Tuesday, July 23, 2024

BOOK REVIEW: ERUPTION by Michael Crichton and James Patterson

 

 Book Review:  Eruption by Michael Crichton and James Patterson

 


When I heard that a “lost manuscript” by Michael Crichton about volcano eruption had been finished into a novel by James Patterson, it was a no-brainer for summer reading.  I’m a sucker for a geo-apocalypse story.

No question, this novel is a page-turner.  It’s exciting, and always made me wonder what would come next: it held my attention. The chapters are extremely short- a few pages at a time- making for easier reading.  It will certainly make an awesome action-thriller movie.  I hear that Spielberg has already signed up for it.  The characters are developed well enough without having to make the book too long and, after all, the main character could be argued to be the volcano itself, Mauna Loa.  I think I know of, or have met, all the volcanologists portrayed in the book.  And by and large, they get Hawaii- the Big Island and its people- satisfactory enough.

That said… reading this book required a suspension of disbelief that grew to the point of just becoming annoying.  I think I know why: the book is set in the near future, but it appears that Crichton finished his writing about 20 years ago, and no one (Patterson?  Hello?) managed to update it to be tech-realistic for the mid-2020s.  As a result, there are too many plot twists and casual occurrences which felt like glitch-in-the-matrix moments or “WTF?” moments.  If it were stated that this book was set in a very slightly alternative universe, I’d have been cool with that.

As for the depiction of the volcano and the natural world – the atmosphere and ecosystems surrounding it, the science advisor didn’t do their job, in a very basic way.  (In case you didn't know, I’m a professor of earth science and a professional geologist, who is not a volcanologist by specialty, but has dabbled in it.) There are some real howlers which wouldn’t pass muster with an introductory earth science student.  Even if one is willing to suspend disbelief about the known history and eruptive behavior of Mauna Loa to accept the premise that the novel describes events around its biggest and most anomalous eruption ever, ever…  and even if you accept the premise that the U.S. military would have done some head-scratchingly incongruous things on the Big Island during the Cold War (that’s the closest I’ll come to a spoiler), well, there are too many glaring misstatements of basic science.  I could easily take numerous pages out of the novel and ask students to circle the errors therein on their final exam, the next time I teach freshman-level geoscience.  It just became tediously annoying. Hopefully, they can be left out of the movie. 

For a more entertaining, more gripping, more satisfying, and more exciting Crichton update, read The Andromeda Evolution, Daniel H. Wilson’s 2019 update to The Andromeda Strain.

*** Three stars out of five

Sunday, February 25, 2024

Oppenheimer

I finally carved out the time to watch "Oppenheimer," being Ernest Lawrence's academic great-grandson (but that's another story). 

Stickler for the New Mexico landscape, I quickly realized that the New Mexico scenes were not filmed at either Los Alamos or the Trinity Site. Dead giveaway is that the iconic mesa-topped peak of Pedernal, not visible from Los Alamos, frames the background of many scenes such as this one. 

But that got me thinking. Pedernal was the magnet-mountain of Georgia O'Keeffe, who lived in Abiquiu (about 50 miles away from Los Alamos) through the 1940s (her most iconic painting of Pedernal was made in 1941-42, according to the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum). And O'Keefe spent a huge amount of time toodling around New Mexico in her Model A Ford. It makes me wonder, in her New Mexico wanderings did she ever blunder in to "Project Y" (the secret lab ran by Oppenheimer, now known as Los Alamos National Lab) or its associated restricted areas? Did she have a clue about what was going on there? Did she ever cross paths with Oppenheimer? It would make for a fascinating short story, at least!



Wednesday, October 26, 2022

TIME IN THE TIME OF COVID

 “COVID years are like dog years. One year is like seven.”

- Peter Marks, director of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, speaking at the Infectious Diseases Society of America annual conference, Washington, DC, October 2022.


Saturday, September 17, 2022

THE STATISTICIAN

"The fact that the birthrate has been increasing ever since ....  reminds me of the definition of a statistician: He is a person who has his head in the oven and his feet in the deep freeze and says “on the average I feel fine.”

From: Proceedings of the Annual Convention of the Middle States Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools, Volumes 72-77, 1958, Page 27.



Saturday, September 10, 2022

What did Nostradamus predict about the death of Queen Elizabeth II and the reign of Charles III?

 

Mario Reading, in his 2009 book "The Complete Prophecies of Nostradamus," predicted that Queen Elizabeth would die circa 2022, and following a crisis provoked by the Church of England over his civil marriage to Camilla Parker Bowles, would eventually abdicate the throne, and that Harry would actually become King. It's already wrong, because the prediction was that Canada, Australia, New Zealand and perhaps the other Commonwealth Realms would have become republics by now.
Fascinating and curious, but can anyone definitively understand whatever Nostradamus was "seeing"? I think not. But, if it happens, you heard it here first.






Saturday, August 27, 2022

GOTTLIEB'S SECOND LAW

"They don't give out the championship trophy at halftime."  - Sports talk radio host Doug Gottlieb

Saturday, August 13, 2022

MURPHY'S LAWS FOR ENGINEERS

  • Any wire or tube cut to length will be too short.
  • After any machine or instrument has been fully assembled, extra components will be found on the bench.
  • Any error that can creep in, will. It will be in the direction that will do the most damage.
  • All constants are variable.
  • In any given miscalculation, the fault will never be placed if more that one person is involved.
  • Dimensions will always be expressed in the least usable terms.
  • The probability of a dimension being omitted is directly proportional to its importance
  • It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are too ingenious.

Saturday, July 30, 2022

DRUCKER'S VERSION OF PEARSON'S LAW

Drucker's Version of Pearson's Law: attributed to Peter Drucker -

"That which is measured is managed."

Saturday, July 16, 2022

SCHRODINGER'S PEDESTRIAN


This week we present to you a Tweet by "@MoldyBasil".

https://twitter.com/MoldyBasil/status/1504797687614525443?s=20&t=RhdUAmDNz6yKLli3n-nn6A

 


Sunday, July 10, 2022

BRAKEY'S LAW

"Never doubt that a few committed individuals can change the world. But if you turn them into a committee, we’re screwed.”- John Brakey

Sunday, June 26, 2022

SCHNOOBER'S LAW

 "It sucks to be the albino chameleon."


@Schnoober on Twitter, December 20, 2010: https://twitter.com/schnoober/status/16885481086128128


Saturday, June 4, 2022

RIGGLE'S FIFTH LAW

"Oatmeal may or may not stick to your ribs, but it sure sticks to your dishes."

-Alex Riggle,10/22/17

Saturday, May 28, 2022

KIM'S LAW OF HYBRID PHYSICAL/VIRTUAL MEETINGS

 

  • The quality of a physical/virtual meeting is directly proportional to the status of the virtual attendees.
  • If there is a high-status person or persons attending a mixed in-person and Zoom meeting on Zoom, then the meeting will be excellent. Or at least excellent for the Zoom people.
Source: https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/learning-innovation/proposing-kim%E2%80%99s-law-physicalvirtual-meetings

Saturday, May 14, 2022

SCHREIER'S LAW

"In a sea of superlatives, all boats sink."

- Benjamin Schreier, in https://www.chronicle.com/article/no-more-letters-of-recommendation

Saturday, May 7, 2022

McGLYNN'S LAW

"If you let important paperwork sit around long enough, it stops being important."
- Terry McGlynn, 

Saturday, April 23, 2022

STRONG'S LAW

"A good legend will kill probability any day of the week."

-W.F. Strong, Professor, University of Texas- Rio Grande Valley

https://www.texasstandard.org/stories/jim-bowie-the-original-influencer/

Saturday, April 16, 2022

GOTTFRIED'S LAW

"If some terrible thing happens, comedy is not going to kill tragedy, but it will get it to lose its grip for a while."- comedian Gilbert Gottfried (1955- 2022) 

 (quoted in THE HISTORY OF COMEDY, CNN documentary, July 2017)

Sunday, April 10, 2022

NOAKES'S LAW OF CINEMATIC VENTILATION

"Ventilation ducts in movies always go to exactly where you need to be and never have any dampers."

- Professor Cath Noakes, https://twitter.com/CathNoakes/status/1474728866740686849

Tuesday, April 5, 2022

GOTTLIEB'S SECOND LAW AFTER ALBRITTON

"They don't give out (the championship) trophies at halftime."

-Popularized by sports talk radio host Doug Gottlieb in 2022, in regards to the University of Kansas's record-breaking comeback in the second half of the NCAA Division I men's basketball championship; appeared in 2011 as a Tweet by Karen Albritton regarding the University of North Carolina Tar Heels. Ironically, it was North Carolina that Kansas defeated in the 2022 championship. Albritton's tweet appeared to be lamenting North Carolina's loss to Duke University in the 2011 Atlantic Coast Conference basketball tournament. North Carolina beat Duke in the 2022 "Final Four" to rise to the championship game against Kansas.  

https://twitter.com/kalbritton/status/35532549228990464

Sunday, March 27, 2022

THE WORM'S LAMENT

 

"That old saw about the early bird just proves that the worm should have stayed in bed."
- First known to have been written by Robert Heinlein in his story Time Enough For Love

Sunday, March 20, 2022

Saturday, March 12, 2022

MAHFOUZ'S LAW

"Home is not where you were born - home is where your attempts to escape cease."-

N. Mahfouz​ (via Christine Waters)


Saturday, March 5, 2022

HANLON'S RAZOR

HANLON'S RAZOR: "Never attribute to malice what is adequately explained by stupidity."

-Submitted by Robert Hanlon to Arthur Bloch's book, Murphy's Law Book Two: More Reasons Why Things Go Wrong! (1980).  Equivalent to a quote in Robert Heinlein's story Logic of Empire (1941) where a character states, "You have attributed conditions to villainy that simply result from stupidity."

Saturday, February 26, 2022

ALLEN'S OBSERVATION

"It’s amazing how long two people can misunderstand one another."- Musician and visual artist Terry Allen

https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/terry-allen-on-the-texas-roots-of-his-music-and-art

Sunday, February 20, 2022

BENJAMIN'S OBSERVATION

"The angel of history looks backward over the wreckage." - Overheard, likely based on German philosopher Walter Benjamin's observation of Paul Klee's painting Angelus Novus

Saturday, February 12, 2022

MADDEN'S LAW

 "The road to Easy Street goes through the sewer."

-John Madden, American football coach and sports commentator, 1936-2021

Sunday, February 6, 2022

GOODHART'S LAW

Goodhart's Law: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure".

https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2016/06/09/goodharts-law-and-why-measurement-is-hard/

Saturday, January 8, 2022

THE FIRST LAW OF GEOGRAPHY

"Everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things."

-Coined by Waldo Tobler as The First Law of Geography in article he authored in Economic Geography in 1970. 

Saturday, December 18, 2021

EISENHOWER'S OBSERVATION

"Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil and you're a thousand miles from the corn field.” - President Dwight Eisenhower


Sunday, December 12, 2021

NELSON'S LAW

 "​Just because you're closer to the basket doesn't mean it's an easier shot."

-Don Nelson, former professional basketball player and coach