Antonio Lamua

I got this book "by mistake" from a book club (one of those "you didn't TELL us you didn't want it!" sort of deals) and, for some reason, decided to keep it. Maybe it's just that I'm a sucker for infinity.

I had it situated as a kind of bedside-browse book, but lo! I turned to page 22 and, next to a photo of the Andromeda Galaxy (one of the nearer galaxies to our own Milky Way) I read this paragraph in the entry "The Most Remote and Deepest Image of the Universe" (howzabout that for a title?):

"The image seen at right allows for the contemplation of the galaxies as they were arranged almost at the inception of the universe. The image is of a scene millions of light years away, a depiction of the origins of creation, representing profound depths of existence never before seen. It belongs to a series of images that provides scientific data on the formation and early history of the universe."

Urrmmm, NO, it's a picture of a nearby spiral galaxy!

That paragraph is not only the sheerest gobbledygook, it is -- in the words of Wolfgang Pauli -- "not even wrong." I have NO IDEA what those words are trying to convey, other than the fact that the author doesn't really know what a galaxy is, nor recognize a fairly familiar astronomical image. It's possible something was lost in translation ... well, if so, EVERYTHING was lost in translation.

So I had to put this book down right then and there. I don't have the time to wade through that kind of thing for the sake of some pretty pictures.… (meer)