Michael Crichton Dead At 66 388
Many readers have submitted stories about the death of Michael Crichton. The 66-year-old author of Jurassic Park and The Andromeda Strain died unexpectedly Tuesday "after a courageous and private battle against cancer," a press release said. In addition to writing, he also directed such sci-fi classics as Westworld and Runaway. Crichton was married five times and had one child.
Re:I don't think there's consensus (Score:2, Informative)
Funny how you never see... (Score:2, Informative)
"after a courageous and private battle against cancer,"
They never say stuff like "after capitulating to cancer like a big pussy,"
But anyway, to employ another cliche-- he will be missed. Forget Jurassic Park- I still get creeped out by the proto-Terminator robot in "Westworld". And who can forget the classic 1981 cloning/CG extravaganza, "Looker". Well, everyone.
Here's an hour-long video interview [google.com] with him on Charlie Rose.
Re:Sad. RIP (Score:5, Informative)
Stay the fuck away from the TV remake. Forgive me for beint this blunt, but it really is that bad.
The 1971 is perhaps the most accurate book-to-movie conversion i've seen. I first saw it arround 5 years ago, and it found it gripping. There was little a remake could improve over it.
For those that don't get the joke (Score:5, Informative)
For those that modded the parent "Troll": Michael Crichton's Web site seems to be down now, but he gave a speech called "Aliens Cause Global Warming" [crichton-official.com] in which he claimed to debunk "consensus science." The gist was that political discussion of global warming too often invoked "scientific consensus," where he argued that science was not consensus-based and that such claims were therefore meaningless.
Similarly, though we may not have consensus that Michael Crichton is dead, it makes absolutely no difference to him.
Re:Recently finished reading Travels (Score:4, Informative)
I didn't exactly respect him more after reading Travels. It was hard to escape the conclusion that Crichton was a guy who would believe literally anything anyone told him. That's one reason I was somewhat surprised to see him arguing in favor of more objective thinking in the global-warming debate. His bio made him sound like a real New Age woo-woo type.
Re:RIP Mr. Crichton (Score:3, Informative)
Anybody else think The 13th Warrior [imdb.com] (based on his Eaters of The Dead [wikipedia.org]) is actually a good film?
I liked it. Still do. I think it's unappreciated.
Re:For those that don't get the joke (Score:1, Informative)
"The world is flat" and "the earth is the center of the solar system" were once consensus science too amongst other ideas considered nonsense these days. Perhaps the great grandparent will do better after December 21, 2012 if/and/or the meta-moderators step in. If the Mayan predictions are right and date is correct, then the tree of life will shine the light on many things or so goes the consensus.
Re:RIP Mr. Crichton (Score:3, Informative)
The ~1970 Andromeda Strain is probably about the only one where they came close (including Jurassic Park).
The "Great Train Robbery" (1979 - also directed by Crichton) was an enjoyable film. Here's the trailer:
http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=h_QathS_8Ok [youtube.com]
Crichton Was A Supporter of Tech Tips Website (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Lower than this Slashdot cannot sink (Score:2, Informative)
Re:For those that don't get the joke (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, both of those predate science, and have not been consensus for over two thousand years.
Re:"andnothingofvaluewaslost" tag (Score:5, Informative)
"chaos theory means that they must run amok and kill us all!"
And also happened to be an embellishment of the film.
People should really learn to read again.. the book series was much better than the Hollywood treatment.. as is often the case.
Re:"andnothingofvaluewaslost" tag (Score:4, Informative)
Was it? I read the book many years ago so it all sort of runs together for me, but I distinctly remember each chapter beginning with a picture of successive iterations of a fractal, and I'm pretty sure that this tied in somehow with chaos theory. Wikipedia says:
Both are pessimistic, but Malcolm, having been consulted before the park's creation, is emphatic in his prediction that the park will collapse, as it is an unsustainably simple structure bluntly forced upon a complex system.
Is it not so?
Re:I read the book (SPOILER) (Score:3, Informative)
It was here that he first discovered the formula he would use over and over: humans discover science - humans abuse science - humans pay.
He did cop out the ending of that one, but it was an early novel. I like to think of him as mostly a sci-fi writer, because the ideas were more important than the characters.
I'm sorry to hear it... (Score:5, Informative)
... one of the first full-length books I read was The Andromeda Strain.
Later, I read the condensed version of The Terminal Man, and remembered (and loved) the line where a doctor explains to a policeman that the subject had a radioactive battery, making him a possible contamination threat. The policeman's response was "Alpha or beta particle emitter?" When the doctor looks surprised, he adds, "I went to college. I can even read and write."
That was where I learned that even cops could have the geek nature.
Re:"andnothingofvaluewaslost" tag (Score:5, Informative)
I said "worthwhile". Bestsellers are mostly just ways to pass the time on a commute.
all the anti-global warming stuff is properly cited and logically argued.
Bullshit. [realclimate.org]
Re:For those that don't get the joke (Score:1, Informative)
The Internet Archive Wayback Machine archived the "Aliens Cause Global Warming" lecture dated January 17, 2003:
http://snipurl.com/55y8u
Re:For those that don't get the joke (Score:3, Informative)
Agreed. For one thing, they completely ignored what was an essential plot point of the book -- that studying resurrected dinosaurs to learn more about them was nearly pointless. They wouldn't act like dinosaurs did because they had no other dinosaurs to learn behavior from. The dinosaurs in the book were out of control, with raptors in a pack turning on each other over a meal; they'd never been taught better, essentially. That negated the idea that some good would come of the project and wasn't just a waste of both lives and money.
Re:You had it backwards (Score:2, Informative)
The point wasn't that science was bad; he point, as stated by Jeff Goldblum in Jurrassic Park was that scientists often realize that then can do something, but almost never ask if they should. An important question I might add.
I read an article the other day that indicated some scientists were currently researching, and believed they could create, designer babies. At no point did they ever actually ask themselves, "Hey, is this a good idea?" That's what he argued against (along with "consensus science", which is more accurately defined as coming to a conclusion with consensus, rather than definitive evidence.)
Re:For those that don't get the joke (Score:3, Informative)
One of the links from the RC wiki was broken, and (despite being a wiki) I couldn't fix it. Here:
http://audubonmagazine.org/profile/profile0505.html [audubonmagazine.org]
Re:For those that don't get the joke (Score:1, Informative)
Having worked with climate scientist I can assure you that the general options are far from general consensus.
BEING a climate scientist, I can assure you that "human CO2 emissions are causing a large portion of modern climate change, and will cause an even larger change in the future" is darn close to general consensus.
Now, not all of us agree with every word of the IPCC report. I personally think they downplay Greenland ice sheet instability and some parts of the paleoclimate chapter on the Holocene are weak. But there is pretty general agreement within the climate community that anthropogenic influences on the climate are currently strong and that global temperatures in 2100 will likely be within or near the GCM model spread (assuming the forcing scenario is correct).
Unfortunately, what people really need to know is not the global average temperature in 2100, but what will be the climate where they live. And the models don't yet have the resolution to say much about that, other than general trends for broad latitudinal bands.
Read the IPCC report. (And no, I'm not one of the contributing authors.) You will not find many statements in there that are contrary to what exists in the peer reviewed literature, if any. Read the literature. I keep seeing Slashdot armchair experts telling me that "there is no consensus on AGW", but I read the journals, and there just isn't a huge debate in the literature on whether global warming is anthropogenic. Nor is there a big debate at conferences, or even behind closed doors. That debate mostly ended 10-15 years ago.
The current debate is about how strong the climate feedbacks are, and whether we'll get a small or a large amount of further warming. (Well, one of the current debates, but it affects all the others.) The greenhouse effect of CO2 alone is somewhat weak relative to the amount of warming we're projecting, because of feedback effects. We're rather sure about the current CO2 warming. We're less sure about how strong those feedbacks will be in the future.
Why... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:For those that don't get the joke (Score:1, Informative)
I'd just like to see a model that accounts for the Medieval Warm Period, the Little Ice Age, and the current warming trend in a meaningful way.
I don't know what "a meaningful way" means, but climate models show a LIA that agrees with paleoclimate reconstructions, as well as a current warming trend that agrees with instrumental data. (How good those reconstructions are is another matter.) See Fig. 6.13d of the IPCC AR4 WG1 report. On the other hand, while they all get an LIA, they disagree on the MWP; only a couple of models reproduce it. Some models are more sensitive to solar/volcanic forcings than others. On the other hand, the paleotemperature data don't agree very well on that either; the MWP is a pretty weak signal and may well be just a regional effect, not influencing global temperatures much. (We don't have good S. Hemisphere proxies to tell whether it was global or not.) See Box 6.4 of the same report.
My question is are we in fact staving off a cooling period with our CO2 emissions or not.
According to models, the climate would have very slightly cooled without our activities. It's unknown whether there would be a bigger natural cooling period in the future, since we can't predict the Sun and volcanoes. (However, likely human activity in the next centuries is likely to overwhelm any natural cooling, unless the latter is dramatic in rate and magnitude, much stronger than the LIA.)
In the very long term (thousands to tens of thousands of years) we'd probably see a descent into a new ice age, barring human activity. However, if you're worried about that, you should want to save our fossil fuels for later when we do need them to warm the climate, and not use them all now when we don't.
(Which, when you look at the MWP and LIA in history, better to have warmer and longer growing seasons than not IMO.)
Growing seasons are far from the only thing affected by climate change. Read the IPCC WG2 report for impacts. (Plus, crops don't even grow better everywhere in a warmer world. Temperate/boreal regions benefit some, except in the places that get increased drought. Most equatorial regions are likely worse off, agriculturally speaking.)
Not every great author has to be a GREAT author (Score:3, Informative)
So Crichton isn't Hemingway. Big deal. He wrote enjoyable books, for the most part, and did so for decades. He wrote stories that kept you thinking about them after you put the book down, even if they had flaws.
Books, like movies and even food, don't have to be "art" to be worthwhile and worthy of some respect.
As a (hack) writer myself I have much respect for authors like Crichton, (old) King, and even Dean Koontz. Their works won't be taught in school, but they sweep you away for a few hours, and get under your skin. And for me anyway, they make me want to write a book myself.* They make it look easy, in the way only real talent can.
Compare Crichton to a real hack like Robin Cook. Ugh!
I will be lifting a glass in his memory tonight, and I rarely drink. The world's a poorer place without him and his tales of Science Run Amok.
* Not that I have written a book lately because hey, I am lazy, but that's another story.