this wonderful plot of society’s continuation of our reverence of the female and her mystical birth-giving power. As Brown writes, she is seen in Mother Nature, celebration of May Day, even Disney movies like The Little Mermaid and Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. The Priory of Sion, a secret society whose leaders include Leonardo DaVinci and Sir Isaac Newton, is tasked with keeping the secret of the Holy Grail safe, but when its highest-ranking members are assassinated, the truth must be leaked outside the society to protect its very existence.

The author shows a remarkable propensity for interweaving plots in parallel and displays an enjoyable sense of introducing pieces of the puzzle in a non-linear fashion. I suggest that people read this book, as it is quite engrossing, but also entertains true notions about the foundations of modern religion in the Western world and conveys a breathtaking array of facts surrounding many misconceived notions that people take for granted today.

I do not want to give away too many hints, so I leave you with that. If you have read this book, let me know what you thought about it.

P.S. I loved the intermingling of the French lines—so simple but stylistically very pleasing.

[update] I misspelled _Sion_ in Priory of Sion. It is now correct.

!(alignright)http://www.sensoryoutput.com/wp-images/postings/davinci.jpg(Dan Brown’s The DaVinci Code)! After a huge lull in my personal reading, I have picked out a few books to engage in my spare time—what little there is—including Dan Brown’s _The DaVinci Code_, Brown’s _Angels and Demons_, and Joanne K. Rowling’s _Harry Potter, tome 5 : Harry Potter et l’Ordre du Phénix_ (in French, no less). I actually started the fifth Harry Potter book several months ago but time just wasn’t on my side to complete even the first few chapters. Some of you may be asking yourselves, why is Kyle reading Harry Potter in French? Well, during my study abroad for nine months, I read the first four books in French, loaned to me by my nine year old host sister. I wanted to continue the tradition, so I ordered the fifth book in French from “Amazon.fr”:http://www.amazon.fr/ last December (after it was finally translated and released in my favorite romance language).