On Friday, Lynas’s new book,The God Species, vanished from Amazon.co.uk. After discussing this with Amazon, Mark writes:
I now understand that Amazon is likely to have removed the book from sale because its automated systems received a number of similar complaints about the book. So a relatively small number of people, perhaps as few as five, can conspire to get a new work taken off Amazon’s web site. Amazon says it will quickly examine whether the complaints are justified but in the meantime potential customers arriving at its web site will be told the book is unavailable. The book’s reputation will be damaged because of the natural assumption that there is indeed something wrong with it that obliges Amazon to remove it from sale. Even if Amazon puts the book back on Monday afternoon, damage has been done.
For those who are curious about the book, I found it is available at the American branch of Amazon: The God Species.
Mark listed UK outlets in the update:
The Book Depository – The God Species (although this seller is apparently due to be bought by Amazon too?)
Waterstones.com – The God Species
Blackwells – The God Species
Foyles – The God Species
Word Power books – The God Species (independent online bookstore)
People in the UK who do wish to buy the book might take the time to write Amazon, and also inform them they have purchased the book elsewhere. I’ll be trying to check Mark’s site and let you know when Amazon.co.uk has relisted the book.
Update: 3:49 pm. Mark Lynas’s web site is returning this 403 Forbidden error message:
Forbidden
You don’t have permission to access / on this server.Apache/1.3.41 Ben-SSL/1.60 Server at www.marklynas.org Port 80
Hat tip Jeez.
Some people have been ‘reviewing’ it on Amazon, about Amazon.
Including Richard Betts (IPCC lead author working groupII)
https://twitter.com/#!/richardabetts
http://www.amazon.co.uk/product-reviews/000731342X/ref=cm_cr_dp_all_helpful?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending
Censorship?
No.
The hardcover sold by Amazon in the U.S. shows it to be available on November 1, 2011. There is a “new” Kindle version of July 7, 2011 available for immediate download in addition to an earlier (?) Kindle version available for download on November 1, 2011. The currently available version is significantly cheaper at $9.99.
So, the first question that comes to mind is whether all these versions are of the same book.
And now it appears (only appears) that Lynas’s website has been hacked. It could just be a server problem, but the timing is interesting.
What is the book supposed to be about, anyway? I’m not too interested, but it certainly has an interesting title.
If this can be taken as a foundational precept of the book, I don’t know why anyone would be interested.
Boris– I agree not censorship. The government isn’t prohibiting anything. But something very underhanded may be going on. Or it may just be a big screwup at Amazon. I posted because I think people who are interested in the book should be able to find stores where it is being sold and blogging is the best way to get that information out.
yguy– I’d read it.
The book is utter crap, but that is no reason to have it banned.
It is certainly no worse than “Time’s Up!”, the call to xenocide veneered in eco-righteousness.
It does seem to be available in the US market. So it is reasonable to conclude that it is only in the nanny state environments where this sort of censorship occurs.
While it would be appropriate to wonder if Mr. Lynas would fight for the right of a skeptical author to be heard, I would still support this bilious tome to be offered to the few who will actually find its ludicrous thesis credible.
Jeez–
Another hypothesis: So many people are clicking links in tweets and blog posts the server is swamped.
Odd – I don’t want to accuse anybody of a publicity stunt but a supposed “banning” of a book might assist sales. It would be peculiar for Amazon to not sell a book about the environment because it generated complaints.
Andrew FL–
This is the blurb describing it:
Do you believe humans are the creators of life on this planet?
And if not, what sort of person do you figure would say something like that?
Do you believe humans are the creators of life on this planet? And if not, what sort of person do you figure would say something like that?
yguy, these are good questions. Let’s watch and see if you get some answers. 😉
Andrew
Note that he said, creators and destroyers of life.
Destroyers? Most definitely. We can wipe out a good portion of the living organism on this planet if we are stupid enough to hit a few buttons here and there.
Creators? you bet we are. The trick is he is playing fast and loose with the language. I’ll suggest that bio engineering is a good example of creating “life”
So really its a play on the word “life”.
So, god species is sorta a metaphor of sorts. Not to be taken literally.. although some will.
Is that truly the premise of the book? I kind-of assumed it was a hyperbolic reference to our technological abilities, particularly in genetic modification.
The author seems to have tried to gore enough sacred cows to ensure that lots and lots of books will be purchased. Maybe I am just a little jaded, but the description does not sound to me like anything very novel, or even worth reading.
And I’ll suggest that modification is a far cry from creation, and that a thousand Einsteins couldn’t create a functioning blade of grass if they had a thousand years to do it.
Damned if I know. I’m just assuming it’s there by the author’s consent.
yguy—
As in original creator of life? No. As in: sculptors, yes.
Does the answer to this question have anything to do with my interest in reading the book? (No. I want to read it and I don’t need to figure out what sort of person Lynas is.)
Matt I agree that it’s got to be hyperbolic.
SteveF: The library is a wonderful place. I check out books. Sometimes I finish them. Sometimes I find them worthless after a quick skim. For that matter, I can skim books at Barnes and Noble. I’m just saying that the sentence that turns yguy off doesn’t put me off considering reading it.
“yguy (Comment #78894) July 9th, 2011 at 4:44 pm
yguy– I’d read it.
Do you believe humans are the creators of life on this planet?”
Yes, indeed. We are at the James Watt adding a condenser, Abraham Derby widening his furnace and using coke, Michael Faraday describing electromagnetism and Louis Pasteur discovering sterility, stage of the next industrial revolution.
We can make artificial organisms, we will soon be designing microorganisms to mass produce compounds we want; something only been done for alcohol, butanol, methane, pharmaceuticals and to get rid of things we don’t; bioremediation and biotransformation.
Growing organs, bones and limbs will common place in 2-3 decades. Cell specific targeting with drugs, DNA or sRNA is just beginning. Designing mammals will be easy, as will recreating extinct biotica.
I am 47, in another 47 years the usage of artificial organisms for the generation of simple and complex compounds in bulk, will be common place. These will be coupled with 3D printing machines that operate on the 10’s of nm level. At the same time computing power will be at a greater density that that of our brains.
yguy.
I think the mistake you are making is LITERALIZING his metaphor.
God, in most belief systems, is the “creator of life”
what he is playing on are the various shades of meaning and connotation in the words ‘create’ and ‘life.
For example. I may take “life’ to mean any “thing” that breeds and replicates.
On that definition, I create all sorts of “life” even when I write code that writes code. or shades of meaning of the word ‘create’, which of course include the word modify.
It’s a metaphor. Not to be taken literally. Think of it as the book of genesis.
err maybe not, perhaps that’s why you are literalizing it.
Now, will I buy the book? nope. Do I think humans ‘create’ and ‘destroy’ life?
ya.. does that make them ‘godlike’? sure, only smaller, stinkier, and some dont have beards.
I would fault him for inappropriate use of the definite article, actually. Human beings are not the only creators/destroyers of any form of life by any definition of these terms. Simple fix, delete the “the” and the sentence is now not claiming such a thing. Nitpicking? Absolutely. Das ist grammar!
Sensible priors vanish from Amazin’ IPCC. News @ 11. Reporting by sfitzpa.
==========================
Amazon has it back online now, short crisis, but lots of PR generated.
In case this guy’s site goes down again, he writes:
“I now understand indirectly from a high-level source in Amazon.co.uk that the complaints received about The God Species – which resulted in the book being taken offline by the company – may have been regarding its description as ‘hardback’ when in fact the copies sold are in a format known as ‘trade paperback’. This is not confirmed, and I have no evidence or confirmation in writing, but it seems most likely that this has not been the result of any malicious activity on the part of any individual, group of individuals or organisation. (This explanation also seems odd given that the screenshot below of the Amazon page when the book was offline clearly shows it listed as ‘paperback’ – so why anyone could have bought it expecting a hardback and then complained remains a mystery.)”
So meh.
Speaking of censorship, I was watching “Revenge of the Nerds” on cable the other night. The censoring was so very odd. They didn’t censor the word “shit” but they censored “douchebag.” Explain that.
Boris–
Hmm…. Maybe they are worried 7 year olds will ask their parents what a douchbag is, and the parents will be upset. All 7 year olds know what shit is. Just a theory. (Not claiming this really makes sense. Does censoring ever make sense?)
Anthony (Comment #78906)
Agreed! I’m going to reserve the book from the library in consequence.
Name one that started out as non-living matter which we made alive.
Growing watermelons has been commonplace for quite a bit longer than that, but I’ve never met a farmer with enough hubris to claim he created one.
Re: Boris (Jul 10 08:45),
Let’s see if Lucia censor’s this. These are frickin hilarious, expecially if you’ve every misheard lyrics..or spent time in asia
I poo Gold!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUFQ-Wn8J9Y
Similarly, one may define “justice” as access to procedural due process without regard to substantive due process, thus severing any connection between the word and the transcendent reality it represents. The question is why anyone would do so absent the intent to deceive.
Claiming we should wield God-like powers, even done half-seriously or metaphorically is dangerous territory. It’s at best a confusion to communicate stuff like this and it only goes downhill from there. 🙁
Andrew
Its funny how you guys want to be language gods.
yguy: It’s funny how you think there is a transcendental reality that words refer to. Of course in some kinds of discourse ( like legal discourse) metaphor is eschewed. However, metaphor cannot be eradicated from discourse, which is to say that there is no way of absolutely controlling discourse, even legal discourse. Which is to say there is no way to outlaw metaphor. Yes, we do argue over the meaning of legal terms. Ask yourself why. If there was a transcendental reality controlling discourse, then one needs a theory of mis interpretation. How do we disagree about the meanings of things? I know….., you are out of touch with the transcendental reality.. or is me who is out of touch? Kinda hard to settle that debate by merely “pointing” at that “external” reality that language is supposed to refer to. As I said we can note that metaphor in legal discourse is avoided ( not eliminated) and that has less to do with the structure of language and meaning and more to do with the behavior of people. The behavior of people ( supreme court says some sentences cannot be said to imply other sentences ) controls discourse; transcendental realities ( whatever they are ) do not.
Meaning is not inherent in the sign.
Andrew: So we should not wield god like powers? funny I thought being christ like was the whole point of christianity. This is an old debate. Have you ever read the original faust story? People used to think that knowledge was a bad thing, that trying to understand the world on your own ( rather than through the authority of the church) was evil. let me suggest that you read my old friend
Erich Heller (RIP) on the original faust legend
you can just google ‘Faust’s Damnation: The Morality of Knowledge
or the original Faust legend.
so ya we are talking about original sin on a climate blog.
lucia will give the catholic perspective.
Good link, mosh. Hadn’t seen that one. But I’m familiar with Benny Lava, which is good if you’ve never seen it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdyC1BrQd6g
Steven Mosher,
Christ’s command was that we love one another, not to wield earthly powers. In fact, He even said not to worry about the day’s troubles. And things like ‘blessed are the meek.’
Andrew
I do believe I smell projection, old bean.
No, what’s funny is how you think there isn’t.
Did that some time ago, thanks anyway.
Non sequitur. All one needs is a connection with that reality – and a 5 year old is more likely to have it than his dad who is a college professor.
Sure it’s hard, when dealing with someone who denies that reality.
Then we have a government by men rather than by rule of law, and all roads lead to despotism.
“yguy (Comment #78909) July 10th, 2011 at 9:37 am
We can make artificial organisms,
Name one that started out as non-living matter which we made alive.”
Mycoplasma laboratorium.
Totally synthetic Mycoplasma based genome + Denucleated bacterium (dea) =
Life.
More of a Baron Frankenstein creation than doing all the tedious synthetic proteins, but it worked.
BTW Essentially everything you eat is the product of thousands of years of unnatural selection, all the fruits and vegetables we eat have been hugely changed from their wildtypes; including watermelons which have had continuous human cultivation and selection for 5,000 years.
If this book is as it has been described to be by booksellers, then it seems to just be another in the tired old meme of (my words) ‘humankind at unprecedented dangerous crossroads, only a new order of ideological environmentalist insiders can guide us through the as yet unknowable uncertainties and we need to act now before we destroy the earth as we know it.’
{That sounds like PNS . . .}
It seems to bring up the image of a bearded naked guy wearing a sandwich board sign that says ‘we are doomed unless you give me money (book price).’. The guy is grinning and dancing a little jig as his Ipod plays REM’s classic rock tune ‘Its the End of the World As We Know It’.
So I think no thank you, will not read it based on that. I will reconsider reading it if new info about it comes along . . . like a positive review from someone with a track record of accurate independent thinking.
John
Re: Boris (Jul 10 11:50), Benny Lava ha. thats great. I prefer the asian ones. Once when I was in china I was shocked cause I kept hearing people say the N word. ha. Silly me, it was chinese.
Re: yguy (Jul 10 13:10),
if you think that we have a rule of law, then you are forgetting the men and women who get to decide what that law “means”. In any case your words have not convinced me.
DocMartyn,
you are saying that NO organics at all were used in the creation of the genome?? I believe you are mispeaking there. My understanding is that this was another puzzle that used known pieces for assembly.
http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/2007/10/08/created-new-life
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left_Handed_protein#In_biology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycoplasma_laboratorium
While you can say that the actual sequences were put together “synthetically” it still required organics to allow them to do that. Until we figure out the chirality issue we can’t say we even know how to COPY life.
Well, that and they are still using KNOWN sequences even if they are assembling them “synthetically.” We are still at the tinkertoy stage where we are using ready made building blocks and known blueprints to build simple constructs.
Re: Andrew_KY (Jul 10 13:03), Well Andrew show the author some love, dont live in judgement of him. dont cast the first stone. all fall short of the glory of god you know. you know what it means to be made in the image of? yes, i could well argue that man is a metaphor for god. Made in the image of. But today is sunday, go in peace.
Why does the wikipedia article say it’s “a planned partially synthetic species of bacterium”?
While talking about mondegreens and douchebags: anyone remembers “wrapped up like a douche” (form the song Blinded by the Light).
Not under the Constitution, they don’t. Judges get to decide how the law applies in a specific case – or as J. Roberts put it, call balls and strikes. No judge gets to extend the strike zone to the batter’s toes, or make it as wide as he is tall.
Not sure what I’m supposed to be convincing you of, but I’m OK with my answers, as far as they go.
Re: yguy (Jul 10 17:10),
Nice in theory, but often fails in practice. See the whole “living constitution” debate. I also give you Roe v. Wade, or almost any case involving the commerce clause as justification. Almost, because there’s a slight hope that the Supremes may limit the seemingly infinite flexibility of the commerce clause to justify federal intervention when deciding the suit over the Obamacare insurance mandate.
“Well Andrew show the author some love”
Love is always grounded in truth. Letting someone persist in obvious error is not love.
Andrew
“While talking about mondegreens and douchebags: anyone remembers “wrapped up like a douche†(form the song Blinded by the Light).”
Even knowing the actual lyrics, it still sounds like douche to me.
My favorite garbled lyric was from Jimi Hendrix “. . .’scuse me while I kiss this guy”
“Hold me close now, Tony Danza”
For Steven Mosher: self consciousness is transcendental
“There’s a bathroom on the right.”
Then there’s “Inna gadda da vida”, which is actually “In the garden of Eden.”
For Andy Krause: self consciousness is an oxymoron.
Boris: “Big old Jed and Eliza”
Andy Krause:
The transcendental ego. Funny you should mention that.
My director in philosophy was this guy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_A._Earle
The transcendental ego is… in its essence, the essential intuition of God by God. This intuition itself constituting the ego may be explicit as in the perfection of mystic experience, or implicit, down through any number of grades of consciousness.”
— Mystical Reason, p. 100.
ya, he thought he was god. we had some nasty arguments about neitzsche, jaspers, sartre, heidegger, long ago.
Heller was less prone to nasty arguments.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_Heller
Funniest damn thing. I’m sitting there with earle defending my honors thesis and the old bastard would not budge ( transcendental ego argument– he pro, me con) finally, I got through but only by appealing to authority ” Erich agrees with me about this passage in Neitzsche”. pretty funny. Earle relented and I passed. whew
On a slightly more important note
http://stevemosher.wordpress.com/2011/07/11/taminos-method-regional-temperatures/
Tamino has posted some code for doing regional temperature averages. I’ve promised him to put it in my R package
RghcnV3. Spent last night doing the preliminary work. Dude writes nice code. Anyway, I’ve restructured his code a bit to make integration go easier. Should be a snap !. I’ve a version 1.2 sitting here ready to go up on CRAN and I’m wondering if I just should not wait and integrate taminos stuff.
Anyway. his code and my restructuring ( easy work ) is at my site
Steven Mosher:
I enjoyed the anecdote and thank you for the links.
Howard:
it is impossible to provide a physical explanation of the features of self consciousness.
Boris – which version of blinded by the light? Springsteens or Manfred Manns?
Manns did use the word douche. Springsteen (the author) wrote and sings “deuce”. Springsteen has spoken about Manns success with the change.
It is annoying Amazon has not commented about what happened. I see new and used copies in paper on sale, and electronic today on Amazon.co.uk.
Re: Andy Krause (Jul 11 23:34), They were both wonderful teachers. Earle was savage at take downs— on the mind body problem in class on Hegel (phenomenology of mind)
Student: some philosophers hold that the mind is merely a brain state.
Earle: so, you think you have a brain. Have you ever seen it or did you just read about it in the newspaper.
Heller was much kinder, a gentle soul who would spend hours talking in his office. but if you wanted to party, Earle was the man. brutal party animal
Peter suber ( also a cool dude) was there also studying with earle
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/hometoc.htm
Mother of All Mondegreens is, of course “Four Candles”
.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCbvCRkl_4U
Fortunately, not censored.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H61agOWWNE0&feature=related
I am opposed to saving the planet. God created the planet, and ipso facto, it is his job to save it. A quick and elegant method would be to implement the final solution to the people problem. One green way to do that would be via a super plague(SP). A super plague would hit hard, fast and low. By hard I mean one by land, two by sea, and three by air. A SP would be a triple threat. It could and would live everywhere. The home base for SP would be the Strahlstrom. From there it would simply sprinkle the earth with death. It would have a life cycle of five minutes and generate a major mutation every three days. Its primary fuel source would be solar. It would be here to stay. People would go the way of dinosaurs leaving room for some other critters. No problem. Of course God has not created SP. However, when the human population reaches twenty five billion something out there will smell food. That something will eat us for lunch. We are eatable. Anyway, it is not our problem. It is the problem of our great, great, grandchildren. They will be here when the earth fills up. We should enjoy life and consume as much as possible.
There is no point in leaving anything for future generations. If we don’t consume it then they will consume it. “My friend, let’s not think of tomorrow, but let’s enjoy this fleeting moment of lifeâ€
Omar Khayyam