and rewrites it into a "story"? Two men who fancy themselves as T-Rexes yet only gain that size and stature via shadow puppetry They both forget/ignore the fact that while some dinos became extinct, others evolved into today's birds and crocs (not the footwear).

How is Shafer's rewriting-of-Crichton's-email-­response-as-story any different than the rewritten-press-releases-faxed­-to-reporters-as-news that Crichton despises? Crichton's obsession of people paying for "quality reporting" shines a spotlight on the fact he wants to get P-A-I-D (and maybe laid?), truth and quality be damned -- exhibit A, his money-trumps-science/storytell­ing book The Lost World. The less said about later works, the better.

Why not brag about fortelling the corporate greed of Enron via the corporate politics in Disclosure (though its VR database interface is another example of future looking in the wrong direction)? Because, as someone else has posted here, the same thing is going on today on a much larger scale via the oil market futures. Crichton really doesn't want answers. He makes his living asking questions and hypothosizing-- a lot of "may"s, "might"s, and "could"s. It is ok when *he* does it. Even though "research" could prove otherwise, the existance of walk-in Sub Zeroes does not debunk global climate change (global warming? Bah, it is *freezing* in here!)

Fox and CNN's pundit fights are *not* the only news sources out there (for now). Yet I have the sinking feeling one of the "younger kids in the lab" gave Crichton and Shafer a Cliff Notes version of a journal article they read declaring "truthiness" is the new "fact". Having two (or more) degrees of seperation from the media does not put Crichton or Shafer in a good position to critique it.