Tyrannosaur Canyon and magnificent desolation

[Jochen Fromm-3]

In the holidays I read (among other things) the following two
books: "Tyrannosaur Canyon" by Douglas Preston and "First Man:
The Life of Neil A. Armstrong" by James R. Hansen. Both are
interesting and impressive. I was surprised that the former novel
takes place near Santa Fe. It is a "techno-thriller" with a lot
of tension and high scientific accuracy - like a mixture of a
Michael Crighton and a Dan Brown novel. Is there really a
tyrannosaur canyon near Santa Fe or somewhere else in New Mexico ?

The biography of Neil Armstrong was also very interesting. It is
a bit disillusioning and thought-provoking to see how little a single
person can do, and how much a whole country can accomplish. There
were so many people involved in the space program - the American people,
the congress and the government who financed it, the industry who built
it, the space agency who controlled it, the astronauts who used it, etc.

Although astronauts are often seen as real heroes, they can accomplish
little without their rockets and the large teams of engineers and
rocket scientists behind them. What is an astronaut without a spaceship ?
After Apollo 11, Neil Armstrong didn't really know what to do with his
life, but there were countless disputes about totally meaningless details
- who has taken pictures of whom on the moon, who has stepped out first,
was it all a hoax or not... Can we learn something from this for
(massive) multi-agent systems ?

-J.

[Michael Agar]

Jochen--Yes, it's the canyon right next to the Santa Fe Institute.

The story even made wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ 
Tyrannosaur_Canyon. It sounds like a good read.

Mike





On Sep 14, 2006, at 10:43 AM, Jochen Fromm wrote:

>
> In the holidays I read (among other things) the following two
> books: "Tyrannosaur Canyon" by Douglas Preston and "First Man:
> The Life of Neil A. Armstrong" by James R. Hansen. Both are
> interesting and impressive. I was surprised that the former novel
> takes place near Santa Fe. It is a "techno-thriller" with a lot
> of tension and high scientific accuracy - like a mixture of a
> Michael Crighton and a Dan Brown novel. Is there really a
> tyrannosaur canyon near Santa Fe or somewhere else in New Mexico ?
>
> The biography of Neil Armstrong was also very interesting. It is
> a bit disillusioning and thought-provoking to see how little a single
> person can do, and how much a whole country can accomplish. There
> were so many people involved in the space program - the American  
> people,
> the congress and the government who financed it, the industry who  
> built
> it, the space agency who controlled it, the astronauts who used it,  
> etc.
>
> Although astronauts are often seen as real heroes, they can accomplish
> little without their rockets and the large teams of engineers and
> rocket scientists behind them. What is an astronaut without a  
> spaceship ?
> After Apollo 11, Neil Armstrong didn't really know what to do with his
> life, but there were countless disputes about totally meaningless  
> details
> - who has taken pictures of whom on the moon, who has stepped out  
> first,
> was it all a hoax or not... Can we learn something from this for
> (massive) multi-agent systems ?
>
> -J.
>
>
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