Books, Magazines, Movies, Music

Amazon ^ | March 2004 | Anatoly T. Fomenko

[SunkenCiv]

History: Fiction or Science? by Anatoly T. Fomenko

[SunkenCiv]

I plan to use this thread to post books and the like that interest me. As far as I can tell, this is going to be in the 'blogger section of FR. If it hasn't turned out that way, don't write in, okay?

This book is a great big load of crap. Among other things, the author claims that Thucydides was medieval, that King Arthur was Russian, and that none of the historical medieval British kings existed per se. IOW, he's an a-hole.

---

George W. Bush will win reelection by a margin of at least ten per cent.

---

[SunkenCiv]

[my old comment] It's like blowing the dust off a long-lost bottle of wine, or somethin'. Here's a book I've had for years in the library, beats me from where, maybe an estate sale. I was surprised that it was still around. I must add it to one of my listmanias...

The Scientist vs The Humanist ed by George Levine and Owen P. Thomas W W Norton & Co; (June 1963)

[SunkenCiv]

The First Scientist: A Life of Roger Bacon by Brian Clegg

[SunkenCiv]

I've never read the book, but watched my niece's copy of the DVD version of the movie. It's just plausible enough to suck me in, but whether it's true that Edmond James Windsor was Chuck Barris' real father, and was really a serial killer, and went to the electric chair in 1939, isn't immediately clear to me. Barris is an entertainer, after all, and other than his well-known TV shows also is known as the writer of a number two pop song.

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind Sam Rockwell, George Clooney paperback hardcover

[SunkenCiv]

Raised Catholic. His bit on the 72 virgins was pretty funny. As we all know, he is proud to have GWB as his president. See my review of this DVD, under my Amazon nick, "HolyOlio".

Raw Feed by Dennis Miller

[GeronL]

Can you find me a history book written in the 20's or 30's without all the leftist bias?

[SunkenCiv]

in observance of the 30th anniversary of his death, a new album, with a name taken from one of his worst songs:

Made to Love Magic Nick Drake

[GeronL]

and no... I doubt you look anything like Barnes, Nobles or Amazons

[SunkenCiv]

I highly recommend this book (see my Amazon review); da Vinci and Machiavelli lived in Florence during the time of the Medici, and worked together on the project described. I'd never heard of the project, and it had never crossed my mind that the two men knew each other. Two biographies in one, good read, good value:

Fortune Is a River: Leonardo Da Vinci and Niccolo Machiavelli's Magnificent Dream to Change the Course of Florentine History by Roger D. Masters

[SunkenCiv]

see my review, "Been Done, Earlier, and Better":

Solving the Exodus Mystery by Ted Stewart

[SunkenCiv]

I got the first of these (also see the "in reply to" link) for Christmas, and checked the second out of the library early this year. The one from the library is fascinating, dealing as it does with the modern events surrounding the discovery of the tomb, skullduggery, the character of Howard Carter, etc:

	The Mysterious Death of Tutankhamun by Paul Doherty
	Tutankhamun: The Untold Story by Thomas Hoving

[SunkenCiv]

Well, you could just eschew books that old and read newer ones. :')

[SunkenCiv]

This magazine is of uneven quality, but still pretty good, worth subscribing to:

Ancient American

[SunkenCiv]

not sure I've reviewed it per se, but have loved this mag from the beginning. Same publisher as BAR, but does not have a Biblical focus. Beats the pants off "Archaeology" magazine, and basically it put "Discovering Archaeology" out of business, despite suppression by a certain bookstore chain, which shall remain nameless.

Archaeology Odyssey Biblical Archaeology Society

[SunkenCiv]

---

If It's Not Close, They Can't Cheat: Crushing the Democrats in Every Election and Why Your Life Depends on It by Hugh Hewitt FR topic

---

[SunkenCiv]

---

America B.C. by Barry Fell find it in a nearby library

Saga America by Barry Fell find it in a nearby library

Bronze-Age America by Barry Fell find it in a nearby library

Kon-Tiki Thor Heyerdahl DVD documentary

---

[SunkenCiv]

---

The Battle of Salamis: the Naval Encounter That Saved Greece -- and Western Civilization by Barry Strauss

---

[SunkenCiv]

---

Did the Greeks Believe in Their Myths? An Essay on the Constitutive Imagination by Paul Veyne

---

[SunkenCiv]

Officer and Page are a little infamous now having penned this title in which they claimed that no mass extinction per se has never taken place, the Chicxulub impact could not possibly have caused a mass extinction, and that no such impact even took place. I bought my copy off the remainder table. Jake Page is a ghostwriter specializing in science books, Charles Officer is a scientist with a little fluffy dog, and the two have collaborated on at least one other title (about global warming, gee, what a shocker):

---

The Great Dinosaur Extinction Controversy by Charles Officer and Jake Page

---

[SunkenCiv]

---

Science and Its Limits: The Natural Sciences in Christian Perspective Del Ratzsch Faith and Philosophy listmania

---

[SunkenCiv]

---

The Pyramids: An enigma solved by Joseph Davidovits online chapter hardcover French language edition

---

[blam]

"This magazine is of uneven quality, but still pretty good, worth subscribing to: "

I subscribe to this magazine.

Unfortunately, I've discovered that it has 'white supremist' roots. The editor-in-chief, Frank Joseph has a past affilation with the neo-Nazis and the guy (George Kadar) who wrote the very good article in the last issue titled, "The On-Going Saga Of Kennewick Man," is an officer in another of these groups. Be very cautious about what you read in this magazine. BTW, all the 'Burrows Cave' hoopla is phony.

[SunkenCiv]

Fascinating history of the library. Notes that the library was *not* burned by Julius Caesar, and in fact was around during Roman times, and was finally consigned to the flames by the Moslems:

---

The Vanished Library by Luciano Canfora tr by Martin Ryle

---

[SunkenCiv]

This is probably my favorite title by Lionel Casson, in any case a fine place to start reading his works. The discussion of the use of pork is worth the price.

---

Travel in the Ancient World by Lionel Casson

---

[SunkenCiv]

CD Universe had the graphic, many thanks to them. Wish this were on DVD...

---

Quest For The Lost Tribes Simcha Jacobovici, director

---

[SunkenCiv]

Matt Ridley wrote "Genome". Here's a review of his new one (may be a dead link):

Matt Ridley:
Nature via Nurture
by Stan Pinnegar
21.11.2003

Some scientists, he says, believe that chimpanzees do not have a theory of mind, that is, they cannot imagine what another chimp is thinking. But studies show ambiguity. Chimps, we are told, regularly engage in deception. A baby chimp, for example, pretended he was being attacked by an adolescent so his mother would let him suckle her. Baboons, the author tells us, have performed well enough at computer discrimination tasks to show they are capable of abstract reasoning.

In the chapter The Madness of Causes we learn about such mental illnesses as bipolar disorder and, in Blame Mother, schizophrenia. The author makes the sobering point that heritability of schizophrenia is high in Western society, roughly 80 per cent, or about the same as body weight and much more than personality. And did you know that a mouse has 1036 olfactory sensors in its nose?

Here's the book:

---

Nature Via Nurture: Genes, Experience, and What Makes Us Human by Matt Ridley

---

[SunkenCiv]

Virtually met the author on another forum. He uses the conventional pseudochronology of Egypt, and makes a mountain out of a molehill, claiming that the Bronze Age came to an end due to an (unattested) smallpox epidemic. Vanity publisher (so are the other dozen or more titles by the author):

---

The Tragic End of the Bronze Age: A Virus Makes History by Tom Slattery

---

[blam]

"Virtually met the author on another forum. He uses the conventional pseudochronology of Egypt, and makes a mountain out of a molehill, claiming that the Bronze Age came to an end due to an (unattested) smallpox epidemic. Vanity publisher (so are the other dozen or more titles by the author): "

The tree rings (worldwide) of that period indicate some type of catastrophe caused a 'dark age' that affected everything. Viruses can't do that.

[SunkenCiv]

Yeah, the Burrows Cave "artifacts" are laughably bad hoaxes. This is a natural consequence though of more than a century of the suppression and degradation of the copious evidence for precolumbian navigation in, to, and from the Americas by various maritime peoples, not even beginning with the Maritime Archaic.

Homing In On The Red Paint People
by Angela M.H. Schuster

Buried between 4400 and 3300 B.P., the dead--along with offerings of tools, animal bones, carved animal effigies, and small, white quartz pebbles--were covered in red ochre, earning them the moniker the "Red Paint People."

The Mystery of the Lost Red Paint People

Maritime Archaic Tradition

The origins of the Southern Branch Maritime Archaic people are obscure. Shortly before 6,000 years ago a new stone tool complex appears in southern Labrador. The people who made these tools preferred locally-available cherts and rhyolites to the quartz, quartzite and Ramah chert of the Northern branch people. By about 5,000 or 4,500 years ago these people had become established on the coast of southern Labrador and parts of the central coast... The Southern branch people were the first humans to colonize the Island of Newfoundland.

---

Red Paint People: A Lost American Culture by Bruce Bourque

---

[SunkenCiv]

Articles from the August issue will be on the PM.Zone in the second week of August.

This article suggests that the sudden interest in cold fusion is due to concern about "suitcase H-bombs" which are otherwise impossible to build.

---

Popular Mechanics

---

[SunkenCiv]

[reprised from a thread where it wasn't too relevant] I really didn't think "You've Got Mail" was very good at all, paling by comparison with "Sleepless in Seattle". Then I got "When Harry Met Sally" nice and cheap, and realized that "Sleepless" was like a high school play. The Ephron sisters are mostly doltlike most of the time, IMHO.

---

---

[ValerieUSA]

Oops, I answered in irrelevancy, instead of here. Now I shall answer in redundancy:

Yeah, no cars blow up. Chick Flicks.

Mostly doltlike most of the time --- that's intense doltism!

The repeating convenient storyline of conveniently loveless and therefore amicably broken convenient prior love relationships in "Sleepless" and "Mail" which facilitated the true love relationships was a simple tool and signified shallowness in the characters and expediency to the happy ending we all waited too long for.... and both movies neglected all of that nasty relationship development stuff which happens after the big moment of discovery.
Pulp romance fiction. Same formula.
Fini

[SunkenCiv]

Reply-to names obtained from The Revision of Ancient History - A Perspective and the much newer Study: Dinosaurs Died Within Hours After Asteroid Hit

---

	Ages in Chaos by Immanuel Velikovsky
	Oedipus and Akhnaton Myth and History by Immanuel Velikovsky
	Ramses II And His Time by Immanuel Velikovsky
	Peoples of the Sea by Immanuel Velikovsky
	Worlds In Collision by Immanuel Velikovsky
	Stargazers and Gravediggers:> Memoirs to Worlds in Collision by Immanuel Velikovsky
	Earth in Upheaval by Immanuel Velikovsky
	Mankind in Amnesia by Immanuel Velikovsky

---

I've had a long interest in Velikovsky, dating back to the early 1970s. Lately I've been reading the following title, which provides a nice synopsis of "Ages In Chaos", the aspect of V's work that most interests me:

---

The Synchronized Chronology: Rethinking Middle East Antiquity by Roger Henry hardcover Adobe Reader digital version d/l website The California Institute for Ancient Studies (very Velikovsky-like)

---

NOT A PING LIST, merely posted to: AndrewC; Avoiding_Sulla; chilepepper; Eastbound; Lucius Cornelius Sulla; medved; Swordmaker; the_Watchman; VadeRetro; vannrox

[SunkenCiv]

Click the link(s) below to see my review. I wrote it under the name "HolyOlio".

---

Solving the Exodus Mystery Vol. 1: Discovery of the True Pharaohs of Joseph, Moses, and the Exodus by Ted T. Stewart

---

NOT A PING LIST, merely posted to: FairOpinion; StayAt HomeMother; Blam

[FairOpinion]

Thanks!

This is great stuff.

I went to your home page and noted that you are one of the top book review writers -- and I see you are reviewing intersting books.

I'll go and read your reviews. I am also bookmarking this thread. :)

[Eastbound]

Not sure what the blog rules are, as I never posted on one before. But thanks for the ping. Trust this will end up as a treasure trove for all of us who are still interested in the origins of man and creation in general.

While I am here, may I mention "The Lost Book of Enki,' by Zecharia Sitchin. The Memoirs and Prophecies of an Extraterrestrial God. (Fiction/Mythology) I think it is his latest book. It is written as prose and attempts to portray the key points of his research in a highly condensed chronology covering his entire works -- and what I think is a creative piece of writing, but alas, I fear, one that only a Sitchin fan would enjoy.

Connects some dots, expands the archeological/astro-archeological playing fields, and if nothing else, is great science-fiction. I've read all of the Sitchin material several times and it currently serves as my ancient world view, subject to alteration and modification, of course, as a proper response to the continuing stream of new evidence which confirms or disputes any aspect of the material.

Sorry if this is not appropriate for your blog. In which case, please delete. Thanks again and please keep me on your ping list.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks! The way the rankings on Amazon move around suddenly, I have to conclude there is some skullduggery going on. Sometimes it's just a matter of having an ISBN dropped, which cuts off the votes one used to have. I've noticed that my reviews sometimes disappear, and sometimes that's because the title is gone, republished with a new number. In the past, Amazon would recycle the reviews, but they no longer do that conscientiously. Sometimes the disappearances are due to some other problem, such as the action of a pair of authors who objected to my review of a competing title. At least, that's what I heard tell through a coauthor of the competing title. She's a nut though. ;') In any case, I hope my reviews warrant some more "helpful" votes from you and others here on the FR.

Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on or off the "Gods, Graves, Glyphs" PING list --
Archaeology/Anthropology/Ancient Cultures/Artifacts/Antiquities, etc.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks! I'll be happy to ping ya when it seems to be warranted.

[SunkenCiv]

Uh-boy. I'd already posted the Stewart title, and forgot.

[SunkenCiv]

I compiled these links for a post in another thread, but repost them here (see also the "in reply to" link):

---

---

[SunkenCiv]

This is the series on which the book was based (not the other way around), and it's on DVD at last! While shopping for hours I saw this at Best Buy and jumped! I didn't buy it though, a little pricey, instead using a gift card I got for my birthday (the enormous chain bookstore). I added this to my Order from Chaos listmania, moved the book (see the "in reply to" link here) to the second spot, and hope the blockbuster movie starring the politically reprehensible Brad Pitt will juice interest. :')

In Search of the Trojan War by Michael Wood

---

[SunkenCiv]

Only one hardcover left in stock, and the ppbk is cheaper:

---

Race and Human Evolution by Milford Wolpoff and Rachel Caspari

Race and Human Evolution (hardcover)

---

[ValerieUSA]

I promised my neighbor I would watch the movie, Freda, with her tonight. So off I go to see Salma Hayak with a unibrow, which will probably totally distract me from the storyline.

[SunkenCiv]

Kahlo was not talented at all, her work sucks, belongs on velvet, sold from trucks parked at abandoned corner gas stations. She was married (I believe) to the so-called social-realist painter who plastered all that socialist propaganda over everything he painted. And she was, uh, unattractive. But by all means, I hope you enjoy the movie. ;')

[SunkenCiv]

[reprise]

John Lewis, writing in the title shown, suggests that the way to avoid our own extinction would be to identify threatening space rocks, then mine them out of existence, defraying expenses from the sale of the processed ores. A run of the mill asteroid often has more mineral wealth than has ever been mined. Trick will be to make it cheap to bring down. Getting the equipment (probably robotic) to the asteroid needs to be cheap; and ideally, a more or less permanent asteroid station at which the automatic machinery will be designed, tested, and manufactured, makes the most sense.

---

Rain of Iron and Ice: The Very Real Threat of Comet and Asteroid Bombardment by John S. Lewis Hardcover

---

[ValerieUSA]

YIKES! Well, I was reminded just how dangerous, ugly, selfish, elitist, irrational, compromised, indulgent, churlish and childish are the roots of the communist revolution around the world. They celebrate their godlessness with debauchery as if that makes them superior beings because they are true to themselves, especially when their true selves cause pain to everyone who ever loved or supported them. How admirable.
Frida was in pain, but that does not excuse her "art," or the IDIOTS who find value in it today. She is dead, and should remain that way.

[AndrewC]

Thanks for the ping!

[SunkenCiv]

[emphasis added below] See the "in reply to" link for a video which includes shots of one of the *three* surviving Aramaic pillars of Ashoka.

The Edicts of King Ashoka
An English Rendering by Ven. S. Dhammika

Asoka's edicts are to be found scattered in more than thirty places throughout India, Nepal, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Most of them are written in Brahmi script from which all Indian scripts and many of those used in Southeast Asia later developed. The language used in the edicts found in the eastern part of the sub-continent is a type of Magadhi, probably the official language of Asoka's court. The language used in the edicts found in the western part of India is closer to Sanskrit although one bilingual edict in Afghanistan is written in Aramaic and Greek. Asoka's edicts, which comprise the earliest decipherable corpus of written documents from India, have survived throughout the centuries because they are written on rocks and stone pillars. These pillars in particular are testimony to the technological and artistic genius of ancient Indian civilization. Originally, there must have been many of them, although only ten with inscriptions still survive. Averaging between forty and fifty feet in height, and weighing up to fifty tons each, all the pillars were quarried at Chunar, just south of Varanasi and dragged, sometimes hundreds of miles, to where they were erected.

The Edicts of King Ashoka An English Rendering by Ven. S. Dhammika

[SunkenCiv]

Posted this in another thread a while ago, and got some surprising reactions. :') No one asked, "how do we thank him?" ;') This has a real tabloid vibe to it, but may be okay.

Nemesis: The True Story of Aristotle Onassis, Jackie O, and the Love Triangle That Brought Down the Kennedys by Peter Evans

[SunkenCiv]

Here's a reprise of a post I made elsewhere today:

Many of these links may be dead by now, and last I knew the book was out of print by a mile:

Lanai Tsunami Deposit
by Volcano World

This is the deposit left by a giant tsunami as it washed up the south coast of Lana'i. The deposit consists of beach boulders plus coral fragments and sand, and extends to about 100 meters above sea level. Here it is about 4 meters thick.

The Hilina Slump a.k.a. "The Big Crack"
by Wiliam Corliss

A 4,760 cubic mile chunk of the Big Island (Hawaii) is breaking away at the rate of 4 inches per year. This is the Hilina Slump, and it is said to be "the most rapidly moving tract of ground on Earth for its size." The Hilina Slump can move much faster. At 4:48 AM, November 29, 1975, a 37-mile-wide section suddenly dropped 11* feet and slid seaward 26 feet. The result was a magnitude-7.2 quake and a 48-foot-high tsunami. This was a minor of the slump. If the entire 4,760-cubic-mile block decided to break off, it would probably create a magnitude-9 quake and a tsunami 1,000-feet high. All the coast-hugging cities of the Hawaiian Islands would be swept away. And LOOK OUT Australia, Japan, and California.

Japan faces tidal wave threat

Scientists in Japan have discovered a fault in the seabed off the country's coast with the potential to unleash a giant "tsunami" tidal wave. The newly-detected fault lies off the south-eastern coast of Japan and may have been responsible for the magnitude 8.1 earthquake which struck the country in 1944, they say... The fault is close enough to the Japanese coast for there to be only minutes between a substantial earthquake along it and the tsunami reaching land... Jin-Oh Park and his colleagues believe that the fault they have found may have been responsible not just for a magnitude 8.1 quake in 1944, but a nearby magnitude 8.3 quake two years later.

Giant Tsunami Would Follow Predicted Canary Isles Eruption

The computer model, compiled in collaboration with Steven Ward of the University of California, Santa Cruz, predicts that the tsunami will have a height of 100 metres (330ft) from crest to trough when it crashes into the shores of nearby north-west Africa. By the time it reached its final destination, the east coast of Florida and the Caribbean islands, the tsunami would still be up to 50 metres high.

The drowning wave
by Tristan Marshall

Any day now, a gargantuan wave could sweep westwards across the Atlantic towards the coast of North America. A mighty wall of water 50 metres high would hit the Caribbean islands, Florida and the rest of the eastern seaboard, surging up to 20 kilometres inland and engulfing everything in its path. If you thought the tsunamis that periodically terrorise the Pacific Ocean were big, consider this: the Atlantic wave will be five times bigger. It will start its journey 6000 kilometres away, when half an island crashes into the sea.

Landslide
by Jonathan Knight
7 August 1999

Everyone realised that dropping something the size of New York City into the ocean would kick up a big wave, but it was only when Moore returned to Hawaii to explore the island of Lanai that he realised just how big. On the south side of the island, limestone boulders were scattered, some as much as 100 metres above sea level. Since the island itself is made of volcanic rock, the limestone could only have come from coral reefs beneath the sea surface. Moore also found fields of coral and seashells as high as 120 metres. The piece of mountain that is shifting is much larger than the slide that soaked Lanai. It's more on the scale of the "Nuuanu" collapse that spun the New York-sized chunk of rock off Oahu more than 1 million years ago, says Julia Morgan, a geologist at the University of Hawaii's Manoa campus on Oahu, who has been watching the mountain closely.

Could sea slides occur off N.J. coast?

A computer simulation of the continental shelf 100 miles off the coast of New Jersey suggests that there may be pockets of water trapped under great pressure deep beneath the ocean floor. The study concluded that if such pressurized deposits of water exist, they could pose a threat of sudden undersea landslides. Peter B. Flemings and Brandon Dugan of Pennsylvania State University said even a small shaking of a mild earthquake could be enough for a sudden release of the water. That could cause undersea landslides down the side of the continental shelf. Such slides, involving many tons of sediment falling like an undersea avalanche down the side of a submerged mountain, have been known to cause tsunami waves.

Mt Pinatubo's brimming lake threatens thousands
by Joanna Marchant
25 July 01

This year has been particularly wet, and since the rainy season began in June the water level has been rising by up to a metre each week. The last time Rodolfo and Alonso flew over the lake in a military helicopter, they estimated that the water was only four metres from the lowest point of the crater wall, a V-shaped cleft called the Maraunot notch. Rodolfo and Alonso estimate that if the notch eroded down 10 metres, 30 million cubic metres of water would spill out. The water would probably mix with loose volcanic sediment on the way, hugely increasing its volume and creating a cement-like mixture knows as a "lahar". Rodolfo has seen fast-flowing lahars in action before. "It is a horrendous sight - horrifying and exceedingly beautiful." Engineering solutions to the threat include reinforcing the notch, or boring a tunnel into the crater to drain the lake. But the government says it is too late for such action now the rainy season has started. Rodolfo and Alonso believe this complacency could be disastrous and are now working with Oxfam to reach local agencies and people directly.

Asteroids and Tsunamis
by Michael Paine
5 November 1999

Tsunami can travel at around 400 mph in deep water. When they reach shallow water they slow down, and that's when the real danger begins. The front of the wave slows first and the effect is like a pile-up on a freeway, with the rear of the wave catching up to the front. The wave increases in height from this bunching effect. The final height of the wave depends on several factors, but the shape of the sea floor has the greatest impact.

Out There
by Louis A. Frank
and Patrick Huyghe

In the spring of 1986, I published my explanation of the black spots in a scientific journal: The Earth's atmosphere was being bombarded by house-sized, water-bearing objects traveling at 25,000 mph, one every three seconds or so. That's 20 a minute, 1,200 an hour, 28,800 a day, 864,000 a month and more than 10 million a year. These objects, which I call "small comets," disintegrate high above the Earth and deposit huge clouds of water vapor into the upper atmosphere. Over the history of this planet, the small comets may have dumped enough water to fill the oceans and may have even provided the organic ingredients necessary for life on Earth.

Scientists reacted to my announcement as if I had plowed through the sacred field of established science with a bulldozer. I had. If the small comets were real, one scientist commented, textbooks in a dozen sciences would have to be rewritten... I spent more than a year answering the objections of critics. But I didn't convince them. It was 10,000 to 1 -- actually 2, myself and John Sigwarth, whose task as my graduate student assistant had been to help me resolve this black-spot mystery. "We have taken a representative poll of current opinion in this field," an editor at Nature wrote in rejecting a small-comet paper we submitted to them in 1988, "and the verdict goes against you." It was my first encounter with taking polls as a way of doing science.

---

The Big Splash: A Scientific Discovery That Revolutionizes the Way We View the Origin of Life, the Water We Drink, the Death of the Dinosaurs, the Creation of the Oceans, the Nature of the Cosmos, and the Very Future of the Earth Itself by Louis A. Frank and Patrick Huyghe

---