he does uses analogies of course but that is just normal i suppose even for a scientifically educated person...

i am aware that he himself and his theory is debated a lot and dont know much creationists either ;) pls do point me to some cases/articles/whatever where he is explicitly discredited.

what about some reaction to the real point here? you used this spaceship analogy in your comment. i just added (referencing Lovelock) that looking on the problem like this would mean that humans take the responsibility of maintaining a very complex system which (at least used to) maintains itself. that would be perhaps a mistake (again). however doing something clever to win time to find good permanent solutions which help the system to balance itself again is perhaps a better idea.

now that is interesting. James Lovelock states in one of his book that this is exactly the real risk in geoengineering. namely if we take the responsibility to maintain the very complex balance what is living earth (see James Lovelock's Gaia theory for details) from the earth (gaia) itself (eg your point of view: earth as spaceship) we end up with a very complex task which we never be able to stop doing. doing some clever hack with earth to win some time to reduce co2 and *methane* emissions, that sounds definitely interesting btw.

some will understand my sig

Umm... you should read the next sentence:

Note: This document requires the installation of the fonts Georgia, Verdana and Andale Mono (code font) for proper viewing.

These can be found at: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group _id=34153&release_id=105355

By the way it displays just fine even without these fonts... it's quite decent HTML.

But seriously, this is a great book! Not just about java, but OO techniques in general.