THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
11/21/08 -- Vol. 27, No. 21, Whole Number 1520
El Honcho Grande: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
La Honcha Bonita: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
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Topics:
Preview (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Common Sense (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Observable Evolution? (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Three Types of War Films (comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
Non-Fiction Book Recommendations (book reviews
by Greg Frederick)
Capital Letters (letter of comment by Pete Brady)
Leeper Screws the Pooch Again (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Pluto (letters of comment by Dan Cox and Tim McDaniel)
Titanic (letter of comment by Taras Wolansky)
This Week's Reading (THE BIBLE: A BIOGRAPHY,
ACQUIRING GENOMES, and NATION) (book comments
by Evelyn C. Leeper)
==================================================================
TOPIC: Preview (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
The trailer for the new "Star Trek" movie is playing with QUANTUM
OF SOLACE. I think it is supposed to be James T. Kirk at Starfleet
Academy. They should call it STAR TREK: THE PREVIOUS GENERATION.
You can see the trailer at http://tinyurl.com/6438wm. [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Common Sense (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Our financial advisor tells us that the stock market tends to
recover. It is an equilibrium. It makes sense to trust in the
Market. That is just common sense.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb, in his book THE BLACK SWAN, tells us not to
trust an equilibrium. The unprecedented happens. That is just
common sense.
The Green Movement tells us that it saves energy to buy local
agricultural products and save the CO2 that long-distance shipping
costs. That is just common sense.
Ronald Bailey in "Reason" magazine tells us that some products
grown abroad may require less energy to produce than locally grown,
and the transportation costs in CO2 production are small by
comparison. That is just common sense.
The world is too complex. You need rules of thumb and simple
principles to remind you how things work. That is just common
sense.
Rules of thumb do not work because the world is just too complex.
You have to look at each situation. That is just common sense.
Common sense will lead you astray. That is just common sense.
[-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Observable Evolution? (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
One of the reasons I like to talk to the Jehovah's Witnesses that
come to my door is that I can turn it a learning experience. Not
that I feel they have some special knowledge of religion that I do
not have, but they frequently head me off on some subject that I
feel I want to know more about. They visited me a few weeks ago to
try and save me and win me to their cause. We got onto the
subject of evolution. "Has anyone ever seen an animal evolve?"
they asked me. That one I had an answer to. It seems that when I
was young penicillin was still fairly new. There were all sorts of
ailments that it seemed to cure. Today it is much less effective.
Why is that? Well there were many strains of bacteria that
penicillin countered. A small number of strains were resistant to
the effects of penicillin. As long as what ailed you was one of
these types of bacteria but not one of these resistant strains--and
that was true of most of the bacteria that was causing the problem-
-then penicillin was an effective counter-measure. Penicillin was
used so liberally that these non-resistant strains of bacteria
began to die out altogether. But a penicillin-resistant strain was
safe against use of the anti-biotic. These days streptococcus
pneumoniae, for example, is much more resistant to penicillin than
it used to be. Wonder drugs are not necessarily a cure.
Frequently they are just a delaying tactic. They give people a
respite until the bacteria has time to evolve and adapt.
Well, when I gave that as an example the Witnesses quickly changed
the subject. I recounted that to a friend, who said that a
creationist would not accept it as evolution--real "macroevolution"
as distinct from "microevolution". It could be argued that
selecting for certain pre-existing strains is not really what we
call evolution. So I asked my friend whether he knew of any
observable evolution to replace this example? He said that no
answer to "Has anyone ever seen evolution in action?" will persuade
even a minimally knowledgeable creationist, say one who knew the
word "microevolution".
Yes, but the Jehovah's Witnesses have yet to send a minimally
knowledgeable creationist to my door. I almost wish they would. I
get ones who are armed with one-question arguments. Like:
"Homosexuality must be unnatural. Have you ever seen homosexuality
in an animal?"
"Yes, in horses."
"But wouldn't you want to see all people living together in peace?"
(Side note: Actually, homosexuality is very common in nature.
Which raises the question of why, since it does not seem to fit the
Richard Dawkins Selfish Gene Theory. Superficially this behavior
seems counter-productive in passing on genes. This is discussed at
http://seedmagazine.com/news/2006/06/the_gay_animal_kingdom.php.)
And by the way, if having been asked if I ever saw evolution in an
animal I had responded, "Yes, in bandersnatches," that would have
been every bit as effective as any other example I could give.
They would have immediately changed the topic.
But if the presence of drug-resistant bacteria did not demonstrate
evolution what did it demonstrate? Well, I think of evolution as
putting more useful genes into the gene pool. What good is a gene
pool to a microbe that reproduces by fissioning? Streptococcus
pneumoniae may as a species have become more robust to penicillin,
but it is not so much from a gene pool but just by selection of the
resistant strains. That is probably not what we usually call
evolution. It is probably a form of natural selection, but not
evolution. It strikes me, or did at the time, that a species of
bacteria reproduces by fissioning. It does not exchange DNA. (As
another side note, this raises an interesting question. I had
thought that at some level the definition of two things being in
the same species is that they can interbreed. No amoeba can
interbreed with another amoeba, they fission. So does this mean
every amoeba is its own species?)
Anyway, so there I was thinking that bacteria do not exchange DNA
and so cannot really evolve by exchanging DNA. In a nick of time
the "Scientific American" web site had a fascinating podcast on
various aspects of e. coli.
Part 1: http://tinyurl.com/ecoli1
Part 2: http://tinyurl.com/53r495
E. coli do not have sex, of course. E. coli reproduces by division
something like every 20 minutes. They do, however, stick something
like a tube into each other and exchange genetic material asexually
(if indeed that can be called asexually).
See: http://www.jbc.org/cgi/content/ abstract/M105678200v1.
Also it turns out that just because bacteria do not have sex does
not mean at all that they do not exchange DNA. They just do it is
cell-to-cell contact. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacterial_conjugation
If the penicillin-resistant bacteria exchanged DNA, then they could
still be my example of observable evolution. I thought I was on to
something. But when the second part of the e. coli podcast became
available it became irrelevant because apparently e. coli do
observably evolve in the laboratory and are used to measure
evolution and to see how it takes place.
Richard Lenski of University of Michigan is observing evolution in
the laboratory and experimenting with the mechanisms of evolution:
http://tinyurl.com/evolution-bacteria
More on Lenski and the long-term evolution experiment:
http://tinyurl.com/5wy84p
So the next time I am asked if I have ever seen an animal evolve
over time, I can tell them that Richard Lenski has. [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Three Types of War Films (comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
There are three kinds of war movies (and, more generally,
historical movies).
The first kind is the very accurate, attention-to-detail, war movie
where the buttons on the shirts are accurate to the period, and the
dialogue is all taken from firsthand reports. Examples of this
would include GETTYSBURG and TORA! TORA! TORA!
The second kind is reasonably accurate in the history, but feels
obliged to add on a completely fictional love story (or other
"human interest" angle), like while history is going on, Mom is
trying to save the farm back home or something. You'd think that
the history would be "human interest" enough--did we really need
Billy Zane as a comic book villain to give the sinking of the
Titanic human interest? Examples of this kind would include
TITANIC (not a war film, but definitely an historical one and
MIDWAY. (A clue for most war movies is whether there is an
actress in a major role. Molly Pitcher and Florence Nightingale
aside, one simply is not going to find a lot of women in major
roles in war movies.)
The third kind is both inaccurate and over-ripe. Actually, it
divides into two sub-species. The first were the films made during
the war whose purpose was (for World War II) morale or (for the
Vietnam War) anti-war sentiment, and who (at least for World War
II) had to operate under military censorship rules. So names and
places were changed, troop deployments fictionalized, and every
squad made up of a politically correct (for the period) diverse set
of men: one career military, one college boy, one farm rube, one
wise-cracking ethnic guy from Brooklyn, and so on. In short, they
bore little resemblance to any actual history. While their motives
may have been laudable (depending on one's politics), they vary
wildly in quality, and are always disappointing to history buffs.
Examples include WING AND A PRAYER; GOOD MORNING, VIETNAM; and GUNG
HO!
The second sub-kind are films made later by people who just don't
care. What they want is a setting familiar to their audience, but
the ability to drop whatever story or message they want into that
setting--and, oh yes, a lot of explosions. Examples here would be
PEARL HARBOR and FORCE 10 FROM NAVARONE. (Mark says that the
historical parts of PEARL HARBOR are fairly accurate, but not
on everything and it seems to me there have been complaints about
the film's accuracy.)
As you might have guessed, I am always on the look-out for more of
the first type. Any suggestions? [-ecl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: QUANTUM OF SOLACE (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: Picking up just after where CASINO ROYALE left off, James
Bond is involved in trying to find the people behind the death of
his beloved Vesper. This is a decent spy thriller on an adult
level. The tone is downbeat, but it is still one of the best in
the series. Marc Forster's action scenes could be more coherent,
but he is better with the dramatic material. Rating: +2 (-4 to +4)
or 7/10
The reinvention of James Bond films continues with QUANTUM OF
SOLACE. The old James Bond had incredible luck and nearly always
did the right thing. This Bond bungles his way into situations and
is as likely to foul up someone else's plan as he is to fix it.
The tension between M and Bond always seemed a little disingenuous
since Bond was clearly MI6's super-weapon. The new Bond as of the
last two films is more of a loose cannon and is dangerous to both
sides. This makes for a much more believable story. Bond super-
villains used to have nonsensical goals like starting World War III
or otherwise wiping out humanity. Dominic Greene (played by
Mathieu Amalric of THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY) has a rather
nasty plot in the current film, but it is not very different from
plots that have been hatched in the real world.
The new Bond no longer has the incredible luck at gambling the old
one did, that kind of luck would have severely damaged the story of
CASINO ROYALE, but he does have some unaccountable skills like the
old one did. In the new film Bond seems to know how to pilot a
1950s vintage cargo plane. But the new Bond is no longer the guy
every schoolboy wanted to be. The old Bond, when he loses the love
of his life, drowned the man responsible in a mud bath. The new
Bond drinks, and mourns, and strikes out only sometimes at the
people responsible. Most of the glamour is gone. So are the
gadget-weapons (with the exception of one in CASINO ROYALE). And
the insistence that his drinks be shaken and not stirred is a relic
of the past. Just about everything that made the series childish
have been done away with. Rather than the romantic setting of
previous films like Istanbul, this Bond is not afraid to spend much
of the film in a Bolivian slum. The film's colors are subdued and
faded to give the film a downbeat feel.
The new film starts uncharacteristically without the usual gun-
barrel and blood logo. Never fear, fans, the trademark logo has
been relocated to the end of the film. Instead the film starts
with three long and mindless chases as well as the worst Bond title
sequence in recent memory over the worst title sequence song. With
those out of the way to placate the wrong kind of Bond fans the
film settles down to a reasonable pace and a more acceptable--even
complex--story. Vesper it seems had gotten involved with a highly
secret yet ubiquitous international criminal organization, a sort
of a latter-day S.P.E.C.T.R.E. Daniel Craig as very probably the
best of the Bonds rushes in to find the new organization and get
revenge. He is not quite equipped with all of the facts. Bond
follows the trail to Haiti. There his masquerade as someone else
brings him into contact with Camille (Olga Kurylenko) who is on her
own mission of vengeance. Greene, a member of this secret
organization--it is called Quantum--is working a deal with a
Bolivian general involving politics, power, and a stretch of
worthless desert. (By the way, calling the organization Quantum is
an insult to the viewer. The title would have made perfect sense
if the word "quantum" was never used in the film. It was like
putting the mine in ENEMY MINE rather than explain the title.)
Director Marc Forster has had a very mixed bag of films to his
credit. He directed MONSTER'S BALL, FINDING NEVERLAND, STRANGER
THAN FICTION, and THE KITE RUNNER. That is a very mismatched set
of films. While this film has one of the worst title songs of the
whole Bond series, it also has some of the best music. Sadly it
was not music written for the film, but rather for Giacomo
Puccini's opera TOSCA. One of the film's few funny moments had the
leaders of Quantum hashing out their plans electronically at a
performance of TOSCA. This bit of extreme boorishness, talking
over the transcendent music, had to be a new low point for Bond
villains. The film takes some swipes at the United States (as they
did in previous films like YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE) and for the first
time in my memory took a little swipe at Israel (claiming one of
the villains is ex-Mossad). Also the evil Dominic Greene
masquerades as an ecology advocate spouting cliches.
QUANTUM OF SOLACE has one of the more complex and satisfying of the
Bond film plots. The character of Bond has more depth than he does
in some of the more pulpy entries in the series. It is one of the
rare Bond films that can be appreciated on an adult level. I rate
it a +2 on the -4 to +4 scale or 7/10.
Film Credits: http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0830515/
This is my ranking best to worst of the Eon Bond films (subjective
and subject to change).
1. CASINO ROYALE (2006)
2. FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE
3. QUANTUM OF SOLACE
4. THUNDERBALL
5. ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE
6. DR. NO
7. LICENSE TO KILL
8. GOLDFINGER
9. THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH
10. FOR YOUR EYES ONLY
11. YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE
12. THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS
13. THE SPY WHO LOVED ME
14. OCTOPUSSY
15. TOMORROW NEVER DIES
16. GOLDENEYE
17. DIE ANOTHER DAY
18. DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER
19. THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN
20. A VIEW TO A KILL
21. MOONRAKER
22. LIVE AND LET DIE
[-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Non-Fiction Book Recommendations (book reviews by Greg
Frederick)
I finished that really interesting history book by Roger Crowley
titled EMPIRES OF THE SEA. It was his follow-up book to his first
history book titled 1453: THE HOLY WAR FOR CONSTANTINOPLE AND THE
CLASH OF ISLAM AND THE WEST. EMPIRES OF THE SEA is about the
battles between the Ottoman Turks and Christian Europe during the
1500's and it mostly occurs in the Mediterranean Sea with galley
ships (ships powered by many men with oars). The battles at Malta
and Lepanto were Christian victories at sea that stopped the Turks
from advancing further west into Europe if they had dominated the
Mediterranean Sea. Crowley's great narrative makes it seem like
you are right there in the middle of the events he describes.
I then read a cool book about the invention of the telephone titled
THE TELEPHONE GAMBIT written by Seth Shulman. It's a very detailed
history of this invention and indicates with recent reviewing of
the records, that probably Elisha Gray was the true inventor and
not Alexander Bell as most people assume today. Recently, the lab
books and other records of Bell have been made available thru the
Library of Congress online and for a century it was not possible
for most to view these records since the Bell family would not
permit this. Shulman's book uses all of the newly available
records. Gray developed the concept of liquid variable resistance
with a vertically oriented metal needle moving up and down in a
small cup of sulfuric acid solution with an electrical contact at
the bottom of the cup. The needle was stuck in a cork attached to
a parchment diaphragm. The diaphragm was stretched across the
bottom of a metal cone shape that the speaker talks into. When the
sound waves hit the parchment the cork glued to it vibrates and the
needle moves up and down in the acid solution (which conducts the
electric current) and as the needle moves closer to the electrical
contact at the bottom of the cup, the electric resistance is
reduced and if it moves away the resistance is increased. This
telephone transmitter converted sound waves into a variable
electric current to be sent by wire to the receiver. Elisha Gray
did extensive research into this method but Bell did not. Both
filed patents on the same day at the U.S. Patent office and the
legal issues started from that event onward.
I also read a book titled UNCERTAINTY by David Lindley. It's about
the big debate between, Einstein, Heisenberg, and Bohr about the
uncertainty principle and it's effect on Modern Physics. Bohr was
Heisenberg's mentor and eventually agreed with him about this
principle. Then the battle begins between Einstein and Bohr about
this concept. It seems that ever since probability became an
important part of the theories of Physics; Einstein was against
this probability as related to the cause of events. I am not
referring to the probability used in thermodynamics for example
when you are dealing with a large number of atoms to calculate air
pressure. It mainly started with the theory of radioactivity and
the model of the atom produced by Bohr (especially the electron
shells). Einstein was always looking for the cause and effect
principles behind all of modern physics' theories. And the random
effects of radiation and the movement of electrons (quantum
movement between the energy level of the shells) were not to his
liking. Then when Heisenberg come out with his uncertainty theory
for the science of quantum mechanics, Einstein was even more
determined to find what he thought was the true cause and effect
underlying quantum mechanics. Einstein was certain that though
quantum mechanics theory worked well he have to remove the
uncertainty, randomness, and probability associated with it, to
reveal the true cause and effect.
Considering the uncertainty of these times this book has an
appropriate title. I am now reading a book titled THE TEN MOST
BEAUTIFUL EXPERIMENTS by George Johnson. It's about ten
experiments that are truly fascinating and how these experiments
opened up our understanding of nature. [-gf]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Capital Letters (letter of comment by Pete Brady)
In response to Mark's comments on capitalization in the 11/14/08
issue of the MT VOID, Pete Brady writes:
You would have a grand time with the Irish language. The Irish
word for "father" is "athair", pronounced roughly "AH-hur". The
word for "our" is "ar", pronounced "our". Thus, as in the
beginning of the Lord's prayer, "Our father" would be "Ar Athair."
But not so fast. Because it is awkward to say that, the Irish put
a meaningless "helper" consonant "n" in front of Athair, and
because it is meaningless, it is not capitalized. (But it is
pronounced.) So, the Lord's prayer begins "Ar nAthair".
And, there's a story here. Many years ago, the massacre site at
Auriesville, New York was dedicated, and they decided to engrave
the Lord's prayer in many languages on tablets in a circle. (I
once went to Auriesville, but perhaps before the tablets were
made.) Irish was one of the chosen languages, and the prayer
began, properly, as "Ar nAthair."
But the stonecutter (who must have felt the way Mark Leeper feels
about this) decided that this was a misprint, and changed the
opening to "Ar Nathair." Unfortunately, this means "Our snake."
I don't know if this was ever corrected. [-ptb]
[Accent marks removed for ASCII version. -ecl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Leeper Screws the Pooch Again (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
In last week's article about Pluto I referred to Neptune by a
special pet nickname I have for the planet. I call it "Uranus".
Sorry for any confusion it caused. [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Pluto (letters of comment by Dan Cox and Tim McDaniel)
In response to Mark's comments on Pluto in the 11/14/08 issue of
the MT VOID, Dan Cox writes:
While Pluto may be designated as a Kuiper Belt Object, I don't
think we know yet if it's actually from the Kuiper Belt (versus
being a former moon of Neptune pulled out of that orbit by an
encounter with another body).
When Ceres was discovered, there was only one person previously
known to have discovered a planet. That planet was Uranus. The
other planets known at the time had been discovered "in antiquity".
The world's only known discover of a planet would loose that
distinction if it was decided that Ceres was a planet, and lobbied
against that decision. The discovery of additional asteroids, some
rather small and not round, supports the decision to call Ceres
something other than "planet. I don't know if or how many
additional asteroids were discovered before it was decided that
Ceres was not a "planet".
Pluto had better luck. For a long time after discovery we had no
good measure of its size. We could not see it as more than a point
in any telescopes. The initial size estimates were based on its
brightness, and an assumption about the brightness of its surface.
These estimates turned out to be larger than reality, supporting
the opinion that Pluto was a planet rather than a far-out asteroid
or something new. But size estimates were made by watching as
Pluto as it crossed in front of various stars and eventually it was
concluded that it was smaller than originally thought. This re-
opened the question "Is Pluto a planet?", which went on for years
(decades, I think), slowly gathering momentum. Supporting the
people who wanted Pluto to be called something other than a planet
was also the fact that Pluto's orbit was more eccentric (stretched)
than the orbits of other planets, and tilted more than the orbits
of the other planets, which were pretty close to being in a singe
plane.
A conference was called to decide on a definition of a planet.
(Calling groups of people together to decide unknown questions is a
practice that goes back at least to the Council of Nicea, and
probably much further.) Going into the conference it looked like
the leading candidate definition was "an object in orbit around the
sun, and having enough mass to pull itself into a roughly spherical
shape". Under that definition, Pluto would have been a "planet".
But it does have the odd effect that a moon that is pulled from a
planet's orbit into a solar orbit suddenly becomes a planet. I
speculate that concerns such as this caused the definition to be
expanded into including some language about dominating its solar
orbit (as reported in the story I read) or clearing out the debris
in its solar orbit (as Mark has reported). The decision was made
that Pluto was not a planet. There is still disagreement over what
the definition of a planet should be.
The definition has some interesting side effects:
A planet made of rock needs to be more massive than one made of ice
before it can pull itself into a round shape.
The minimum mass of a planet probably depends on its orbit. Would
an object with mass of Mercury be able to clean its orbit if it
were in an orbit the size of Pluto's? [-dtc]
And Tim McDaniel writes:
In re "The Ruckus About Pluto" of the 14th inst. I think the
problem people have with demoting Pluto is not change, but demotion
in particular.
The term "planetoid" appears to be obsolete: the American Heritage
on-line just points to "asteroid (sense 1)".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwarf_planet quotes the IAU's
definition as making three categories: planet, dwarf planet, and
Small Solar System Bodies. Dwarf planet versus SSSB is based on
the body being massive enough to become approximately spherical due
to gravity. Planet versus dwarf planet adds "has cleared the
neighbourhood around its orbit".
Mr. Leeper posits that "The concept we previously had was that the
solar system was a nice orderly comprehensible collection of a few
objects and that school children could memorize everything large
enough to be called a planet. That simplicity fed our egos ..."
I don't think that particular explanation is complete. The first
IAU proposal, by planetary scientists, just had the requirement for
hydrostatic equilibrium. The discussions I saw mentioned that it
would classify Ceres, "Xena" (now Eris), Charon, Vesta, Quaoar, and
likely several others as planets. The reactions I saw were along
the lines of "cool!", "that's interesting; what's the current
list?", or at worst "what's a good definition?". Examples of the
latter two: http://tinyurl.com/5totjy.
But I notice http://tinyurl.com/6qydvu, from 2005, in which Sea
Wasp wrote that Pluto ought to remain a planet: "trying to redefine
the term to exclude one of the base cases that every kid in the
country has known for over two generations is unacceptable". But
he added that that means that anything larger orbiting the Sun is a
planet. That fits Mr. Leeper's "But any kid with a science
orientation does know the names of the nine planets as we were
taught them, and some of us feel a little betrayed that Pluto was
demoted to a planetoid.". Indeed, I think that some such people
thought that *Pluto itself* was insulted.
As an aside about "We have found a chunk three-quarters the mass of
Pluto out at 130 billion kilometers out": Eris, at 6-15 Gkm out, is
larger and more massive than Pluto. [-tmcd]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Titanic (letter of comment by Taras Wolansky)
In response to the comments on Titanic in the 11/14/08 issue of the
MT VOID, Taras Wolansky writes, "In retrospect, I now realize that
the problem wasn't really with the Titanic casualty stats you
presented. It's just that Evelyn must have been comparing the
wrong columns when she erroneously concluded that "a man in first
class had a better chance of surviving than a woman in third
class". Actually, the stats were for women and children lumped
together -- but still untrue." [-tw]
Evelyn responds, "Looking at the statistics, you are correct. I'm
not sure where I got the idea that a man in first class had a
better chance of surviving than a woman in third class, unless I
was reading casualty statistics as survival statistics." [-ecl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
THE BIBLE: A BIOGRAPHY by Karen Armstrong (read by Josephine
Bailey) (audio ISBN-13 978-1-400-10394-2, ISBN-10 1-400-10394-0;
book ISBN-13 978-0-871-13969-6, ISBN-10 0-871-13969-3) seems to be
more a condensation of Armstrong's book THE HISTORY OF GOD than a
book about the Bible per se. For example, she spends a lot of time
on the Talmud and the Mishna, which are not part of the Bible.
(She justifies this, as far as I can tell, by talking about them as
an oral rather than a written Bible, even though they are
eventually written down.) There are also odd slips, such as when
she contrasts second Isaiah with "the rest of the Pentateuch," even
though second Isaiah is not part of the Pentateuch at all. I
thought THE HISTORY OF GOD was excellent, but I have been
disappointed in all her other books that I have read.
ACQUIRING GENOMES: A THEORY OF THE ORIGINS OF SPECIES by Lynn
Margulis and Dorion Sagan (ISBN-13 978-0-465-04391-X, ISBN-10
0-465-04391-7) has a interesting theory (speciation happens by the
acquisition of genes from symbiotic organisms), but made statements
that I thought at odds with current definitions. For example, the
authors say, "Groups of organisms, again like people or corn plants
or chickens, considered to be all descended from the same ancestors
("clade") are classified as members of the same species. Such
organisms are called 'monophyletic' because they are descended from
'a single common ancestor.'" But as I understand it clades are
nested, e.g., all primates form a clade which itself exists within
the clade of all mammals. Clearly this crosses species boundaries
(or makes the term "species" meaningless.)
And "... viruses are not alive and indeed they are even, in
principle, too small to be units of life. They lack the means of
producing their genes and proteins." One can deduce from this that
viruses are not alive *if* producing their genes and proteins is
the definition of life (and if it is true that viruses cannot do
so). But my suspicion is that this is probably not the only
accepted definition of "life" and other, equally valid, definitions
may imply that viruses are alive.
I have to say that the authors show more desire for intellectual
honesty than most. Rather than attempt to hide contrary views,
they include a foreword by Ernst Mayr that contradicts or denies
them on several key points (e.g., symbiogenesis as an instance of
speciation, the validity of the principle of acquired
characteristics). Mayr says, "Given the authors' dedication to
their special field, it is not surprising that they sometimes
arrive at interpretations others of us find arguable. Let the
reads ignore those that are clearly in conflict with the finding of
modern biology. Let him concentrate instead on the authors'
brilliant new interpretations and be thankful that they have called
our attention to worlds of life that ... are consistently by most
biologists."
NATION by Terry Pratchett (ISBN-13 978-0-06-143301-6, ISBN-10
0-06-143301-2) is *not* a Discworld novel. It is an alternate
history novel, though most of it is a pretty straightforward
survival-after-disaster-and-shipwreck novel, and the alternate
history is really only important to the final chapter or so. What
is notable is that to some extent Pratchett is following in Philip
Pullman's footsteps, and writing a young adult novel that has at
its heart the questioning of established religion. (They are both,
I will note, British.) Pratchett is more subtle, with most of the
questioning being of a Polynesian belief system rather than any of
the monotheistic religions--but with a heavy emphasis on the
question of the meaning of suffering in a world supposedly
controlled by a beneficent god, the application to the monotheistic
faiths is obvious. [-ecl]
==================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions
from insufficient premises.
-- Samuel Butler