It's A Dog Eat Dog World

Week:  11
Mission:  Develop a celebrity cast.  I treated this as an all-time celebrity cast since I'm more up to date on old actors than current actors.
Book:  Thereby Hangs a Tail
Author:  Spencer Quinn
                                                Cast
Bernie:  Harrison Ford
Suzie:  Kim Basinger
Hippies:  Christopher Lloyd, John Lennon
Count Borghese:  John Travolta (not as a young guy; current)
Nancy:  Dana Torres
Earl Ford:  John Wayne
Les Ford:  Johnny Depp
Colonel Bob:  McLean Stevenson
Chet:  Any large mutt that can be trained


Time Read:  5 hrs
    Total Books:  15
    Total Hours:  88

If This Was an Oops Week, Would My Extension Last Until Next Sunday?

Week:  10
Mission:  Prove to Mr. Strusz that I read over break.
Books:  The Case for a Creator, Dog on It, The Centurion's Wife, Into the Wild
Authors:  Lee Strobel, Spencer Quinn, Davis Bunn & Janette Oke, Jon Krakauer

     I believe that we have spent more than enough time discussing The Case For a Creator.  Let us move on with our lives.  Suffering from a non-fiction overdose, I decided to go in the opposite direction with a book that had no real moral or literary value, Dog on It.  Two detectives, Chet and Bernie, find themselves investigating the disappearance of a teenager named Madison Chambliss.  Encounters with bikers, Russian gangsters, and a drug dealer are narrated by Chet as he follows wherever Bernie, his nose, or his stomach leads.  This book is perfect for anyone with an appreciation for dry humor and a love for canines--did I mention that Chet is a dog?
     The Centurion's Wife is historical fiction, set in and around Jerusalem in 33 AD.  Alban, a Gaul, has been commanded by Pontius Pilate and Herod Antipas to investigate the disappearance of the body of the prophet who had been crucified to preserve the powder keg known as Jerusalem.  In return, Alban is promised the hand of Pilate's niece, a strategic marriage in line with the centurion's ambitions.  Leah, faithful servant of Pilate's wife, has been ordered by Procula to infiltrate the band of disciples following the prophet  that invades her mistress's dreams.  Leah abandons all hope of an endurable life when she is informed that she will be marrying an unknown centurian.  She fears that, like her sisters, she will be chained to a man who does not care about her and views her as a pawn to be manipulated for the sake of success.  Will Alban find acceptance and love?  Will Leah be able to trust a man?  Will they find the truth about this prophet, and if they discover the unthinkable, will they allow this message to control their lives?  Well, duh.  Why else would this book be written?  Nice how the title didn't give that away.

The bus where Chris McCandless lived in Alaska .

     Into the Wild is non-fiction about Chris McCandless, a college graduate who traveled western North America with only a backpack, living off the land and occasionally joining civilization for a few months before feeling the need to move on.  His last great adventure was attempting to survive in the Alaskan wilderness.  He lasted over 100 days, but made two fatal mistakes.  He knew that wild potato plant roots were safe to eat, but did not know that the seed pods of the same plant were toxic.  His second mistake was not having a map.  If he did, he would have known that there was an abandoned zipline downstream that he could have used to cross the river to safety and civilization.

Books read:  14
Time this week:  24 hrs
Total time:  83 hrs

Great Expectations

Week:  9

Mission:  Evaluate Expectations vs. Reality

Book:  The Case for a Creator

Author:  Lee Strobel

     I expected this book to be like The Case for Christ; in fact, that's why I decided to read it.  It's not.  This book is science, science, science.  I breezed through The Case for Christ.  This book, especially the physics chapter, is occasionally slow reading, and that's the opinion of someone enrolled in chemistry, physics, anatomy, and GTA II.  I thought about dropping it, but stubbornness and interest won.  I'll likely finish it by my next post, but no promises.
     I expected Lee Strobel to be a fundamentalist, so I was surprised that, in this book, the Big Bang and idea that the Earth is millions of years old are often taken for granted as facts compatible with Genesis.

The components of a bacterium's motor.

     In some ways, this book has exceeded my expectations.  I never expected it to be so beautifully educational.  I read some sections and think, "That's so cool.  My mind has been blown."  Did you ever wonder why the Earth tilts on its axis?  Well, without the moon, the tilt would vary from 0 to 85 degrees.  That's not good.  Did you ever wonder why Earth doesn't get blasted by numerous comets?  Fortunately, we have a cosmic shield, a sphere with a mass over 300 times greater than that of Earth--Jupiter.  Mars and the moon also contribute defensive surface area.  What's the most amazing motor in existence, capable of 10,000 rpm?  It happens to be microscopic and power the flagella of bacteria.

Time this week:  2 hrs
Total time:  59 hrs
Books read:  10

Theory vs. Science

Week: 8
Book:  The Case for a Creator
Author:  Lee Strobel
Mission:  Identify antagonists
Antagonists:  Myths and Lies
     At the beginning of the book, Lee Strobel takes on four principal evolutionary arguments: 

The Tree of Life, Cambrian Explosion not included.

• The Stanley Miller Experiment--In 1953 Stanley Miller reproduced the earth's early atmosphere, shot "lightning" through it, and produced amino acids, the building block of life. 
• Darwin's "Tree of Life"--This summarizes Darwin's idea that life developed from one ancestor, the root, and resulted in many branches of species.  This change took place gradually over long periods of time. 
• Ernst Haeckel's embryo drawings:  Ernst Haeckel drew embryos of various vertebrates at three stages in their development to show the similarities in embryonic structure.

• 

  Archaeopteryx

  Archaeopteryx:  This half-bird and half-reptile fossil is the "missing link" between reptiles and birds.  

Antagonists exposed:

• The Stanley Miller Experiment:  The environment used was a hydrogen-rich mixture of methane, ammonia, and water vapor, which was scientifically correct at the time.  That was 1953.  Today, scientists believe that the environment contained very little hydrogen, which would have escaped into space.  Instead, it consisted of carbon dioxide, water vapor, and nitrogen.  If the experiment had used the correct gases, the result would not have been amino acids.  According to Jonathan Wells, Phd, Phd, who studied at both Berkeley and Yale, some textbooks misleadingly report that the result would be organic molecules, not mentioning that these molecules are formaldehyde and cyanide--embalming fluid.
• Darwin's "Tree of Life":  The key to this theory is slow development over time.  The fossil record has shown that this theory cannot be true, most noticeably in the case of the Cambrian explosion.  Before this geological time period, the fossils are "jellyfish, sponges, and worms" (p. 44)  At the beginning of the Cambrian, arthropods and chordates quickly appear, directly contradicting the tree.
• The Embryo Drawings: Haeckel deliberately chose embryos that appear similar.  For example, he represents amphibians with a salamander instead of a frog (frogs embryos appear much less similar), and his most circulated diagram depicts four placental mammals.  The most important dishonesty is the fact that what is labeled the "early" stage  of embryonic development is actually the midpoint.  At early stages of development, these embryos are actually less similar, which essentially takes away any support that they offer the theory of evolution.
• Archaeopteryx:   This fossil is a bird with modern feathers, not a half-bird, half-reptile creature.  In addition, Dr. Wells says, "Birds are different from reptiles in many important ways--their breeding system, their bone structure, their lungs, their distribution of weight and muscles.  It's a bird, that's clear."  More importantly, in an area of study known as cladistics, it is taught that birds evolved from reptiles.  In the fossil record, reptiles with bird-like bodies are found "millions of years after archaeopteryx...the missing link is still missing!"  Furthermore, the archaeopteryx isn't even an ancestor of modern birds--it's a member of an extinct species.  

Books Read:  10
Hours Read:  3
Total Time:  57