Antonio L. Quintanilla

Interesting questions

Revisado: 08-13-23

Sex with an “alien”? Then it’s not alien, it’s human. The entire premise that we are dealing with aliens is an unfounded assumption. They are overwhelmingly humanoid in experiencers’ telling. And some experiencers talk about sex, having sperm, and even fetuses taken. The biological definition of ”species” is that voluntary sex occur only within the population. These beings if they are so interested in our sex maybe are not alien then, are they? They are human.

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Where is 2010 Oddysey Two?

Revisado: 05-24-22

Great classical story and missing the most important sequel! We have the Italian and not the English!

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Interesting

Revisado: 08-05-21

This is a good history and it is also trying to make an argument, that the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima was the right decision. So it is not a detached history, rather falls in the “traditionalist” camp, as the author calls it, and a counter argument to the “revisionists.” Nevertheless, the arguments made are well informed and cogent. You will learn a lot, especially about the Japanese leaders making the decisions.

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Compelling

Revisado: 04-26-21

Clear explanation of the science and a full development of the story. Very compelling. No easy answers and makes you think a lot.

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A direct experience

Revisado: 04-12-21

Goodwill bring us to face to face with the scientists and the evidence and some of the consequences of climate change induced sea level rise. It is a valuable experience that most of us do not have and need to appreciate to be intelligent about the climate crisis.

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Great story

Revisado: 03-25-21

Wonderfully written and narrated. A very personal and compelling look at the community of scientists with Jennifer Doudna at the forefront who developed the Crispr technology. Weaves the human aspects of science with the technical and the social. Thinks in interesting ways about the implications of Crispr and gene editing for humanity. And importantly highlights the role of women scientists. At the end weaves in the role of Crispr in the Covid response into 2021.

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Great book

Revisado: 12-20-20

Best narration, using several narrators to express different characters.

The story is both terrifying and hopeful. It is written in Robinson’s style reminiscent of his Mars trilogy, weaving a possible future from possible beginnings.

Many intriguing story ideas that in his other world novels are entirely fictional in this book about our home planet seem possible and even actionable.

We need a hopeful vision and with his art Robinson paints one. The ending is beautiful and reminded me of the ending of Blue Mars. Loved it!

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Amazing trilogy

Revisado: 10-13-20

It reminds me of Moby Dick, it’s deep cross-sectional views of what Mars could be. You feel that it is even possible. Beautiful.

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Beautiful

Revisado: 08-31-20

Christopher Tolkien’s latest editions, The Children of Hurin, Beren and Luthien, and finally, The Fall of Gondolin, weave in a mix of storytelling and editorial remarks, and wonderful synthesis of difficult underlying materials, the main stories of Tolkien’s mythology of the elder days. The characters and the stories are beautiful and sad at the same time. And for lovers of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, these editions create the complex backstory for all the events and poetry and allusions in those amazing stories.

You can also see the great love of Christopher for these stories that became his life’s work until his death in his 90s shortly after the publication of the Fall of Gondolin.

It’s not always easy reading or listening to these editions because they are not continuous novels, rather shorter and longer fragments of stories that Christopher lovingly weaves into one coherent story with multiple and sometimes alternating strands, I would say, like a musical piece and it’s variations yet with one theme. Maybe the music of the Ainur? Rest in peace, Christopher. And thanks.

I should also say that the two readers have done a beautiful job playing the alternating roles of narrator and editor’s voice.

And of course, there is J. R. R. Tolkien’s marvelous imagination and story that has something enduring still to tell our troubled world about itself.

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Intriguing

Revisado: 06-13-20

Pasulka’s “page turner” book is very compelling. Her treatment of the UFO subject, which she calls “the phenomenon”, is thoughtful and authoritative as a historian of religion, especially Catholicism, which she weaves in as a comparison. She characterizes her approach as ethnographic, focused on the social meaning not on whether “the phenomenon” is “true ontologically”.

I finished listening to Pasulka’s book feeling that her treatment was more and less than a systematic ethnography, because it involved her own personal experience and response to the community of “experiencers” she is studying a great deal, and in a way that could not be readily separated — although that is unavoidable and ethnographically honest.

Pasulka’s treatment also seemed to be somewhat credulous in entertaining explanations of “anomalies” that seemed purely speculative or superficial even coming from authoritative scientists, like the recurring idea of using quantum theory. How can one scientifically falsify any explanation of an “anomaly” when the term include experiences of “the phenomenon” as well as Christian miracles? And Niels Bohr never claimed that quantum theory was an actual model of reality only that it is very successful in predicting experimental results.

As a Catholic, I was gratified that at the end the real message of Christianity, as human charity and love, and not just the phenomena of “saints and miracles”, was included in the story.

Pasulka’s extended focus on the figure of the anonymous and extraordinary “Tyler” is disconcerting, because it makes her “ethnography” scientifically unverifiable — a key anthropological consultant cannot be independently interviewed or examined. He reminds me, and not in a way that is encouraging, of Carlos Castaneda’s similarly extraordinary and inaccessible Don Juan figure, from his 1970’s “ethnography” of Mexican shamans, The Teachings of Don Juan and sequels.

In the end, I was left with a kind of “book encounter” of the UFO phenomenon that is compelling, and unresolved, as it must remain. As a Christian, and I think Pasulka might agree, “the phenomenon” should not change the primary motivations of the human experience, even if it does intrude in mysterious ways in the lives of “experiencers”, however one interprets it.

I think that Pasulka’s goal of approaching the UFO phenomenon as a social scientist was largely successful, and certainly intriguing and fun to listen to. I may also buy the book to reread the text and any notes.

Finally, I think Pasulka would probably have done a better job reading the book herself. The voice actor was fine, although sometimes I got confused about who was the subject of the narration. And from her interview with Ezra Klein, Pasulka has a very expressive voice.

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