Kicking the Sacred Cow

I think this book is actually worse than bad: it's dangerously irresponsible. It's serious tinfoil hat territory, and rather mean-spirited besides. Like all conspiracy theories, it conveniently places itself beyond rational discourse by preemptively calling into question the trustworthiness of any other sources of information.

However, I do enjoy a good conspiracy theory, and the chapter on Velikovsky / catastrophism is especially fascinating.

The rest of the book delves into such enlightening topics as “what if global warming is a scam?”, “what if radiation, DDT and asbestos are actually good for you?”, “what if HIV isn't a real thing?” and “Einstein and Darwin were both wrong, probably.”

It would be amusing if it wasn't so depressing... I mean, here's someone who is clearly intelligent and capable of some critical thinking, ultimately going down this weird path of “intelligent design” and anti-intellectualism. I mean, there's a healthy amount of skepticism and then there's... whatever this is, which is overcompensating in the other direction so far that you're basically Timecube. And yeah, I love Timecube, but I would really be afraid that someone would pick this book up and take it seriously, because it's so much nicer and cleaner and easier to believe in this narrative where you don't have to worry about global warming or pesticides or things like that.

I actually put this book in the recycling bin instead of taking it to the Little Free Library, is how strongly I feel that no one else should ever read it, probably.