I’m 60 pages into Dan Brown’s “The Lost Symbol” and I don’t think I can read any more of this rubbish. No I have not grown tired of Dan Brown’s average writing ability or his Claremont-esque dialogue I just can’t take anymore of the pure idiocy that passes for science in this book. It is not the first Dan Brown book I have stopped reading because of this. I put Digital Fortress back on the shelf after getting fed up of his complete lack of understanding of computers and encryption. Just half an hour of that made me want to beat my own brains out. I put it down to being to close to home and I enjoyed his other books despite their absurdity. Even the silly god particle stuff from ‘Angels & Demons’. So why have I stopped reading this one? Because apparently according Dan Brown the scientists in his world have been able to show that prayer can influence random number generators, that after 9/11 these same random generators stopped being so random because of all the grief/compassion/horror/dust. Another idea it offers up is that sending lovey-dovey feelings to freezing water causes the ice crystals to form in nice ordered patterns while being mean to the water makes the ice grow chaotically. I kid you not. The premise being that mind can win out over matter and that ancient man knew the secrets of the universe and our ‘science’ takes us away from this truth. Other gems include the quantum events can be effected by the consciousness of the observer and that new particles appear because scientists want them to. I put this down to the fundamental mistake a lot of people make about what is meant by observer when reading layman’s books about Quantum physics. Lots and lots of what is called Noetic Science. Which is no different to plane old new age mumbo-jumbo with a more ‘scientific’ sounding name. It is the hippy’s equivalent of creation science. In other words it is total horse shit.