Ravine Rantings

Robert Schoch is an example of a well-credentialed scientist with tenure at a prestigious university who is willing to walk right along the fringes of science and engage in wild speculation. He has degrees from Yale and George Washington University and is a faculty member at Boston University. GWU and Boston U are both "near-Ivy" universities, meaning that although they are not in the Ivy League, they are at a similar level of quality and prestige. Yale, of course, is in the Ivy League. Schoch, I think, troubles the scientific community because he is willing to challenge existing paradigms yet is difficult to dismiss out of hand because of his credentials and tenure. Schoch gained international prominence when he published scientific papers and appeared in a documentary in the early 1990s about the Great Sphinx, dating it to pre-dynastic Egypt. His work was based on studies of erosion in the Sphinx enclosure, which is carved out of bedrock. His claims caused an uproar in the ...

  My copy of American Tabloid with minor cat damage. James Ellroy paints a grimy view of mid-twentieth century America in his novel American Tabloid . Every cop is a crook and a thug. Every FBI agent is a thief, a liar, and violent. Every man has at least one mistress. The only man portrayed as honest in the entire novel is Robert F. Kennedy, but the rest of the family are crooks, cheaters, and womanizers. Women are portrayed mostly as sexual partners for the corrupt men of the world. The mafia are central to the story, and everyone does business with them, from the CIA to Raul Castro, to J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI. Ellroy writes in heavy period slang. Stupe. Dig. Zorched (apparently means drunk). Every profane phrase ever known to humanity is uttered, many forgotten to time and not listed in the Urban Dictionary. Every nickname for every street drug you can think of is included. Every racial slur is spoken or embedded into the narration. The cast is an ensemble, there is no cent...

Kitty liked it. So did I, except for it making me a little queasy. Sorry for the water spots. I've read Neal Stephenson since the 1990s and try never to miss a single book or article. From his earliest works in the 1980s up to present, the quality and scope of topics he covers in his work expanded ad ridiculum [Yes, I italicize fake Latin], and has reached proportions exceeded by no other author I can think of. He writes everything from alternate history, to alternate future, from cyberpunk to swords and sorcery, all in books of increasing length. His recent work, Fall or, Dodge in Hell , is one of the most thought-provoking novels I've ever read. It spans his usual speculative, near-future science fiction, and develops into a tale of fantasy. The story is about an event predicted by futurists of a time soon-to-come when artificial general intelligence will become sufficiently advanced that it will be possible to simulate a human brain in computer software. This point is referr...