I put this Michael Crichton piece on the sideboard a few days ago, but it seems appropriate to link to here. It is a long piece, but thought provoking.

I guess Crichton is right! I believe in intellegent extraterrestrial life (note: I don't think they're buzzing Midwestern farmers, but I did pass 30,000 hours on my Seti@home client this weekend) AND I believe that the CO2 we're dumping into the atmosphere is changing the climate. I also believe in evolution through natural selection, the germ theory of disease, relativity (of the special and general varieties), and quantum mechanics (although my personal jury's still out on string theory.) And I believe that Micheal Crichton is a hack.

I should note that "thought provoking" doesn't mean that I take an editorial stance on the Chrichton piece. El Destructo, where do you keep this personal jury of yours? I would imagine room & board and daily stipends for your jury would really add up. I really need to get myself one of these personal juries.

I have 12 little angry men that live in my head. That's probably not news to anybody, but it does keep the overhead down.

I did not mean to imply that you agreed with Chrichton, Sam. I was merely expressing my opinion.

At least we both agree that he is a hack! For what it's worth, my favorite Micahel Chrichton movie. I don't like it so much because it is good, but because when I was a kid it was a PG movie that played HBO in the daytime and contained nudity. Sterile though the nudity was, it was nudity of Susan Dey nonetheless.

The mp3s and corresponding images of the draft messages are pretty cool. And I wish my title was Director of Interstellar Message Composition.

Yeah, triko, chances are that when your bio pic is in a honeycomb, you are doing some far out shit for a living.

MeFi has picked up a similar Chrichton speech(apparently for the third time) and compared it to Jack Hitt's article A Gospel According to Earth. The response to Chrichton over there is about as warm as Destructo's here.

Crichton is a paranoid attention seeker. Hitt is a smelly hippy.

Crichton may have some pernicious, chronic disease eating his brain.

Crichton just keeps resurfacing on Metafilter like some implacable zombie which claws it's way up from the grave to shuffle, arms outstretched, towards the jugular of reason.

Michael Crichton is not a scientist. He wrote "The Lost World".

I'd say it's pretty warm over here.

There's nothing worse than an implacable zombie. They're like that when they don't get their way. They should make a movie, "Attack of the Implacable Zombies". Michael Crihton can write it.

[W]hen your bio pic is in a honeycomb, you are doing some far out shit for a living.

There's nothing worse than an implacable zombie.

How about an implacable zombie whose bio pic is in a honeycomb?

Another thought provoking piece along these lines is Paul Davies' E.T. and God: Could earthly religions survive the discovery of life elsewhere in the universe?

A much less thought provoking piece along these lines.