i am late due to Friedrich Nietzsche, he keeps bumming me out.

Sorry colleagues,

I had to make a decision about what to put at the top of the list, this posting didn't make it this week - I promise I'll do better!

Crichton and I go way back (1994) to watching "ER" with my mom. She is a nurse who worked for 35 years in every conceivable nook and/or cranny of the medical world; I am a former adrenaline junky who went from working as a volunteer firefighter for five years in to the ER at what is now Regions Hospital (i.e. a very busy trauma center). Crichton has long known how to push many of my buttons, but I was and am convinced that he should have stuck to writing for television. I do not wish to engage in an attack on writing style, it's not what we're here to do, but I will go on the record saying I don't enjoy his books.

I will jump on the lawsuit bandwagon for a moment - Crichton is an MD and he knows all about lawyers and lawsuits. We are a nation of laws, ostensibly, we like it that way. But we have made a move toward, and Crichton uses this very effectively, becoming a nation which derives some its physical structure from the weight of its codes. Crichton utilizes our nation's fearful understanding of what it CAN mean to have a good cadre of lawyers and an unlimited budget: "The NERF, an American activist group, announced that it would join forces with Vanutu in the lawsuit, which was expected to be filed ... George Morton ... would personally finance ... more than $8 million" (xi). It matters not which side of an argument you are on when you have the money and the PR machine to make noise - Crichton plays on our knowing this, and it is an effective use of the national paradigm, fueled, codified, and acted upon by members of the legal profession.

"Of course he knew that these particular charts had been chosen to prove the opposition's point" (490) states what, for me, is the most salient point of this book, or any book, or any science or any argument. If my argument is timely, if I am in a good position to provide you with my authority and credentials, if you are the right public to hear what I am peddling, if I have selected my data carefully - I am - at least for the next news cycle - correct. The issue at hand does not matter, everybody has their ax to grind on any issue. Some people hold a position that is similar to yours, some are very much opposed to your values, but you can bet your bottom dollar that there is a data set out there that can be used to support your issue. All you need is the right seeing device, the correctly selected issue, a nice paradigmatic wind at your back and you are on your way. (A good lawyer wouldn't hurt, either).

Does this mean that you can never believe in data or science or paradigmatic winds? Be suspicious of data and science and always face into the winds of paradigm so you can see what is about to hit you in the face. We have never needed a healthy dose of skepticism more than we need it now.