I particularly like this quote from the very end:
“James Charles Hacklett Hunter was governor of the Carolina Colony in 1777, when he urged that the colony side with the northern insurgents against the English army under the command of General Howe in Boston.”
I like how Michael Crichton calls the rebels insurgents…just rubs in how ignorant the media is for calling the people defending their country in the middle east insurgents as if that is a horrible thing.
There are other good examples of liberty loving people in the book. Especially the privateers. And good examples of how corrupt the Spanish and English governments were.
Can’t wait for Speilberg to turn this book into a movie.
I’ll definetely miss Michael Crichton’s writing and common sense.
Michael Crichton was a global warming skeptic, and this provided fuel for those who (rightly) said that too many global warming skeptics are famous people giving comments outside their area of expertise without own research.
Eventually, I tried to find more of Crichton’s views on global warming, and it turned out that he mostly opposed it because he felt that scientists and laymen talk about the issue unscientifically. He clarified that as an anthropologist, he felt that the issue was approached in a way more typical of religious groups than scientists throughout history, where it was not a matter of questioning and uncertainity but dictates and mandates. Which still slanders too many honest scientists.
On the other hand, I admire Crichton’s skepticism a little more than Isaac Asimov’s bold claim that the possibility of global warming means that a carrot and stick approach is needed by powerful nations on weaker nations to have them bend to a global mandate to stop global warming, which was rather unrealistic and also goes to the other extreme of preaching certainty and action over uncertainty.
“this provided fuel for those who (rightly) said that too many global warming skeptics are famous people giving comments outside their area of expertise without own research.”
And the journalists and politicans who have almost universally jumped aboard the CAGW movement?
“Which still slanders too many honest scientists.”
How can one be a scientist while employing dictates and mandates instead of inquiry and reproducible and falsifiable experiments? If they did indeed employ such experiments, Crichton was not referring to them - but to rely upon and repeat the mantra of authority or consensus has nothing to do with science and is in fact used to stifle the inquiry and experiments which define science. Crichton could not have been slandering any scientists, only pseudo-scientists and their followers.