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the end of the Cretaceous and the start of the Tertiary—the so-called K-T boundary. (The Cretaceous was shorthanded as “K” to avoid confusion with the Cambrian and other geological periods.)
an iconoclastic mathematician named Ian Malcolm announced that none of these questions mattered, and that the debate over a meteoric impact was “a frivolous and irrelevant speculation.”
Of course he did.
I would suggest that the latest thinking in chaos theory, or nonlinear dynamics, provides tantalizing hints to how this happens.
Oh good more chaos =_0
Malcolm was forty years old,
Malcolm had, in fact, been reported dead in several newscasts. “I was sorry to cut short the celebrations in mathematics departments around the country,” he later said, “but it turned out I was only slightly dead. The surgeons have done wonders, as they will be the first to tell you. So now I am back—in my next iteration, you might say.”
I don't want to go on the cart
What they had in common was a belief that the complexity of the world concealed an underlying order which had previously eluded science, and which would be revealed by chaos theory, now known as complexity theory.
Complex systems tend to locate themselves at a place we call ‘the edge of chaos.’ We imagine the edge of chaos as a place where there is enough innovation to keep a living system vibrant, and enough stability to keep it from collapsing into anarchy.
Too much change is as destructive as too little.
it seems to me highly unlikely that they all changed their behavior at the same time, everywhere. And that in turn means that there may well be some remnants of these animals still alive on the earth.
Walking beside him was Sarah Harding, a young field biologist visiting from Africa. Malcolm had known her for several years, since he had been asked to serve as an outside reader for her doctoral thesis at Berkeley.
Her field of study was African predators, lions and hyenas.
“Richard Levine?” She laughed. “Irritating, isn’t he? He has a worldwide reputation for being a pain in the ass.”
Ouch
“But absence of proof is not proof of absence.
Levine looked pleased to be with them, as if he had won some victory to be sitting at the table. Malcolm looked weary, like a parent who has spent too much time with a hyperactive child.
This'll be a fun expedition
Basic thesis is that we’ve lost all the old myths, Orpheus and Eurydice and Perseus and Medusa. So we fill the gap with modern techno-myths. Geller listed a dozen or so. One is that an alien’s living at a hangar at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.
So urban legends and conspiracy theories
Malcolm had been denying the speculation for three years.
And the individual scientists had been bound by nondisclosure agreements, abetted later by generous grants to continue their silence. In Malcolm’s case, two years of medical bills had been paid by the company.
InGen was long since bankrupt; the principal investors in Europe and Asia had taken their losses.
“Yes,” he said finally. “If animals started showing up again, I would be interested in helping you.” “Great!” Levine said. “That’s all I wanted to know.”
This is not the time to be flippant Ian
From Malcolm she heard nothing at all, although he sent her a card on her birthday. It arrived a month late. He had scrawled at the bottom, “Have a happy birthday. Be glad you’re nowhere near him. He’s driving me crazy.”
Thoughtful.
With his long limbs folded up, his hands tucked under his chin, he looked like a praying mantis. That had been his nickname in graduate school: in part because of his appearance—and in part because of his tendency to bite off the head of anyone who disagreed with him.
LOL
After all these years, Levine had not changed at all. He was still one of the most brilliant and irritating men in science.
That's a great rep to have
Thus Levine’s worldwide reputation forced him to continually travel around the world, inspecting new finds, and rendering his expert opinion to researchers who were annoyed to admit that they needed it.
Honestly that sounds like hell
It started about five years ago. A number of animals were discovered up in the mountains, near a remote agricultural station that was growing test varieties of soy beans.”
“They were all destroyed. And to my knowledge, no others were found for years afterward. But now it seems to be starting again. In the last year, we have found the remains of four more animals, including the one you saw today.”
A few years back, some North American journalists began reporting there was something wrong on one island, Isla Nublar. Menéndez invited a bunch of journalists down for a special tour of the island—and proceeded to fly them to the wrong island. They never knew the difference.
There’s Sorna, on the west coast; it’s leased to a German mining company.
“No. Then last winter, a couple of Swiss geologists showed up to collect gas samples from offshore islands, as part of a study, they said, of volcanic activity in Central America. The offshore islands are all volcanic, and most of them are still active to some degree, so it seemed like a reasonable request. But it turned out the ‘geologists’ really worked for an American genetics company called Biosyn, and they were looking for, uh, large animals on the islands.”
They say Biosyn’s the only genetics company with more lawyers than scientists.”
Yeah that checks out
People aren’t studying the natural world any more, they’re mining it. It’s a looter mentality. Anything new or unknown is automatically of interest, because it might have value. It might be worth a fortune.”
But my guess is that it was an ornitholestes.
Dodgson had been paying him five hundred dollars a day for weeks now, to follow a bunch of scientists around.
I'LL DO IT
Like that paleobotanist Sattler whose specialty was prehistoric pollen grains. James had sat through one of her lectures at Berkeley, and had barely been able to stay awake.
Never mind, Ellie. He's not worthy.
“Alan Grant: paleontologist at Montana State. At the moment he’s on leave of absence and is now in Paris, lecturing on the latest dinosaur finds.
“Ellen Sattler Reiman,” James said, pushing across a photo. “Botanist, used to be involved with Grant. Now married to a physicist at Berkeley and has a young son and daughter. She lectures half-time at the university. Spends the rest of her time at home, because—”
Donald Gennaro, lawyer … died of dysentery on a business trip.
The boy’s started college and the girl is in prep school. And InGen filed for Chapter 11 protection after Hammond died.
“Levine’s been planning some kind of expedition for a year or so. He’s ordered special vehicles from a company called Mobile Field Systems.
“Because he was on the passenger manifest of the flight from Costa Rica—but he wasn’t on the plane when it landed. My contact in Costa Rica says he checked out of his hotel in San José before the flight, and never went back. Didn’t take any other flight out of the city. So, uh, for the moment, I’m afraid that Richard Levine has disappeared.”
“Now listen, you stupid son of a bitch,” Dodgson said.
I don't want this job anymore
In recent weeks, he had been working steadily to walk without the cane. He still had occasional pain in his leg, but he was determined to make progress.
Hey good for you Ian
Confronted by Levine’s relentless enthusiasm for the lost-world hypothesis, his excited telephone calls at all hours of the day and night, Malcolm had begun to reconsider his own views. And he had come to believe that it was quite possible—even probable—that extinct animals existed in a remote, previously unsuspected location.
I WAS RIGHT AND YOU WERE WRONG.
Very adult.
To the south, they saw a place where the tops of the trees began to move, a whole section of forest that suddenly seemed to come alive, as if brushed by wind. But the rest of the forest was not moving. It was not the wind.
In a few moments, they came upon two parallel tracks in the dirt, long since overgrown with grass and ferns, but clearly recognizable as an old Jeep trail, leading off into the jungle.
It was greenish-brown in color, and it made a continuous, irritable squeaking sound at Levine, as if to drive him away.
Relatable.
he heard a terrifying high-pitched cry, and when he turned he saw that Diego was screaming as his body was hauled away, into the bushes.
Ugh poor Diego awful way to go
Kelly Curtis
Wait - Kelly as in Malcolm's daughter?
R. B. Benton
“Why isn’t Dr. Levine here?”
lol how tf did I miss that that was a recording wtf me
