Michael Crichton dies

[Russic]

Originally Posted by habernac

I didn't know he had Cancer

http://www.cbc.ca/arts/books/story/2...n-michael.html

he had some extreme views, but put out some pretty decent work over the years.

I don't know, not believing in global warming doesn't seem very extreme to me. Perhaps I didn't do enough research, but he seemed to share the same opinions of about half the users on CP.

[REDVAN]

Sad news for sure even though IMO his latest works were slightly lacking.

Really one of the better scientific fiction writers of this era.

[Hack&Lube]

His view on the hysterical global warming/climate change scare is one of the most intelligent and well-thought out. I absolutely agree with him.

[Stranger]

Originally Posted by Hack&Lube

His view on the hysterical global warming/climate change scare is one of the most intelligent and well-thought out. I absolutely agree with him.

x2

[HOZ]

Damn. Really, bad news.

2 good people within a few days of each other. Obama's Grandmother and now Crichton.

Liked most of his books but Timeline was made for movie trash. Great premise but idiotic Hollywood ending.

[Burninator]

Originally Posted by Hack&Lube

His view on the hysterical global warming/climate change scare is one of the most intelligent and well-thought out. I absolutely agree with him.

You mean his all encompassing definition of religion by including global warming/climate change under that umbrella? Whether you agree or not about that issue, calling one side a religion is stretching the word religion so far as to make the word useless. I fond it neither intelligent nor well thought out.

[HOZ]

Originally Posted by Burninator

You mean his all encompassing definition of religion by including global warming/climate change under that umbrella? Whether you agree or not about that issue, calling one side a religion is stretching the word religion so far as to make the word useless. I fond it neither intelligent nor well thought out.

A very poor reading at what he was getting at. Very poor.

From Aliens Cause Global Warming

[SIZE=small]The Scientific American attacked Lomborg for eleven pages, yet only came up with nine factual errors despite their assertion that the book was "rife with careless mistakes."[/SIZE]
[SIZE=small] It was a poor display, featuring vicious ad hominem attacks, including comparing him to a Holocaust denier. The issue was captioned: "Science defends itself against the Skeptical Environmentalist."[/SIZE]
[SIZE=small]Really. Science has to defend itself? Is this what we have come to? When Lomborg asked for space to rebut his critics, he was given only a page and a half. When he said it wasn't enough, he put the critics' essays on his web page and answered them in detail. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=small]Scientific American threatened copyright infringement and made him take the pages down. Further attacks since, have made it clear what is going on. Lomborg is charged with heresy. That's why none of his critics needs to substantiate their attacks in any detail. That's why the facts don't matter. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=small]That's why they can attack him in the most vicious personal terms. He's a heretic. Of course, any scientist can be charged as Galileo was charged. I just never thought I'd see the Scientific American in the role of Mother Church. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=small]Is this what science has become? I hope not. But it is what it will become, unless there is a concerted effort by leading scientists to aggressively separate science from policy.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=small] The late Philip Handler, former president of the National Academy of Sciences, said that "Scientists best serve public policy by living within the ethics of science, not those of politics. If the scientific community will not unfrock the charlatans, the public will not discern the difference-- science and the nation will suffer." [/SIZE]

[Burninator]

Originally Posted by HOZ

A very poor reading at what he was getting at. Very poor.

http://forum.calgarypuck.com/showthr...chael+Crichton

[HOZ]

Originally Posted by Burninator

http://forum.calgarypuck.com/showthr...chael+Crichton

Same response. Very poor reading at what he was getting at. Very poor.

[Frequitude]

No way! He was my favorite author growing up (probably still is). I've read everyone of his books except the non-fiction medical ones.

JP/Congo/Sphere/etc. were classics. Even his later works, Airframe and Prey were enjoyable reads.

Crap. RIP.

[Frequitude]

Originally Posted by Bertuzzied

Disclosure with Michael Douglas and Demi Moore was pretty good.

Forgot about that one! I think that scene in Disclosure (the book) was my first "porn"...

[Hack&Lube]

Originally Posted by Burninator

You mean his all encompassing definition of religion by including global warming/climate change under that umbrella? Whether you agree or not about that issue, calling one side a religion is stretching the word religion so far as to make the word useless. I fond it neither intelligent nor well thought out.

He only confirmed what I had thought and had experienced all along, long before I ever read that article written by him. Years before I ever read that article (thanks for bringing it to my attention CP) I has experienced many situations where I merely mentioned to people I had met that I was not totally convinced by the global warming argument, that it was a largely man-made phenomenon that we could have any efficacy in reversing...and the indignance that was returned to me just made my brain think that this was exactly like talking to someone who was zealously religious. Religions don't have to be theological. I really believe it's just part of the human psyche. These people just got really irrationally argumentative and started going over certain talking points again and again and then finally just getting really mad at me. I'm a pretty timid and non-argumentative guy in person, I just mentioned that I didn't totally believe it and I had people that I knew yelling at me. I watched a lot of films on climate change, read books, articles, and news stories and everything about certain aspects of it really annoy me. For many people, the whole climate change thing was very much like a secular religion in how zealously attached they were to certain ideas, even to the point of cognitive dissonance.

I care about the issue, I just don't like the way people got blindly hysterical about it (including people I knew personally). The whole movement gives me a bad taste in how politicized it became. It became in many ways (in my view), a politics of fear...and dissenting voices get drowned out, denied government funding, or silenced by peer pressure.

So in the end, maybe I just enjoyed the article so much because one of my favorite authors and a very respected and intelligent guy came to the same conclusion that I did and I wasn't just crazy.

[howard_the_duck]

Originally Posted by C_Rush

Was a cool movie, but nowhere near as good as the book.

Really? I watched the movie first....read the book a couple years ago and thought the movie portrayal was just awesome.

[icarus]

One of my favourites. Was obsessed with his books growing up. What a loss.

First Solzhenitsyn, now Crichton... has been a sad year for my favourite authors.

[Deegee]

I recently finished reading the Lost World and it's amazing how it's not even the same storyline as the movie. I realize the book and movie for the first one were a bit different, but they were certainly more closely tied to each other than the sequel.

The book was awesome.

Sucks he passed on.

[jolinar of malkshor]

Anyone know what kind of cancer he had?

[Burninator]

Originally Posted by Hack&Lube

He only confirmed what I had thought and had experienced all along, long before I ever read that article written by him. Years before I ever read that article (thanks for bringing it to my attention CP) I has experienced many situations where I merely mentioned to people I had met that I was not totally convinced by the global warming argument, that it was a largely man-made phenomenon that we could have any efficacy in reversing...and the indignance that was returned to me just made my brain think that this was exactly like talking to someone who was zealously religious. Religions don't have to be theological. I really believe it's just part of the human psyche. These people just got really irrationally argumentative and started going over certain talking points again and again and then finally just getting really mad at me. I'm a pretty timid and non-argumentative guy in person, I just mentioned that I didn't totally believe it and I had people that I knew yelling at me. I watched a lot of films on climate change, read books, articles, and news stories and everything about certain aspects of it really annoy me. For many people, the whole climate change thing was very much like a secular religion in how zealously attached they were to certain ideas, even to the point of cognitive dissonance.

I can't say I have really experienced that to be honest. Most of the time global warming is brought up people that I've met already have their mind made up that man isn't causing it. Which is odd because they don't know much about it either way, and I don't know how they came to their conclusion with knowing so little. The most worked up I've seen people get is here on CP.

I care about the issue, I just don't like the way people got blindly hysterical about it (including people I knew personally). The whole movement gives me a bad taste in how politicized it became. It became in many ways (in my view), a politics of fear...and dissenting voices get drowned out, denied government funding, or silenced by peer pressure.

This one problem that I have from your side of the camp. Because it's the same claim that Intelligent Designer proponents, creationists, alternative medicine promoters and other pseudosciences make. Now to be clear I am not calling your science (or whoever) pseudoscience, but people who are doing pseudoscience do make those claims. I am much more hard nosed when it comes to this argument. The science will speak for itself. If there is good science to show, then it will get done and it will gain ground. I do not buy that their is a conspiracy or anything like that. I only care about the science. The consensus currently in the scientific community is that global warming is largely man made. So if the science is good on the other side then that consensus will change. I trust science to work.

So in the end, maybe I just enjoyed the article so much because one of my favorite authors and a very respected and intelligent guy came to the same conclusion that I did and I wasn't just crazy.

Understandable. But you know what I also found strange about Crichton was that he was quite interest in science, yet his books were very anti-science. Jurassic Park, Congo for example. Maybe his other works were different, I am only familiar with his some of stuff.

[Burninator]

Originally Posted by HOZ

Same response. Very poor reading at what he was getting at. Very poor.

Ha! The classic HOZ response of "I am the only one that can extract meaning from my links but I won't bother explaining what I think they mean to people. Instead I'll just make a drive by."

As for the article you linked to. Meh. His whole premise is that because he thinks there is no science behind climate science therefore it is a religion. He can call it a pseudoscience if he wants to, but calling it a religion is still wrong. I stand by what I said earlier. All that other filler about SETI and science having a consensus and being wrong is meaningless. Because science had a consensus and was wrong in the past doesn't mean it's wrong now. Other fields of science have a consensus and he doesn't seem to have a problem with them.

[REDVAN]

Climate science is not a hard science (like math...)

Climate science is one scientist taking all the data available to him/her and making a hypothesis about what is causing that, and voila.

Not really concrete, and it's just as valid to disagree with it, but it's not really a religion. Just a popular opinion.

I heard Crichton has another book coming out next year. Hope it is not terrible, like the last few have been.