Book Review: State of Fear by Michael Crichton
Having struggled through the mind numbing over-the-topness of Ayn Rand, and jammed Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead into my skull, i can honestly say, this book is particularly refreshing and tasty.
Instead of fifty-seven page speeches by stony uberhumans who can prove what they’re saying merely by saying it, Crichton calls bullshit on the global-warming myth and has the cites and the resources to back up his claims. The book is classic Crichton, fast paced and dense with detail; the actual science is discussed in well written conversations by the characters, and those discussions are brief and devastating. Pitiably, in the book as in life, the moonbats are so immune to actual facts that they fail to see the stupidity of their positions until it kills some of them. Most gratifyingly, too, I might add. In one particular scene, a moonbat of superhuman stupidity goes on claiming there is and never was any such thing as cannibalisim right up to the moment he is eaten alive by his captors.
I reccomend this book for three reasons: One: the simple and concise logic used in the arguments. It’s amazing. Two: the cites used to prove the science. Most impressive- but then, Crichton has always been a man to do his homework- or get it done, properly. Three: there’s a simple phrase used in the book that people need to remember: any good science is done by, as Crichton says, “a true iterative process, externally assessed”. In other words, you try something, see if it works, and try something else to see if that works. And you don’t get to check your own work, because checking your own work by definition biases the results. It’s how industry has been doing it, right along, and it works, and works well. By the time you get to that phrase in the book, you will understand EXACTLY what it means. Now, go, read. Carefully read the end of the book, the author’s message, too. You need to hear that, to hear about marge Sanger, about eugenics, about some of the dirty laundry of the previous century; there’s some good information there that should be required reading in every classrom in America.
Agreed that State Of Fear is a fine and useful work. My fear is that the Age Of Open Minds, like the Age Of Miracles, is behind us — that everyone has locked himself into one of Eric Hoffer’s “compact and unified churches” and imposed a “fact-proof screen” between his beliefs and reality.
Rand’s Atlas Shrugged has been cited by millions as the beginning of their “conversion” to capitalism and Americanism. But that was published in 1957, before the schools became Leftist bastions. I fear its penetration today would be far less.
No question, Mr Porretto. I think you could drop a million golf balls on times square at midnight and not a one would hit an open mind, even on the rebound.
Might have better luck in Nebraska, maybe.
Still. Open minds and independant thought may be in our past, but for a very few.
Thanks. I’m putting this book on my must read list. And, I am one of those who had a life changed by reading Rand. Isn’t it kind of amazing that much of what she wrote about in Atlas Shrugged is happening today. The socialist countries of Europe are collapsing and the USA is hell bect on having a socialist government. But, rednecks still have their guns.