9780743488280

Introduction: Engineering and the Truth Fairies	p. 1
Humanistic Religion: The Rush to Embrace Darwinism	p. 9
Science, Religion, and Logic	p. 11
Darwinism and the New Order	p. 13
The Triumph of the Enlightenment	p. 13
The Original in "Origins": Something for Everyone	p. 14
A Cultural Monopoly	p. 16
Sweeping Claims--and Reservations	p. 17
By Scaffolding to the Moon	p. 17
Rocks of Ages--The Fossil Record	p. 19
Slow-Motion Miracles. The Doctrine of Gradualism	p. 19
Life's Upside-Down Tree: The First Failed Prediction	p. 21
Flights of Fancy: The Birds Controversy	p. 25
Lines of Horses	p. 27
Keeping Naturalism Pure: Orthogenesis Wars	p. 30
Anything, Everything, and Its Opposite: Natural Selection	p. 31
Dissent in the Ranks: Logical Fallacy and Tautology	p. 31
Moth Myths. The Crowning Proof?	p. 33
The Origin of Originality? Genetics and Mutation	p. 34
Recombination: Answering the Wrong Question	p. 34
Random Mutation: Finally, The Key to New Things Under the Sun	p. 35
An Automated Manufacturing City	p. 36
The Blind Gunman: A Long, Hard Look at the Odds	p. 38
But it Happened! Science or Faith?	p. 40
Life as Information Processing	p. 41
Evolution Means Accumulating Information	p. 41
Bacterial Immunity Claims: A False Information Economy	p. 42
More Bacteria Tales: Directed Mutation	p. 44
And So, Back to Finches	p. 44
Confronting the Unthinkable	p. 45
Intelligence at Work? The Crux of It All	p. 46
Darwin's Black Box Opened: Biochemistry's Irreducible Complexity	p. 47
Acknowledging the Alternative: Intelligent Design	p. 50
Is Design Detectable?	p. 52
Philosophers' Fruit-Machine Fallacy	p. 54
Testing for Intelligence	p. 54
Section Notes	p. 58
Of Bangs and Braids: Cosmology's Mathematical Abstractions	p. 61
Mathematical Worlds--and This Other One	p. 63
Cosmologies as Mirrors	p. 63
Matters of Gravity: Relativity's Universes	p. 65
An Aside on Spectra and Redshifts	p. 66
A Universe in the Red and Lemaitre's Primeval Atom	p. 67
After the Bomb: The Birth of the Bang	p. 69
Gamow's Nuclear Pressure-Cooker	p. 69
Hoyle and Supernovas as "Little Bang" Element Factories	p. 71
The Steady-State Theory	p. 72
The Cosmic Background Radiation: News but Nothing New	p. 73
Quasar and Smoothness Enigmas: Enter, the Mathematicians	p. 75
The Plasma Universe	p. 78
Hannes Alfven, the Pioneer: Cosmic Cyclotrons	p. 78
The Solar System as a Faraday Generator	p. 80
A Skater's Waltz Among the Planets	p. 81
Solar System to Galaxy	p. 83
Peratt's Models and Simulations: Galaxies in the Laboratory	p. 84
An Explanation for X-ray Flashes	p. 85
Eric Lerner and the Plasma Focus	p. 86
Going All the Way: Galaxies to the Universe	p. 88
Older Than the Big Bang	p. 89
Other Ways of Making Light Elements	p. 90
And of Producing Expansion	p. 91
Redshift Without Expansion at All	p. 93
Molecular Hydrogen: The Invisible Energy-Absorber	p. 93
The Ultimate Heresy
Questioning the Hubble Law	p. 95
Halton Arp's Quasar Counts	p. 95
Taking on an Established Church	p. 98
Eyes Closed and Eyes Open: Professionals and Amateurs	p. 101
Quasar Cascades: Redshifts as a Measure of Galaxy Age	p. 102
What Happens to the Distances?	p. 104
What Causes Redshift? Machian Physics and the Generalization of GRT	p. 105
The God of the Modern Creation Myth	p. 108
Section Notes	p. 110
Drifting in the Ether: Did Relativity Take A Wrong Turn?	p. 111
Some Basics	p. 115
Reference Frames and Transforms	p. 115
Inertial Frames	p. 116
Extending Classical Relativity	p. 117
Problems with Electrodynamics	p. 117
Maxwell's Constant Velocity	p. 119
Michelson, Morley, and the Ether That Wasn't	p. 121
Lorentz's Transforms for Electromagnetics	p. 123
The New Relativity	p. 124
Einstein: Transforming All of Physics	p. 124
Relativity's Weird Results	p. 126
Unifying Physics	p. 128
Dissident Viewpoints	p. 130
Elegant, Yes. But Is It Really Useful?	p. 130
Lorentz's Ether Revisited	p. 131
Entraining the Ether	p. 133
Field-Referred Theories	p. 135
Electromagnetic Mass: Increase Without Einstein	p. 137
Gravity and Electromagnetics	p. 140
Does "Time" Dilate? Or Do Clocks Run Slower?	p. 143
The Famous Faster-Than-Light Question	p. 145
Section Notes	p. 150
Catastrophe of Ethics: The Case for Taking Velikovsky Seriously	p. 151
Early Work: The Makings of an Iconoclast	p. 154
How It All Began: A Small Question About the Exodus	p. 154
Implications of Catastrophism	p. 158
Venus and the Cosmic Connection	p. 159
The Universal War God: Mars	p. 163
Worlds in Collision	p. 164
The End of Everything You Thought You Knew	p. 164
Science in Convulsion: The Reactions	p. 168
Testimony from the Rocks: Earth in Upheaval	p. 173
The Fossil Graveyards	p. 173
Earthmoving and Excavation	p. 174
Orthodoxy in Confusion	p. 175
Embarrassing Confirmations	p. 175
More Electrical Heresies: Charges and Counter-Charges	p. 178
A New View of Planets: Violent Origins; Rapid Change	p. 179
Rejected Call for Reappraisal	p. 181
The Planets Speak, Regardless	p. 184
Slaying the Monster: The AAAS Velikovsky Symposium, 1974	p. 188
A Glimpse of the Ground Rules	p. 189
Only the Data That's Fit to Print: The Venus Tablets	p. 193
Pronouncements from the Celestial Heights	p. 197
Carl Sagan: The Star Billing	p. 200
Sagan on Astronomy	p. 201
The Ejection of Venus by Jupiter	p. 201
Repeated Collisions Among the Earth, Venus, And Mars	p. 203
The Earth's Rotation	p. 204
Sagan on Terrestrial and Lunar Geology	p. 205
Terrestrial Geology And Lunar Craters	p. 205
Sagan on Planetary Biology and Chemistry	p. 207
Chemistry & Biology of the Terrestrial Planets	p. 207
Manna	p. 211
The Clouds of Venus	p. 212
Sagan on Planetary Physics and Surfaces	p. 214
The Temperature of Venus	p. 214
The Craters of Venus	p. 218
The Circularization of the Orbit of Venus	p. 219
After the Inquisition: The Parallel Universe	p. 220
Section Notes	p. 223
Environmentalist Fantasies: Politics and Ideology Masquerading As Science	p. 225
Garbage In, Gospel Out
Computer Games and Global Warming	p. 231
A Comfortable Natural Greenhouse	p. 232
Twiddling with Models	p. 233
Meanwhile, in the Real World...	p. 234
But the 0.5[degree]C Net Rise Is Still There: If the CO[subscript 2] Increase Didn't Do It, What Did?	p. 238
Global Greening	p. 243
The Bandwagon Rolls Regardless	p. 245
How the Real Scientists Feel	p. 247
Holes in the Ozone Logic: But Timely for Some	p. 248
Ozone Basics	p. 249
The Depletion Controversy	p. 251
Creating Catastrophe: The Wizards of Ozone	p. 256
A Few Coincidences	p. 258
Saving The Mosquitoes: The War On DDT	p. 262
Some Background Intelligence: Malaria	p. 262
Opening Assault: Silent Spring	p. 266
The Offensive Develops	p. 269
The 1971 EPA Hearings	p. 271
Well-Designed, Well-Executed Experiments: DDT as a Carcinogen	p. 271
A Plague of Birds	p. 276
Cracking Open the Eggshell Claims	p. 278
Everywhere, and Indestructible	p. 282
The Scientists' Findings and the Administrator's Ruling	p. 284
"Vitamin R": Radiation Good for Your Health	p. 286
Radiation Phobia	p. 286
"The Dose Makes the Poison": Hormesis	p. 287
Rip-Out Rip-Off: The Asbestos Racket	p. 292
Asbestos and the WTC Towers	p. 292
Insulated from Reality	p. 293
Makers and Takers	p. 295
Section Notes	p. 297
Closing Ranks: AIDS Heresy In The Viricentric Universe	p. 301
An Industry Out of Work	p. 304
Storm-Cloud Over the Parade	p. 306
Anatomy of an Epidemic	p. 309
Questioning the Infectious Theory	p. 310
The microbe must be found in all cases of the disease	p. 312
The microbe must be isolated from the host and grown in a pure culture	p. 312
The microbe must be capable of reproducing the original disease when introduced into a susceptible host	p. 313
The microbe must be found present in the host so infected	p. 313
Science by Press Conference	p. 313
Biology's Answer to Dark Matter? The Virus That Isn't There	p. 315
An Epidemic of AIDS Testing	p. 318
Testing for What?	p. 319
Biotechnology's Xerox Machine	p. 320
The Export Industry: Africa and Asia	p. 321
"Side Effects" Just Like AIDS: The Miracle Drugs	p. 324
Liquid Plumber: AZT	p. 324
Protease Inhibitors. Hype Uninhibited	p. 326
A Virus Fixation	p. 328
Section Notes	p. 330
Afterword: Gothic Cathedrals and the Stars	p. 331
Section Notes	p. 340
References & Further Reading	p. 341
Index	p. 355
List of Illustrations
The "Tree of Life" as envisioned in a Victorian textbook	p. 22
Increase in the number of animal phyla with time	p. 23
Binary Decision Tree	p. 56
Spectra: continuous and line	p. 67
Simulation of plasma currents	p. 85
The radio galaxy Cygnus A	p. 87
Galaxy and quasar counts by apparent magitude	p. 97
Quasar pair straddling Seyfert galaxy	p. 100
Nucleus of Seyfert galaxy Seyfert galaxy NGC4151	p. 102
Quantization of galactic redshifts	p. 105
Field lines around stationary and moving charges	p. 138
Terrestrial magnetosphere and hierarchy of magnetospheres	p. 142
Velikovskian orbits	p. 186
Babylonian Innana symbols	p. 194
Atmospheric carbon dioxide over the last 400 years	p. 235
U.S. and global temperature variations	p. 236
Predictions of greenhouse models versus observed values	p. 239
Temperature variations with solar activity for the last 250 years	p. 240
Climate record for the last 3,000 years	p. 242
Natural sources of chlorine compared to production of CFCs	p. 254
EPA version of ozone trends compared to natural cycle	p. 257
Ultraviolet flux. Nonexistent trend created by skewed data	p. 261
Effects of DDT on reproduction of quail and pheasant	p. 279
Radiation dose-response curve showing hormesis at low levels	p. 289
Comparisons of ionizing radiation sources	p. 291
Two faces of AZT	p. 325
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Kicking the Sacred Cow

0743488288

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