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BOOK REVIEW Deep Time Davis Darling Delecorte Press, 1989 In the a note to the reader, Darling explains his point of view about the book: Deep Time is a personal sense of how one subatomic particle might perceive its origin, a beginning; into some far distant future where it all ends. Ancient and modern myths explore the creation of the universe. Today the high priests of science, philosophy, and theology pursue the quest for answers to the natural history of humans; and the universe. Did it have a beginning or did it always exist in some form or other? Will it ever end, or will the yet finite mind of conscious animals ever be able to comprehend the nature of infinity? What happens to the presumably one subatomic particle at time zero? The story of particle physics ensues for billions of years, incomprehensibly in earth time where for many people accurate monthly planning is a mystery. Six hundred million years after a big bang, the earth condensed from the resultant space debris. Less time bound at this point the book becomes more interesting, concerning itself with chemical element formation, and the beginnings of organic life forms; humans eventually, and their exploration of space with Voyager 1 and 2. Darling suggests that the answers sought today - what is matter, what is time, and what is life - are to be found by the exploration of inner space: the mystery of consciousness and self-consciousness.

The word fuck has so many meanings, and is so frequently used in English today as a noun, adjective, adverb, and explicative, as to be practically worthless as an accurate descriptive of anything. If it does one thing very well, it is its use to relieve tension or stress at whatever causes a bother. While commonly thought of as an acronym it is not. Another acronym similar to the one you proposed is ‘forced unsolicited carnal knowledge,’ a legal term used in the 1500s, when a married couple needed the king’s permission to procreate. The king variants first appeared in the 1970 May issue of Playboy. As an acronym it was used on the medical records of British service men who reported as sick and found to have VD. It was short for ‘found under carnal knowledge.’ That notation appeared in the East Village Other on February 15, 1967. The book has a long introduction - About the F-word. Acronyms were rare before the 1930s, and most today seem to be associated with written business documents or corporate names; most of which are hardly pronounceable as words. The book is loaded with derived acronyms and definitions for A, B, D, E, F, G, H, J, L, M, N, P, R, S, T, U, W, and Z words. It is an interesting to browse, and probably a must dictionary for anyone who writes.

BOOK REVIEW By Ronald Scheurer The Drunkard’s Walk �" How Randomness Rules Our Lives Leonard Mlodinow 2008 Statistics is often thought of as a rather dry subject, but actually it can get pretty wet. To many the mathematical part of it may seem like a rainless trip through a group of staid formulas. Ah, but the probabilistic part of it adds that final leap of personal faith one has to make on whether to take or not to take some particular action. Mlodinow explains that statistics are data; that effect usually follows cause, and with enough data, the probability of accurate predictions of future events is a safe game. So you leave the umbrella home and get soaked in the afternoon. Then the sun comes out. Decision making involves choice among alternatives based on information that may be wrong, right, or purposely deceptive. Mlodinow explains the role that chance plays in choice. Are there usable principles that can minimize making poor decisions when apparent fortuitous situations beg for a leap of faith? Well, maybe; but understanding how randomness affects our daily affairs in ways over which we have no control is called fate. Enter probability. Toss a coin once. Heads. Again. Heads. Four more times. Heads. Probability for the next toss is 50/50 heads or tails. In a chain of 10,000 tosses, the chances of six heads in a sequence is possible. Who knows? It could land on the edge! Randomness is not short term; it’s long term. And there is no way to tell when that winning streak will occur, nor how long it will last. Early statistics centered on demographics and economics. Today it is applied to just about everything having over 15 specialties. Being born is a statistic. Being dead is a statistic. But aside from cut and dry data, how information is presented can bias the results of statistical analysis. Mlodinow does an excellent job explaining data collection and its use with examples drawn from history to the present. The infamous bell curve and where some particular bit of data lies on it can be puzzling. Looking only at the top of the wave, if it is steep, implies one thing, but suppose the wave is spread out over a very wide range and points on the peak of the curve are not much higher than those on the center bottom of the wave? How are lives affected when totally unrelated people are making decisions that unknown to each one causes them to converge at a single point in time and place? The train accident or massive highway collision involving multiple automobiles and trucks during a snow storm. Each person’s chance decision (a string of random decisions - numbers) placed them at that point. Randomness rules.

BOOK REVIEW by Ronald A. Scheurer Out of Control - The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, and the Economic World By Kevin Kelly 1994 When something is out of control it generally would seem to be directionless; or conversely going in all directions at once, so it is difficult at times to see exactly where Kelly is headed with his interviews of computer experts. Most appear to have a desire to create a life form that can be manifest inside of a computer program that can not only replicate itself, but one that can evolve into an artificial, intellectual life form simulating the human mind and consciousness. This mind and consciousness program, as the operating system of a sophisticated machine or robot, then becomes the artificial life form to replace, in effect, humans who evolved naturally and hence less efficiently. Evolution moves along much more quickly and efficiently in the artificial brain for any number of reasons suggested, and in just the right kind of robot, one beyond Robby the robot of “Lost in Space” fame, becomes capable of taking over some human decision making. The sentient Hal 9000 of “2001" fame isn’t mentioned, the master computer who took over “Discovery One” in Arthur C. Clark’s novel. Dave, the ship’s final survivor barely manages the disabling of Hal. Not mentioned either is the 1956 film Forbidden Planet depicting the Krell civilization’s self-repairing gigantic machine capable of projecting thoughts into animated matter. Unfortunately for the smart but unwise Krell, and Morbius (Walter Pidgeon) those thoughts, less cooperative than cooperative toward their fellow beings resulted in the Krell self extinction, and the destruction of Altair IV. That machine was supposed to be the ultimate technological device for good. Out of Control renders multiple futuristic possibilities for humanity based on the evolution of computer software, artificial intelligence that mimics and goes beyond human intelligence, and robotic hardware to carry such synthetic life. Will such synthetic life be self-replicating? And once started, can it be stopped by their human creators? Would such forms of life be recycled by birth and death as are all forms of naturally evolved life on earth? Black holes are nature’s recycling machines for expended matter and energy. Both are pulled into the vortex of one cone and released through the point to point contact with an obverse cone. A new universe is born as an old one dies. Macbeth: SCENE V. Dunsinane. Within the castle. Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more: it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury Signifying nothing. Humanity exaggerates its self-importance: Perhaps, the big bang was no more than a loud fart.

Book Review by Ronald Scheurer If They Give You Lined Paper, Write Sideways By Daniel Quinn 2007 ... or maybe even turn the paper upside down. And if the paper is unlined? Well, it isn’t so much the paper as it is how you perceive the world around you, and you formulate your own thoughts about your place in it. Most of the book is written as a series of dialogues between Elaine (pseudonym) and Daniel during a holiday weekend. In those talks Quinn discusses his former books and his wonder why readers did not seem to understand their message. In fact, it seemed to horrify some of them. Why? The problem, obvious in retrospect, was Quinn’s different frame of reference: somehow “alien and mysterious.” Rather than seeing humanity from an earthbound view, he felt like a Martian anthropologist watching a supposedly rational species destroy the planet they live on. The point made is that many fairly well off humans today view their history on the earth as a highly successful god given adventure. Lined paper makes writing on them a normal assumption. Writing across those lines makes a different assumption. One of Quinn’s across the lines views is that Nature never was in balance. The idea of restoring that balance is relatively new and seems prompted by the fact that humans are very close to if not passed the tipping point of a whole new scenario for the planet; one not conducive to their own survival as a species. He also notes that if nature were in perfect balance, evolution would never have occurred. Humans would not be here. There is, however, no suggestion that humans return to pre-industrial times. Further discussion presents a more probable scenario to an even earlier age. Stone Age living. During the Stone Age, there were no starving millions. Those images of humanity have only have been appearing for the last 70 years, yet food production has been increasing all of that time. Why? Any Stone Age man could find food with a little hunting and gathering. No one starved because their village territory rarely outstripped nature’s capacity to sustain their population. When it did they migrated to hunt and gather elsewhere. They did not stand on street corner with a cardboard sign. How would rational Martians choose to live on the earth? Conversely, how would humans choose to live on another planet if it could initially support them with found food, water, and shelter? Would they have learned anything about what they did to the earth? Elaine asks Quinn if he believes in god? Belief or disbelief in something that may or may not exist is not a universal human activity, though cross culturally is fairly common. God is given a performance review, and it would seem that either god does act in mysterious ways or people simply behave stupidly. Suppose there is no god, and the myths that there is/are (one or many) are merely tales told over the centuries by religious hucksters and politicians to acquire power, control, and wealth over populations not sustainable by local territories? If politicians were given the same performance review as god, how would they fair? Would they too not act in mysterious ways to preserve their presumed status as gods on earth. Do they lead wisely, or do spend most of their time bickering over legislative details until their own ten commandments no longer garner enough votes for re-election. Today, who lives at the hands of the gods? Many people in the developed world; most in the rest of the world. Why? Because it is easier to follow than to think for themselves. Clerically revised religions have for centuries told their ecclesiastic members and congregations that god gave them dominion over just about everything on the planet. They seem to have taken that to heart, but without much soul. One of Quinn’s readers raises the issue of population control, or more precisely, at what point will it become impossible to supply food to the local human biomass let alone to the world when the resources now used to do that drop below availability? Quinn doubts that the planet’s ecological systems could survive a population level of nine billion. He is not alone. Appendix I - The New Renaissance - An address delivered by Dan Quinn at the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston, March 7, 2002, is printed at the end of the book. It is a concise reading of the ideas appearing in his earlier books. Appendix II - Our Religions: Are They the Religions of Humanity Itself? delivered as a Fleming Lecture in Religion, Southwestern University, Georgetown Texas, October 18, 2002, is also included in the book. It’s a short look at how religions got humanity into its current cul-de-sac. RAS - 7/16/11

BOOK REVIEW by Ronald A. Scheurer Disability, Difference, Discrimination By Silvers, Anita; Wasserman, David; and Mahowald, Mary B. 1998 The number of synonyms that can be used to describe various disabilities and the degree to which those disabilities affect the afflicted can seem endless after reading the points and counterpoints of these authors. What constitutes a disability and to whom? How is one’s disability perceived by the person affected, and at what point was that perception conceived? Before or after its occurrence? How did the disability occur? Is it permanent or temporary. And what is the dis-abled’s felt need for compensation or accommodation by society for transportation or other access compared to others? The other side of the coin considers the degree to which society accepts the claims of the disabled for compensation. accommodation, or both. Are these claims honored in the name of social justice or moral honor. Who pays, how much, and for how long? What accommodations are needed for various disabilities to match the equal access of walking, talking, hearing, and sighted others? Can any of this be legislated and equitably enforced by government as determined by lobbied politicians? To what extent does accommodating the disabled inconvenience so called normal walking, sighted, and hearing people? What is their ethical position on helping the crippled, the blind, or the deaf depending on their relationships? Other issues: If the physically handicapped have limited to access to schools and jobs, their disadvantage is largely caused by the environmentally constructed world that caters to the normally able. Is this morally fair in a society that claims equal opportunity for all regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, religious preference, etc. The list of possible differences between any two people could be endless, and in the competitive society many countries on the planet have become, differences give certain groups the edge in the search for success, wealth, and fame. For insight into the world of the disadvantaged irrespective of the causes, the book is an excellent introduction to the world of people with physical or cognitive problems. It also examines issues felt by their caretakers. While its authors seem to use many ten-dollar words to note differences in and justifications to their own ideas, a few more one-to-five dollar words and shorter sentences would make the book more accessible to average readers. There is an excellent afterword in the book written by Lawrence C. Becker.

BOOK REVIEW: It’s Not About the Hair, Debra Jarvis, 2007 There are two parts to each of the ten short chapters. The first part of each is a short e-mail update by the patient to friends and relatives about her cancer diagnosis, treatment, side effects, talks with doctors, tests and various possible outcomes. The style is conversational and first person. The author is a patient! Jarvis talks with you, not at you. There is nothing preachy about this veteran chaplain whose spirited sense of humor revealed in the introduction quickly dispels any idea that this book is sermon. It is a shot treatise on, as she puts it, how to be your best real self. The first questions anyone asked are basic. What did I do to get cancer? Is this a death sentence? Why me? Jarvis asks patients What’s Your Story? She willingly tells her own in a manner that takes the disease seriously, but not so much as to sow the seeds of depression. Laughter is a part of living in the moment, and while feeling crappy is a normal part of cancer treatment, it isn’t what life is about. There is a real need for frank honesty over hard questions with patients, however; a fact brought to light by some teenagers whom Jarvis spoke with: whenever I said I was fine they defined the word for me in a way that cleared the ice for some very frank discussing cancer and death. Jarvis started a three session program for care giving staff titled The Existential Expedition. The first session deals with their childhood dreams, family beliefs about pain and suffering, and what prompted them to work in this field. The second dealt with spiritual though not necessarily religious beliefs. The third session was about death. How would you like to die? What happens when you die? Throughout the book, sharing stories among patients by patients not specifically identified and beyond HIPPA regulations (those mythical confidentiality rules designed to protect patients’ secrets) is a good thing. The people here are alive and fighting, living and learning to deal with new and limiting realities. Each patient has a different story; and the wonder after diagnosis is how people manage to understand each other’s feelings at all. Each story, each treatment plan and its side effects are as individual as the personalities of the patients. Having cancer forces one to think about death. And life before that inevitable end. Self evaluation before cancer is one thing. After diagnosis it is something quite different, and involves a very personal assessment of self that is physical, emotional, and spiritual. There is a difference between venting feelings and being angry, or feeding those feelings to the point of depression. The first is cathartic; the second, self destructive. Jarvis covers attitudinal feelings about life after diagnosis - fatalistic or plan oriented; cheerful or fearful? You’re not dead yet, and as long as you have your boots on wear them to the end by remaining an active participant in life. Easier said than done, yes, but the alternative is self defeating. Being honest and candid about treatments and side effects can be problematic. Jarvis discusses this as being chemo savvy; how to discuss issues with your doctors and other healthcare providers while realizing that chemo therapy is similar to fighting fire with fire. Jarvis notes three final scenarios of treatment. If chemo (or whatever treatment) works unconditionally, full remission without recurrence occurs. If full remission does not occur and subsequent chemo is required, She describes it as the scene in The Shining where Jack Nicholson hacks his way through the door and says in an evil voice, “Here’s Johnny!” Only it’s cancer. Chemo forever means that the cancer isn’t even temporarily curable. The afflicted will die. The difficulty for friends associated with cancer patients, and knowing that death is an inevitable consequence, is in acknowledging that as a fact of life for everyone. That fact is hard to accept, and anyone who faces it knows that the first year after the death of someone you have loved is the hardest. It’s Not About the Hair is an excellent read for anyone dealing with either side of cancer. Ron Scheurer

BOOK REVIEW: Modern Liberty and The Limits of Government, Charles Fried, 2007. According to popular Christian myths, Adam was the first person on the earth, and thus the first and only person who had total freedom and liberty to act as he wished. Then along came Eve. Suppose it had been the other way around. Eve came first, Adam second; and it was Adam who most often said, “Not tonight, I have a headache.” Not only did Adam and Eve have different perspectives on what the rules should be, but their God creator had a few thoughts of his own. As the population increased, some presumed and/or elected leaders interpreted common sense rules about useful behavior. Philosophy began. Other presumed leaders, a priestly class, more adamant about the rules, tightened them. Religion began. Charles Fried’s Modern Liberty considers not only individual liberty, but equal rights for divergent groups of people within a community. He examines the idea of free speech in varying social contexts? And perhaps, more importantly, who or what determines the amount of liberty an individual can enjoy, the rights of that individual vis-à-vis the rights of others, and can those rights be presumed to be equal? Very often one person’s liberty is counterpoised to another person’s vision of some abstract good. Religious revelations from a God to an individual may offer a fair set of moral rules for communal living, but the commentary by others who reinterpret those rules often ends up restricting an individual’s liberty without just cause. This happens when an individual’s choices are restricted in some way under the threat of coercive or punitive action against them. One can always change religions in a democracy, but what happens where a national government is a theocratic state where non-believers are persecuted in one way or another by a minority? Fried asks “Who Imposes on whom?” Fried explores in considerable detail of the need for both physical and mental space in which to express one’s individual liberty, and how the rights of one individual may or may not be perceived to interfere with the liberty of someone else. By contract rights can be bought or sold. But, when those rights are bought and sold under duress, who or what will protect the victim of that coercion? Enter government and the rule of law; however, there is little to keep the government from reshuffling the deck when equitability ceases to flavor the power elite. Enter liberty of the mind. Fried extends the discussion. Freedom of the mind, the liberty to speak and express thoughts requires some element of physical space and material possession to do so. Governments can and do dash this liberty by curtailing publishers, broadcasters, and individual speakers from the facilities needed to reach their respective audience, but the consensus of the governed is, or should be, that governments protect these liberties. It may very well be that governments are not the most effective engine of tyranny over people’s lives. Cited in Modern Liberty is Edmund Gosse’s Father and Son: A Study of Two Temperaments Oxford University Press (1974) where the tyranny of a parent over a son’s efforts to free his own mind is explored. Finally, as Fried puts it, one also has to “struggle with the inertia of one’s own mind.” RAS (11/30/09)

BOOK REVIEW: Butt Rot & Bottom Gas; A Glossary of Tragically Misunderstood Words, Eric Groves, Sr., 2007. Some words sound obscene but are not. For example, Groves had his collection of documentary photographs confiscated by US Customs because they were labeled “great tits.” Birdwatchers know them as European and Asian songbirds. Some corporate e-mail filters cut delivery on a few rather innocuous words as well as the more nasty ones known as slang or vulgarism, but most of the single words and/or expressions in this glossary seem at least PG rated. Use British spelling, add an ‘h’ between the ‘s’ and ‘o’ of “arsole” (an organic chemical compound) and this fairly common colloquial expression denoting stupidity might be filtered. Most of the expressions in this short, small 112 page book would require at least an imaginative mind set to use them as euphemistic sex terms, but they do lend themselves easily to that frame of mind. It is surprising that some of the commonly used short word sex substitutes do not appear: frig (slang) for the more vulgar version for which there is an entire book – The F Word, Second Edition, Edited by Jesse Sheidlower, 1999, (Random House). Upsetting? Think of the number of words that rhyme with it!

BOOK REVIEW: 2009 – The Best American Travel Writing, Simon Winchester, Editor. The 25 collected travel tales cover the world in one sense, but writers in quite another. It is not about countries. It is about individuals and cultures, and how adventuresome travelers react to social circumstances unlike their own; and the obverse, how others react to visitors from other places. The Forward, by Jason Wilson, and the Introduction, by Winchester, are not to be skipped. Both define the nature of travel writing. It involves the awareness that geography is much more than the names of countries and capital cities. It’s about people living in other places, and their adaptations to both the physical and political environments of those places. Less than 70 percent of America’s children can find France on a world map. Test yourself with a blank world map to fill in country names; or a blank map of the United States and Canada for states and provinces. Ironically, American travel writing is among the best and most widely distributed in the world. And if it were matched by energetic travel reading, US citizens might become more aware of world events and other cultures. Winchester’s selections are a great start. RAS (11/30/09)

Carl Schowengerdt’s The Religious Subversion of Democracy, 2007. To paraphrase the end cover of the book: Jewish pride, Christian arrogance, and Muslim exclusivity threaten world peace everywhere. Until each realizes they blindly hate and kill each other on the basis of false myths, peaceful co-existence of all people on the earth will not be possible. What makes this book readable for anyone, whether a church member, a freethinker, agnostic, or atheist, is the fact that Schowengerdt does not harp on the dictum of the Madeline O’Hara school of atheism, but instead honestly explores the good points of religion’s primary moral rules. What he does advocate is rational thought about the origins of those rules in light of current scientific knowledge facts about the universe, the place of humans in that universe, and the origins of the myths that form the basis of today’s major religious belief systems. The book repeatedly dwells on the simple fact that humans in the universe are quite insignificant features of the total landscape. The universe was here long before humans, and will be long after humans are completely gone. Once self-consciousness became a psychological reality and coupled with the wide variety of emotions that humans experience, myths about humanity’s importance in the universe defied rational thought. Religion (however that may be defined) was needed as a reason to be. Fear of not having a reason led to today’s myths and fables; metaphors by which to live. In a country so oriented toward science, it is incredible that only 12% of all Americans believe that the universe began without the interference of some kind of superpower – a God. According to a Gallup poll, 88% do believe in some superpower – a God – that gave humans dominion over, and free use of, just about everything else alive or existing in that universe. How ego centric can people get? Schowengerdt’s evolution of God as a function of a simple statistical bell curve, the probability that something will or will not occur, makes more rational sense than any literal interpretation of the myths surrounding the origins of life on the earth. The universe is as indifferent to humans as is the weather; neither good nor evil. Create a God to explain our existence, make it a personal God, and suddenly it becomes necessary to ask that God why bad things happen to good people, and good things happen to bad people. Such things happen because of the unwise use of resources; the consequences of human activity, and their assumption of having been given dominion over all things to prove their worthiness to some sort of heavenly paradise after death. Personal responsibility is explored in the universe of chance as an opportunity to live in peace, make things comfortable for a sustainable population, and not wreck the circumstances in which we have found ourselves. There may or may not be an afterlife to human existence on the earth, though most people and religions believe there is. Any concrete evidence? Any evidence to the contrary? No. Believe what you will; know what you can: the former is easy; the latter difficult. The foundations of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are explored. The effects of their subsequent applications when disagreements over the nature of their Gods by their self-presumed prophets occurs, puts to ruin whatever good they held at the start. Confucianism appears to be the only system of ethics which never developed a priestly class; no hierarchy; no Gods. When you view the earth from its surface, it becomes an egomaniac’s Wal-Mart. Astronaut Bill Anders described it from 240,000 miles out, “We’re living on a tiny little dust mote in left field on a rather insignificant galaxy. And basically this is it for humans. It strikes me that it’s a shame that we’re squabbling over oil and borders.” And religion.

The Geography of Nowhere, The Rise and Decline of America’s Man-Made Landscape, James Howard Kunstler, 1993. The book tallies from the Pilgrim settlements to the modern auto suburb the huge economic, social, and spiritual costs we now pay for our car-crazed addicted lifestyles. Two words should come to mind while reading just about ever chapter in this book: growth and development. The difference: growth is untamed expansion (a form of cancer); development is taking what exists and improving upon its appearance and utility without destroying its basic idea (the thoughtful and rational use of resources to manage sustainable growth without destroying the planet for future generations). Developing nations cannot be turned into replicas of the US, or for that matter, many other places in the world. Local governments cannot improve transit problems or the quality of life by revising land use laws that favor suburban sprawl, megamalls, high rise expensive housing, auto manufacturers, oil companies, tire manufacturers, and highway builders, while destroying the possibilities of a return to sensible electric rail transit (most of which has already occurred), plowing up farmland in floodplains, building industrial parks (that require auto commutes), and planning new center sites devoid of economic single home housing. Human scale architecture started going downhill after elevators and structural steel came along in the 1890s. The Depression stopped the building craze for a while, then after WWII, it picked up its pace as architects further eroded city building under the rubric of Modernism. Tall office buildings could keep hundreds of drone workers occupied while their owner manufacturers made extra money earning rental income from the upper floors. The value of city property increased too much for economic housing. Where did the workers live? Slumburbs. How did they commute? By GM buses, the company that destroyed just about all independent trolley lines, on roads and new superhighways subsidized by the government. Did sensible private electric trolley lines get any government help? NO! Case in point: Pacific Electric Railroad had 1,600 miles of track linking all of Los Angeles’ suburbs until the late 1920s. Pacific Electric was killed by GM. Today, LA has 150 miles either planned or built at a cost of roughly $10 billion. It will be super for anyone living within walking distance of a station. Pacific Electric had lots of stops, but as auto traffic increased, and crossed the tracks, collisions between trolleys and cars increased. Guess who lost the battle? Kunstler describes Detroit (probably the worst city in the US, Portland, Oregon (probably the best for regional planning), and Los Angeles (with the wonder if it will survive as a city at all). There is the possibility of better places, but to stop the absurdities of today’s irrational growth and replace it with sustainable development will take a wakeup call to every city’s citizens, a return to sensible politics without special interests, and a return to pre auto addiction days.

The Map That Changed the World, Simon Winchester, 2001. While it took a whole army of people to put the OED together, it took only William Smith, basically a canal digger, to put together a geological map of England and Wales in 1815 that allowed at least some human beings to escape the fog of religious dogma and understand a little about their origins. Smith was born on March 23, 1769, first son of a blacksmith, a bit more than 5,771 years after the earth was created. In England, at that time, what was the start of the industrial revolution had begun, and the underpinnings of the scientific method, observation, deduction, and rational thought, took over some of mythical explanations about the earth, its resources, the origin of life, and ultimately just where humans fit into the natural scheme of things. Smith’s father died when he was eight years old. His mother remarried. Smith ended up on his step father’s farm where dairymaids used what they thought were stones to weigh newly churned butter. A closer look by curious William held his interest. They were not stones. Fossils, known as early as the 1730’s, and their implications for religious dogma didn’t mix. But once coal mining started for use in producing steam and heat for developing industries, more fossils were found. Could the earth be more than 4,000 years old? Winnable coal in North Somerset County indicates from modern radiometric dating to have been laid down 310 to 290 million years ago! Fast forward. Smith spent a lot of time recording layered rock in coal mine shafts. The stratified layers, while they heaved up and down, were fairly consistent with each other. To move coal canals were built. Smith studied the rock formations along their routes. He also spent a lot of time inside of railroad tunnels, recording the uplift and down drift of the rock walls noticing that the layers followed consistent patterns. Bingo! Following the landscape on the surface, Smith drew over the years his geological map of the British Isles. Fast forward again. What makes the book an interesting read is the trials and tribulations that Smith went through before being recognized for his work against the many odds he faced as common born among the aristocrats.

The Professor and the Madman, Simon Winchester, 1998. It is not only an interesting account of the making of the Oxford English Dictionary, but carries with it the story of George Merrett’s accidental murder on February 17, 1872, by William Chester Minor in Victorian London’s crime-ridden Lambeth Marsh. Minor was sentenced to life, and after his interment in April 1872, was known as Broadmoor File Number 742. Why Minor murdered Merrett is covered in Winchester’s exploration of Minor’s history as a child born in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), and later as a US Army surgeon during the Civil War. Minor’s brief time spent at the Wilderness Battle in Virginia during General Grant’s attempt to crush the Confederate forces of Robert E. Lee in Northern Virginia didn’t go so well, and while it may have tipped the scales of Minor’s descent from sanity, there is some reason to question the events of his earlier life. James Augustus Henry Murray, the second primary figure in the OED’s origin, was born in 1837, Harwick, Scotland, a Teviot River valley town; and left school at 14 as did most poor children of the British Isles. Precocious, with a love of reading, an interest in just about everything, and more than just a flair for languages, by 15 he had a working knowledge of French, Italian, German, and Greek. James married Maggie Scott when he was 24. Two years later Anna was born, but died in fancy. When Maggie got ill shortly after Anna’s death, the couple was forced by economic circumstances to move to move to Peckham (near London) where Murray worked for the Chartered Bank of India. It looked like the end of his intellectual pursuit, however, two years later married Ada Ruthven, far more his social and intellectual equal, a point from which he rose to be known worldwide as one of its greatest philologists. While other dictionaries had been conceived and printed, none attempted the scope of OED. Winchester writes well of its conception, the problems associated with development, financing, and eventual printing of the current 20 volume tome. Just how did Murray and Minor meet in 1880? There are two versions of the story, one more romantic than realistic. Both are told. Minor’s condition declined as he aged. In 1910, Winston Churchill sighed for his discharge from Broadmoor, and return to the United States for continued confinement at St. Elizabeth’s Federal Hospital in Washington, DC, (Then known only as the Government Hospital for the Insane). James Murray passed away on July 26, 1915, before the completion of the OED. In 1919, William Minor was transferred to hospital for the elderly insane in Hartford, CT, known as The Retreat. He passed away on March 26, 1920.