Rich: I finally got around to reading ... By some stroke of coincidence, my copy of Bulletin of AMS was sitting in the morning mail, just after Rich's message arrived. So, nothing to do but take a look. Well, it is slightly different than the advance copy which many of us have already read, and the differences aren't good. Somehow, when I read that copy I dismissed it, failing to take adequate notice that it was destined for the AMS Bulletin, which is a serious publication of a major scientific society. How they managed to publish such a revier is a cause for wonderment. To start with, they don't accept reviews from the public, which are automat- ically rejected (see the statement of policy in the Bulletin). Rather they commision them. Well and good, but from whom? You would think that there are numerous candidates, who are knowledgeable in cosmology, dynamical systems, automata, the history of science, whatever ... . So, who is Steven G. Krantz? Well, he is a member of their editorial board, specializing in complex analysis who has reviewed some books and written some editorials. Perhaps he is not familiar with the areas represented by the contents of ANKOS. Still, you would think it possible to read a book and form some coherent view of its content. But wait! He starts right off by failing to capture the essence of Rule 30 (which was the subject of some commentary here last fall. Apparently word didn;t get back to him.} Indeed, to say ``Vestigial forms of cellular automata were around in the 1950's --- ...'' Doesn't this man even have the slightest idea of where cellular automata came from? I really don't want to turn this into a flame. But a couple of tidbits might merit mention. I footnote 2 (not in the draft) he asserts that Addison-Wesley was contacted about publishing the book, but ``One sticking point in that relationship was that he demanded that any reviewer sign a nondisclosure agreement and promise not to study math nor physics for the ensuing ten years.'' Some of the other reviewers have mentioned the nondisclosure agreement as well as the expensive meal to which they were invited; such agreements seem to be rather standard oven if the meal is not. Well, prepublication publicity is one thing, even Science and Nature have come under discussion for practicint it against journalists. Getting good reviews at the time of publication is undoubtedly seen as a sales technique, and so on... . But do you really think that Wolfram brought that promise into the bargain? I don't know Wolfram close at hand, and maybe he said something like that as a joke. I doubt it, and I wonder how the (other) editors at the Bulletin allowed that footnote to get into the review? If true, it ought to have some substantiation. Footnote 3 tries to set mathematicians and physicists apart in their thinking, and we all know that they represent two different styles of thought. But are they really orthogonal? In one of his Notices editorials, our reviewer takes on she chemists. I suspect that he is as fond of his wit as Wolfram is of his intellect, and both can get to be a little overwhelming. I wonder if Freeman Dyson actually said what he is cited for in footnote 6, and if so, whether he acquiesced in having been quoted as having said it. On to footnote 7 and the Heisenberg principle, which was stated differently and more jargonly in the preprint. We discussed that here a couple of weeks ago. We had a whole course on this, under the guise of ``quantum computing'' in our last summer school; one should be aware that to mention the principle is but to call attention to the tip of an iceberg. Well, to cut this short, I agree with Richard, and feel quite bemused to realize that I had not comprehended what had happened untill he mentioned it. If the review had appeared in a lesser journal, one might not worry so much, but >that society< and >that journal< deserve a review of much higher quality. ---- Here is a chance to comment on an earlier comment. At first sight, it appears that there is an error in the ANKOS treatment of Rule 110, because the text and the drawings do not entirely correspond to each other. Separate correspon- dence and careful analysis reveal that the dozen pages or do of description is far too inadequate to constitute a comprehensible description of the Turing Machine emulation; several dozen would be more appropriate. One hopes that they will eventually be forthcoming. - hvm ------------------------------------------------- Obtén tu correo en www.correo.unam.mx UNAMonos Comunicándonos