I just went outside. Weather.com says it's 70 degrees, but in the shade I was downright chilly! Is it August or October?

I dunno, but there was rain here....RAIN!! I haven't seen rain in a REALLY long time...too bad I'm not in Israel and the rain isn't there

There was rain here too, during my lunch hour -- the nerve! -- but now it's a beautiful cool, autumn afternoon.

Denying it isn't going to make it go away.

I just wrote that to get people's attention.

My brains are a little addled today; I don't even know why I started this thread.

We in the UK have had the third lousy summer in a row. It's in the mid to high sixties and rains almost every day. I'm thoroughly sick of it.

Is that Fahrenheit or Celsius? Because if it's Fahrenheit then that's really chilly!

U shall hope it's faranheit, because if it's C, they'd long be fried.

I don't believe in it. There are plenty of reports that show a cyclical weather pattern over the centuries.

Michael Crichton's book, State of Fear, was insanely boring as a sci-fi/action-adventure book, but had copious discussion of the arguments for and against a belief in global warming, including listing sources in footnotes.

Blasphemy! I LOVED it. Mind you I read that the second it came out when I was much more of a sci-fi nerd.

Global warming is the most expensive hoax in the history of mankind.

Boring it's not- it's sort of like a Jewish Novel™ all plot and no real dialoge etc. But each sub-plot was more fantastic (and I don't mean to be complementary) than the previous.

Except that it was really well written and an enjoyable read. So what that it wasn't character driven. I didn't care.

I'm a Michael Crichton fan but I didn't like that book. The plot was way too implausible and ridiculous. If I want research studies, I'll read research studies, not novels disguised as research studies or vice versa.

Wow, I thought it was an obscure book that no one would have heard of. You guys are well-read.

I guess I'm not much of a Crichton fan. I enjoyed the Andromeda Strain movie 100 years ago (never read the book). I read and enjoyed Sphere and Prey, which I preferred to State of Fear.

I prefer many other authors: Kirk Mitchell, Lincoln Child/Douglas Preston, Brad Thor, James Grippando.

Sphere was a rip-off of an Asimov short story (it took place on a distant planet instead of the ocean floor though). Prey was really good. Timeline was excellent although the movie did NOT do it justice. Congo was better than most people realize. And of course there are the classics - the lost world/jurassic park books.

Ah, the good old days when I spent most of my waking hours with my nose in a book.

QFT

Although I'm a not a fan of Hillary's (and certainly a bigger fan of Crichton's) I think she had a good point when she said that footnotes or not it still is a novel.
At the end of his summation he basically says it himself (tongue firmly in cheek,) "Everyone has an agenda, except for me."

Who?


They're fantastic. So imaginative.


Never read 'em.