Book Description
In a story that is both of its time and timeless, Evan I. Schwartz tells a tale of genius versus greed, innocence versus deceit, and independent brilliance versus corporate arrogance. Many men have laid claim to the title "father of television," but Philo T. Farnsworth is the true genius behind what may be the most influential invention of our time.
Driven by his obsession to demonstrate his idea,by the age of twenty Farnsworth was operating his own laboratory above a garage in San Francisco and filing for patents. The resulting publicity caught the attention of RCA tycoon David Sarnoff, who became determined to control television in the same way he monopolized radio.
Based on original research, including interviews with Farnsworth family members, The Last Lone Inventor is the story of the epic struggle between two equally passionate adversaries whose clash symbolized a turning point in the culture of creativity.
Customer Reviews:
Great story, but misses a few important relevancies.......2004-01-12
I loved this book, the story of yet another unsung hero, the lone wolf pioneer, oblivious to the world's thieves, fighting to realize a dream, then getting ripped off for it at the moment of success. Ask yourself: who invented the lightbulb, the telephone, the radio, the airplane? You know the answer. (It might not actually be fully correct, but you can certainly come up with an appropriate name.) Now, who invented television? That is, the means of converting a moving image into a stream of electrons. Stumped? Some people know the names of Vladimir Zworykin and Philo Farnsworth, but not many. This book is the extremely fascinating story of Philo T. Farnsworth (what a name!) and how one man, David Sarnoff, succeeded in placing in the mind of the public the idea that television was created by him, as the leader of RCA/NBC. Zworykin worked for Sarnoff, and between the two totally ripped off the ideas and even the patents behind the creation of TV. While Farnsworth did receive a minimal amount of credit and some money during his life, in the end his name was buried as far as the public was concerned.
Unfortunately, the author seems oblivious to the fact of similar rip-offs occurring right amongst some of the minor characters of the story, in particular Edison AND Marconi stealing, and trying to keep Tesla from receiving, the credit he deserved for lighting and radio discoveries. Everyone has their own axe to grind, but the fact is if you dig deep enough, there are probably stories like this surrounding every great technological advance.
Anyway, if you at all like the genre, this book is bound to become a classic for you. It's also a great cautionary tale regarding the weaknesses of the patent system as practiced in the USA.
An engaging, quick, entertaining read.......2003-12-03
More party conversation facts that you can expect to collect from 99/100 other books. A great story, well told. Professionally and rigorously researched. Fun to read.
Quick read, and honest about the prospects of invention.......2003-09-04
Evan Schwartz has done an excellent job in creating a fast read without the depth of A Beautiful Mind, but interesting nonetheless. His subject is after all a more straightforward individual than John Nash, although Schwartz, like Sylvia Nasar, does explore some of the darker corners of Farnsworth's personality.
Schwartz refreshingly does not engage in positivistic technological whoop-de-doo about the possibility of reviving the status of the lone inventor. During the dot.com boom there was some loose talk about the possibility of the better mousetrap but it is clear that the administered world, that Farnsworth's nemesis in the book (David Sarnoff of RCA) helped to install in the 1920s, makes technological innovation, by the lone inventor, the exception and not the rule.
Schwartz also does an excellent job of balancing the two very different (yet strangely alike) personalities of Philo T. Farnsworth versus "General" Sarnoff, who more or less browbeat Dwight Eisenhower into making him a General for Sarnoff's admirable war record.
For Philo T. Farnsworth belonged more to the 1890s than the administered, corporate world of the 1920s. His name is somewhat odd in that (like Edward G. Nilges) it confesses an unbroken attachment to a family-of-origin, and a need to at one and the same time identify with a clan, yet precisely identify oneself as an individual within the clan.
Sarnoff's name is cooler-sounding and more down-to-business to the modern and indeed the administered ear, and far more than old Philo, Sarnoff was "skilled" (if that is indeed the word) in manipulating, not technical and scientific realities but his relations with his fellow men.
Farnsworth was of course no slouch in the PR department, but Sarnoff was more aware that the effect of illusion could be self-reinforcing, and that Sarnoff could USE the technology (and let others tinker with the technology), as in Schwartz' example of Sarnoff's dog and pony show at the 1939 World's Fair.
Technicians may cry foul, but the unavoidable fact that one technology builds upon another MEANS that the administered world (in Farnsworth's time, of cheap radio buff magazines, in ours, of cheap personal computers) was brought into being by social engineers *malgre lui* like Sarnoff.
But one cannot give old-fashioned credit to the Sarnoffs and the Gates when one admits this fact, and the reason for this is the inseperability of the social illusion they created, and the feeling the rest of us that we have been subtly horn-swoggled.
At the 1939 World's Fair, young David Gerlenter was very impressed by what in fact had little relationship to reality but the illusion created by the Fair urged him not only to participate in the creation of the world of "tomorrow", it also made them enthusiastically not question its ideological presumptions.
Missing, of necessity, in Evan Schwartz' quick read is another (indirect) employee of David Sarnoff, and this is my cherubic but rather gloomy old pal Theodore Adorno.
[The frequency of mention of Adorno may indicate to the unwashed a stalker-like obsession although Adorno died in 1970, or it may indicate that I am on to something Big.]
Adorno was indirectly retained at the Princeton Radio Research project in the 1930s by an RCA funded group that was charged, by Sarnoff, with making radio more high-class, and Schwartz describes Sarnoff's own tastes, which were in the lingo of the day, high-brow.
Walter Damrosch, not "Damrouch" as it is in the book, was a popular classical conductor of the 1930s and performed, as Schwartz recounts, at an RCA celebration. Sarnoff hoped that Adorno, et al., would show him how to market, over radio and possibly television, "quality" programming.
Being an intellectual cousin of Farnsworth in the very different but in fact equally demanding field of sociology, Adorno seems to have disruptively wanted to first theorize the impact of Edison's, Marconi's, and Farnsworth's creations on the listener. Adorno, in a truly pragmatic spirit, wanted to take the material basis into account, but was forestalled from doing so.
Adorno was aware, ten years before the appearance of McLuhan, that the medium, in particular its necessary limitations, might become the message. He theorized that the limitations might be necessary using, not the Aristotelean or Boolean logic familiar to a Farnsworth, but a 'dialectic' call and response logic in which we might actually demand, in the case of music reproduction, the very experience that denies, excludes, an older, and possibly richer, experience.
Of course, the engineer then and now is engaged in finding ways to satisfy demands, and not prove their mutual exclusion, which is why theoretical sociologists are scorned by engineers. But Boolean logic's possibility happens to rest on the bare possibility of knowledge, and one of Farnsworth's limitations was that this blinded him to the importance of PR over and above valid patents.
But rare indeed is the engineer with this range of vision, and as a result, engineers, in reading this book, might be subtly encouraged to POLARIZE the urban and cosmopolite world of Sarnoff versus the more down-to-earth, nuts and bolts, ham and ham sandwich world of an Edison or Farnsworth. With the result that such men grow old without grace, and the ultimate justification of the technology is biased towards destruction.
Fascinating and well-executed.......2003-01-24
For science and invention-history buffs, this is a no-brainer, but even the non-technoid layperson will find this a fascinating and fast-paced read. The author does an excellent job of presenting the key characters' development and motiviation, interspersing very fluidly the important biographical details of both Farnsworth and Sarnoff with appropriate and necessary background information on the technological evolution that eventually drew their lives together.
Schwartz achieves an entertaining balance between the social history of television and radio, the scientific minutae of the early growth of these technologies, and the personal lives of the individuals involved. Without becoming self-righteous or dogmatic, he lets the reader know where he stands on the issue of scientific integrity versus commercial exploitation, and succeeds in proving his underlying thesis that Farnsworth was truly one of the last of his breed. Finely researched and tightly written, this is a thoroughly enjoyable book.
Why can't we learn from the past?.......2002-12-24
Looking for precedence in the desktop PC operating system wars? The battle for television standard supremacy is exhibit ABC!
Similar to Microsoft's grab for OS hegemony in the 1980s and 1990s, RCA outmaneuvered archrivals AT&T, Westinghouse, Philco to capture the hearts, minds and pocketbooks of the American public. And while the battle was fought by the best minds Corporate America could muster, it was a lone inventor by the name of Philo T Farnsworth who gave RCA all it could handle on the innovation front, but was eventually outgunned by RCA honcho and master marketeer David Sarnoff, who perfectly played the courts to outlast the brilliant but business-challenged entrepreneur.
In fact, the story is reminiscent of IBM's early 1980s investigation for a PC operating system. Computer geeks might remember that at that time Digital Research's CP/M was considered the best of breed PC operating system, and Big Blue was desperate to have it power its fledgling IBM PC. IBM execs, however, couldn't get a meeting with CP/M's inventor Gary Kildall (IBM had arranged to meet him at home, but Kildall was off flying his plane, leaving his wife Dorothy to negotiate a deal but she wouldn't sign a non-disclosure agreement.). So Big Blue sought alternatives, eventually striking a deal with Microsoft for an operating system the then infant company didn't yet have rights to (which was eventually called MS-DOS). And the rest, as they say ... is history!
Sarnoff bluffed, licensed and marketed his way into the television space. Farnsworth like Kildall, was almost too bright for his own good. He thought the game would be decided by the technical merits of his product. That wasn't the case then -- nor is it now. It's not who invents the better mousetrap that wins; it's who defines, controls and spins the battle to suit his ends. It's marketing muscle not technological superiority -- as Microsoft has proven time and again.
Kildall died battered and bruised (physically and emotionally) not unlike Farnsworth who passed on as a penniless and forgotten man.
I could easily see this book turned into a major motion picture: Johnnie Depp in the Farnsworth role; Bob Hoskins as Sarnoff. But don't wait for the movie. This book is a page-turner -- you won't be disappointed. Farnsworth, like Kildall, can't be forgotten. It's books like this that guarantee he won't.
Amazon.com
Chronicle of the Old Testament Kings charts the rise and fall of the leaders of Israel from Abraham to Herod. The first founders of the nation (such as David, Solomon, and Moses) and the prophets who first judged their leadership (such as Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Elijah) are brought vividly to life, with lavish color maps, time lines, photographs of archaeological treasures, and reproductions of later artists' imaginative renderings of each figure. These features alone make Chronicle of the Old Testament Kings a whiz-bang coffee-table book. In addition, author John Rogerson, a professor of Religious Studies at the University of Sheffield, also provides an accessible, absorbing set of profiles of Israel's leaders. He considers all of the crucial debates in biblical scholarship today: Did the earliest biblical leaders of Israel actually exist? How much can we know about them? And how should that historical knowledge influence our reading of the Bible? Rogerson's intrepid exploration of these questions, presented in such a stylish volume, makes Chronicle of the Old Testament Kings a valuable addition to any library of books about religion.
Book Description
The story of ancient Israel's rulers, from Abraham to Herod, encompasses some of the greatest events and most powerful personalities in history. Covering a span of 1,500 years, Chronicle of the Old Testament Kings charts all the leaders of Israel from the Ancestors--the physical and spiritual founders of the nation--through the united monarchy under David and Solomon, to the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, Persian and Greek rule and, finally, Roman domination. Chronicle of the Old Testament Kings searches through the mists of tradition to reveal the historical figures behind familiar names such as Moses, David, and Solomon. Did they exist? What is known about them? The rulers are placed in the context of their own world and brought vividly to life, complete with their outstanding feats and their equally notable failings. We are also introduced to less-known but fascinating figures, such as Ahab and his Ivory House; Hezekiah, who withstood the might of the Assyrians; and Judas Maccabeus, who restored Jewish independence. Although leaders of a people dedicated to God, they frequently lapsed into morally questionable behavior, resulting in criticism and censure from Prophets such as Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Elijah. Key features of the book include:
* data files for every ruler, listing important information such as the meaning of their names, their lineage, wives, and children, and Bible references;
* portraits of rulers, genealogical trees, full-color maps, and illustrations taken from a huge range of sources;
* special features, including the Exodus, the Philistines, the Exile, Solomon's Temple, and the Dead Sea Scrolls;
* timelines providing at-a-glance visual guides to reigns and events.
Customer Reviews:
Great addition to Bible Studies Library!.......2007-05-31
True persons of faith should not fear history, they should embrace it!
This book is a wonderful addition to any biblical studies library for the ease of convenience reference it provides for the Kings of ancient Israel from Saul and David through Hosea and Zedekiah respectively.
Plus, it also includes pictures including Jehu prostrate. Signicantly, this is the only contemporaneous picture of a Judean or Samarian King and it appears here in this book along with the necessary history to place Jehu next to his Omride predecessors as well as his Judean betters (according, at least to Kings 1 and 2!).
Tuuly I didn't really appreciate Armegedon or the Temple Mount until after physically seeing them and in the same vein I didn't appreciate the relationship between these biblical leaders until seeing them in context with each other.
A wonderful read, an accessible read and a necessary part of a good bible studies library, this book is HIGHLY recommended!
Typically fine book in the T & H Chronicles group.......2006-12-05
This book is for those with open minds that are interested in the material of the ancient kings of Israel. It is not intended to be a religious or Biblical text so those who purchase it believing it is just that are going to be disappointed, offended, etc. Considering the low ratings shown here that are based on that, the potential buyer should be aware of this and that the use of the term "secular" appears to be a put down of a non-religious work that some believe should be dealt with only from a religious perspective.
I happily recommend this book.
Major Disappointment.......2006-04-04
This is a major disappointment for several reasons. The overwhelming majority of the book is a secular rehash of what is in the Bible, but with liberal scholarship and scepticism. I had really purchased the book to learn about the kings of Israel which are not recorded in the Bible, but there was little information there ... just scant references and ultra brief biographies.
I would not mind the liberal scholarship if the author had been honest enough to furnish the conservative responses and evidences, but it was obviously a one sided portrayal.
Consequently, these two reasons (too little on extra-Biblical kings and too liberally biased) I cannot recommend the book although the other Chronicle series are well worth the money.
David C., Ph.D.
Too secular!.......2001-10-23
I certainly enjoyed Chronicles of the Pharaohs and Chronicles of the Caesars. Unfortunately, this one was a let-down. Although it covers all the kings of Israel and Judah (along with the patriarchs and Moses) this book has a very secular humanist slant.
The book basically denies the possiblity for divine intervention and revelation. It does not take the miracles of the Old Testament seriously. Besides this, whenever the author perceieves that there is a discrepency between the Old Testament and extra-Biblical pagan texts, he always sides with the extra-Biblical pagan texts.
Obviously, there are no contemporary pictures or statues of the Old Testament kings.... The author therefore makes use of Roman Catholic art from the Middle Ages to fill in the gaps. As such, many of the pictures are unrealistic and silly. One would think that the kings of Israel were actually in medieval Britain or France....
It was good as a reference to determine which kings lived when, but not much else.
The only people who would enjoy this book are college students at secular universities who want to study the Bible and at the same time justify their lack of faith.
This is definitely not something I would use at church or Sunday School. This is not even a book I would use for Christian edification. It is simply a chronology of Biblical history taken from a secular humanist or naturalistic point of view.
Useful only for basic reference.......2001-07-28
This book is simplistic in the extreme. The overviews are cursory and often details given conflict with other scholarship.
I give it three stars for one reason -- it is a useful basic reference. In my research I use it to give me a chronology of the kings and for the maps. Other than that, it is not very worthwhile.
Amazon.com
Kary Mullis won the Nobel Prize for his invention of the polymerase chain reaction, a chemical procedure that allows scientists to "see" the structures of the molecules of genes. Mullis is no shy, socially inept bench chemist, though; on the contrary, he has led as big and full a life as possible, opening himself to experiences like hallucinogenic drugs, surfing, casually handling dangerous chemicals, and taking shots at the sacred cows of science. Dancing Naked in the Mind Field is Mullis's own chronicle of his adventures, from wooing countless women to possibly being abducted by aliens, and it's a funny, shocking tale indeed. This man certainly doesn't suffer from lack of self-esteem, and yet you might want him along on a trip to the astral plane, say, or a tour of the human genome. Mullis is a fascinating character and his autobiography will put to rest forever the stereotype of scientist as skeptical nerd. --Therese Littleton
Book Description
Here is a multidimensional playland of ideas from the world's most eccentric Nobel-Prize winning scientist. Kary Mullis is legendary for his invention of PCR, which redefined the world of DNA, genetics, and forensic science. He is also a surfer, a veteran of Berkeley in the sixties, and perhaps the only Nobel laureate to describe a possible encounter with aliens. A scientist of boundless curiosity, he refuses to accept any proposition based on secondhand or hearsay evidence, and always looks for the "money trail" when scientists make announcements.
Mullis writes with passion and humor about a wide range of topics: from global warming to the O. J. Simpson trial, from poisonous spiders to HIV, from scientific method to astrology.
Dancing Naked in the Mind Field challenges us to question the authority of scientific dogma even as it reveals the workings of an uncannily original scientific mind.
Customer Reviews:
Rambling of a Nobel prize winner.......2007-09-05
If it wasn't for a couple of hilarious anecdotes including the encounter with Swedish king and surfing episode after he got the Nobel prize, this would have been a very boring book with a title "Rambling of a rummie with a PhD". Mullis is eager to share his opinion on almost anythng and he should stick to surfing and molecular biology as he is not doing too good with almost anything else. He should have hired a decent ghostwriter as his writing is still "work in progress". And it was so easy to notice that his effort dwindled down in last couple of "chapters" that it became pathetic at times. Better luck with his next book, but I am definitely not going to read it.
Interesting, except for two woeful misunderstandings.......2007-05-05
Kary Mullis is best known for winning a Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1993 for his discovery of PCR (polymerase chain reaction), a technique which allows amplification of specified DNA sequences. I read Mullis's 1998 book twice in preparation for this review, with many months between readings. During the first reading, I was struck by how many outrageous things he said, and by his willingness to subject himself to ridicule from mainstream scientists by mentioning out of body travel, alien abduction, telepathy, astrology and the like. I guess a Nobel Prize gives the prize holder a kind of immunity against such ridicule, or perhaps just the license to speculate. At any rate, Mullis seems to have suffered no ill effects from his supposed abduction by aliens (in the form of a glowing raccoon) nor from taking high doses of psychedelic drugs.
During the second reading, however, I played detective. I tried to find clues to the roots of Mullis' denial regarding two major issues - 1. denial that global warming is real, and 2. denial that HIV causes AIDS. Although the book is short and the history therein thin, I managed to connect a few dots.
The first dot was given in chapter 3 where Mullis is describing his disgust at a safety officer at Cetus, "I called him the danger officer because all he ever did was put up DANGER signs. A danger officer wants to find dangerous things because it gives him more power.... If you are paid to be a safety officer in a lab, you will find danger whether there is any or not."
Mullis continues with the theme of self-interest trumping reality in chapter 10, "--when someone comes on the seven o'clock news with word that the global temperature is going up...More likely they [scientists] are minding their own livelihoods." Then in the next chapter, the author goes on a rant, "Who pays these experts? Is it the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that the United Nations is supporting with our money? Or is it the Environmental Protection Agency which you were bitching about today because your company was having to close down one of its plants due to some fish that might go extinct, and you might get transferred in the shuffle?... Is it Greenpeace? The Sierra Club? ...the sun never sets on the British Empire or bureaucrats--environmentalists, as many of them are called today. Sleep soundly. Your planet is in well-fed hands."
Mullis continues, "The concept that human beings are capable of causing the planet to overheat is...ridiculous....Even if the temperature were going up, we would be foolish to think we caused it....The trend over the last two centuries is down. Down is not up."
Mullis doesn't say where he got his data, but it is counter to the observed temperatures on the surface of the planet that shows temperatures going very clearly and strongly upwards.
Not only does Mullis not accept the findings and conclusions of the overwhelming majority of experts in the field, he uses his own non-expert assessments as justification to vilify scientists and activists working to slow global warming as exemplified by this Mullis quote listed in Wikipedia:
"Global warmers predict that global warming is coming, and our emissions are to blame. They do that to keep us worried about our role in the whole thing. If we aren't worried and guilty, we might not pay their salaries. It's that simple."
When it comes to HIV and AIDS, Mullis seems to have swallowed the discredited views of Peter Duesberg hook, line and sinker. First, regarding Gallo's original papers in Science, which first associated a virus with AIDS Mullis says, "all they had said there was that they had found evidence of a past infection by something which was probably HIV in some AIDS patients. They found antibodies. Antibodies to viruses had always been considered evidence of past disease, not present disease. Antibodies signaled that the virus had been defeated." The idea that the presence of antibodies means HIV has been cleared by the immune system is patently false. The same would be true of any long-lasting viral infection. To say that the presence of antibodies means the virus has been cleared is like saying that the presence of soldiers means the war is over, and we won. It's absurd.
Then, true to Duesberg's views, Mullis blames the victims for their problems, "Think of the immune system as a camel. If the camel is overloaded, it collapses. In the 1970s we had a significant number of highly mobile, promiscuous men sharing bodily fluids and fast life styles and drugs. It was probable that a metropolitan homosexual would be exposed to damn near every infectious organism that has lived on humans..."
But the immune system is not a camel, and there is no evidence anywhere in
the immunology literature that exposure to multiple infections can cause the
serious opportunistic diseases seen in AIDS. And this view does not account for non-drug-using, non-promiscuous people who obtained HIV from the medical blood supply (before it was screened for HIV) or from a sexual partner, then developed AIDS and died. And it doesn't explain the AIDS deaths of children who obtained the virus from their mother.
Mullis concludes the chapter with: "A segment of our society was experimenting with a life style and it didn't work. They got sick. Another segment of our pluralistic society, call them doctor/scientist refugees from the failed War on Cancer, or just call them professional jackals, discovered that it did work... for them. They are still making payments on their BMWs out of your pocket."
However, HIV/AIDS science is peer-reviewed, not cooked up in some smoke-filled room. And the idea that drugs are the cause of AIDS hase never been proven. Mullis is guilty, I'm afraid, of mistaking his own projections -- or perhaps those of Peter Duesberg -- for reality. Maybe that glowing raccoon outside his Mendocino cabin, or the diethyltryptamine, did some damage after all.
Dancing Naked in the Mind Field.......2007-02-09
Excellent book for the scientific mind. Makes you think about a variety of subjects that we just accept as truth. Easy and fun read/
Kary Mullis Vs Yuo.......2006-05-14
Kary Mullis = Slept with dozens of smoking hot women, did more drugs than pink floyd, and then invented the most widely used process in biotechnology, won a nobel prize in chemistry, and had his discovery licensed for $300 million dollars to Roche.
Yuo = Sat in your musky basement, foaming at the mouth, posting negative feedback on his book and claiming that the thousands of super-qualified nobel prize selectors are all delusional and that he is in fact a lucky hack who has "done too many tabs".
Perhaps if you'd popped a couple of tabs your head wouldn't be so far up your backside, and you would've display some inspired, outside-the-square creativity in your life? (169% Owned)
The emperor has no clothes.. eg. dancing naked.........2005-09-20
Dear reviewers and buyers of Kary Mullis book. I wish I could respond to each of you, to tell you that the old, dusty rules of innovation and genius has not changed like it seems with mr. Mullis.
To the point;
The book is actually a very good insight in my view of mr. Mullis personality and clearly shows like most awake readers already questioned; how could this person become a nobel-leaurate? How can you reconcile nutty ideas on HIV, stargazing and belief in UFO's with a scientific mind? Hardly. Contrary to popular belief, to research PCR was painstaking, complex work done by a proper scientist over a longer period.
Norwegian scientist mr. Kjell Kleppe, worked with nobelprice-laureate H. Gobind Khoranas at the Institute for Enzyme Research at University of Wisconsin from 1968 to 1970. Here mr. Kleppe researched, described and published the very details for PCR. Curiously Mullis patent-application is almost identical to Kleppe's research-papers 14 years before..
Look here for more:
http://www.ibl-inst.se/www/PDF/Presentationer/Polymerase%20Chain%20Reaction_040621.ppt
For full details of the story;
- Arthur Kornberg article, Science Magazine, February 1991 and
- Journal of Molecular Biology, 1971, Kjell Kleppe and H. Gobind Khorana
In a Norwegian interview, Arthur Kornberg told that Stuart Linn, professor of Berkley University, participated in a Gordon seminar in N.H. by Kjell Kleppe about PCR and used it in his lectures later. One of Stuart's students was Kary Mullis..
You do the math; A surrealistic book describing nothing about PCR but all about a person that used drugs, is sex-obsessed, rants, boast, etc.etc.. from the father of PCR?
Mulis should perhaps have a nobel-prize but maybe rather in inventing history and getting away with it..
Customer Reviews:
Darkly humorous essays on science and life.......2007-01-16
Dancing Naked in the Mind Field is a collection of essays on semi-random topics. Kary Mullis, winner of the nobel prize in chemistry for inventing PCR, probably couldn't get away with saying most of this if he hadn't won a nobel prize. And he knows it and implies it.
Common subjects dealt with are explosions (the aspect of chemistry that got Mullis interested as a child) and hallucinogens and other drugs. Another common subject is stupid things that slide in science today and why they might be sliding. For example Mullis describes the success of his first published paper in Nature. As a grad student he published a theoretical paper on time travel. First Nature published it. Second it got a lot of press and he was referred to as "Dr Mullis" in news articles despite being a grad student. When he tried to publish on PCR he had to shop the article around and published in a less well read journal. This probably affects his views on other subjects: the hole in the ozone layer is a non-existent problem (as if we could noticeably change the atmosphere), HIV doesn't cause AIDS and might not exist (well we've never isolated HIV, there isn't a tube of it somewhere to study), colesterol doesn't cause heart disease, etc.
He backs up his unconventional views by pointing out the lack of scientific evidence to support other people's theories. As he points out "everybody knows" isn't a reference that should fly in a journal article.
And Mullis points out whether or not his hunches are testable. Alien abduction (which he experienced and describes) is not testable because the experiment can't be duplicated. Astrology being the major indicator of personality type can be studied and tested. Mullis also brushes on traveling through the astral plane as long as we are talking about popculture wierdness.
Dancing Naked in the Mind Field is good fast reading. The writing is always entertaining and very accessible with humor. In the couple of year since I read this I am reminded of it most often in the context of teasing out scientific bias and bias in general. The book isn't really about that, but in retrospect it contributes to insight on bias.
Average customer rating:
- Good Simple Book
- Outstanding
- A must-read for air pollution control practitioners.
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Wet Scrubbers, Second Edition
Howard D. Hesketh , and
Kenneth C. Schifftner
Manufacturer: CRC
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Customer Reviews:
Good Simple Book .......2006-03-08
I found the book useful for a calculation I was doing. It was simple and easy to use and suited the purpose.
If this review was helpful, please add your vote -- Thanks.
Outstanding.......2002-12-31
I worked for a year designing/specifying/sizing wet scrubbers, and this book was open on my desk the whole time. It's fantastic.
A must-read for air pollution control practitioners........1999-03-22
The NST/Engineers, Inc. reviewers found that the authors, Kenneth Schifftner, Product/District Manager for Bionomics Industries, and Howard Hesketh, Professor of Engineering (Retired), Air Pollution Control, at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, have provided a most useful resource to the pollution control community. Mr. Schifftner is the patentee of a scrubber with unusual capabilities, the Catenary Grid ®, also described in the book. The reviewers, having successfully applied that scrubber design to a high solids-loading, toxic, plant exhaust stream in one case, and to a toxic plant exhaust stream, in an urban setting near a school, can attest to the soundness of the application principles described in the book.
The authors have demonstrated again in this second edition the practical value of their more than fifty-year experience in wet scrubber research, development, and plant installations. They cover every important type of wet scrubber for industrial and municipal applications. Practical considerations are highlighted throughout. As an example, they describe twenty-three considerations for successful gas absorption in liquid streams. Provision of design methods, reference data, and typical calculations lead users to the proper choices for scrubbing equipment and the auxiliary systems for the wide range of gaseous, misty, and particulate-loaded conditions that all pollution control practitioners face.
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- The Lives and Times of Bonnie & Clyde
- The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815 (Studies in North American Indian History)
- The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of Richard P. Feynman
- The Point of Existence: Transformations of Narcissism in Self-Realization (Diamond Mind Series, 3)
- The Prophet Outcast: Trotsky 1929-1940
- The Real Rain Man: Kim Peek
- The Roots of Endurance: Invincible Perseverance in the Lives of John Newton, Charles Simeon, and William Wilberforce (Swans Are Not Silent)
- The Scarlet Professor: Newton Arvin: A Literary Life Shattered by Scandal
- The Secret Man: An American Warrior's Uncensored Story
- The Sisters: Babe Mortimer Paley, Betsy Roosevelt Whitney, Minnie Astor Fosburgh : The Lives and Times of the Fabulous Cushing Sisters
Books Index
Books Home
Recommended Books
- Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave
- Masters of War
- Mahu
- K-Pax III: The Worlds of Prot
- History: Fiction or Science
- Introduction to Combustion Phenomena
- History of Placer and Quartz Gold Mining in the Coeur D'Alene District: A Thesis
- Windows and Mirrors: Interaction Design, Digital Art, and the Myth of Transparency
- From the eagle's wing;: A biography of John Muir
- The Moss Flora of Britain and Ireland
The Boy Genius and the Mogul: The Untold Story of Television
Tv's Forgotten Hero: The Story of Philo Farnsworth (Trailblazer Biographies)
The Human Side of Managing Technological Innovation: A Collection of Readings
The Boy Who Invented Television: A Story Of Inspiration, Persistence, And Quiet Passion
The Soul Of A New Machine
