Nota Bene
Cascade Mountains
Dear Fellow Reader,
Welcome to this section of our website entitled “N.B.,” an abbreviation for the Latin expression, “Nota Bene” which means “note well.” In years past when Latin was commonly taught to American students, “N.B.” would be used in writing to draw the students’ attention to something important, or to direct the reader to a specific aspect or detail of the material being discussed. “N.B.” could also be used to add additional information to a subject being addressed. That is the purpose of this section, I will be updating this section on a routine basis to provide you as the reader with additional information on my books that will make your reading experience even more enjoyable. We’ll be exploring subjects ranging from “time travel” to the spread of Christianity. I’d enjoy hearing your thoughts on this, please feel free to drop me a note on the Contact link of our site. Looking forward to hearing from you, until then, happy reading!
Cascade Mountains,
Review from the Military Writers Society of America
10 May 2024
“What was done was done,” asserts the central character in Chapter Twenty-three of Jamison Whiteman’s The Shield Before Me; and most of us have said or thought the same thing at some time. But “Was it?” asks this novel provocatively, taking readers on a journey into a world of science fiction that involves time travel and the potential of changing history.
Dr. Murray Edgeton, scarred by insensitive treatment growing up in small-town West Texas, hates the church he was forced to attend, making him a devoted anti-theist. As a brilliant physicist, he later leads a team of world-class scientists to a breakthrough anticipated by Einstein’s theories of relativity that inspires a scheme by which he can debunk Christian teaching.
Utilizing “wormholes” in space and time, Edgeton inserts a team into the moment of Christ’s crucifixion, anticipating that they will find that Jesus was just an ordinary, itinerant preacher of his age, not the actual son of God. With his agents’ return to the present—without the evidence they thought they’d find—he seeks other ways to undermine the Christian church and its influence. But romance enters his world when he meets a young woman who changes his mind about religion. While not immediately converted to her beliefs, he finds himself more sympathetic to the principles she explains—and demonstrates. What should he do now?
The conflict between science and faith continues to drive the story through twists and turns (like the “Portals” of the “Space-Time Continuum”) to a complex conclusion. Alternating scenes in present-day California with events in first-century Palestine, the novel tracks world-renowned thinkers battling to determine the future. At the same time, the book asks us to consider if, given modern technology, travel in time isn’t already close in the real world. Music, one of his characters explains, takes us to other countries and times. Another reminds us that modern cuisine connects ingredients, styles, and tastes from many cultures and periods. That the scientists working on the Einstein Project come from around the world underscores how information moves at light speed in a digital universe. The characters, all well-established in their professional careers, seem able to drop what they’re doing, and fly across the country to a distant location after a phone call. Finally, the fact that early disciples were able to spread their teachings across the globe asks us how contemporary social media—Facebook, TikTok, Instagram—now affect the thoughts and behaviors of millions with amazing speed.
As characters with hidden motives pursue different ends, their friends and colleagues do not know that some are from other times and places. Receiving mental and physical shocks, other characters lose their grasp of the time and place they inhabit. Unable to predict the novel’s plot, readers are bounced from possibility to possibility until they reach the end and a strong message about religious persecution in the twenty-first century.
Review by Professor Michael Lund
Neowise Comet
Time Travel
12 May 2024
Dear Fellow Reader,
Time Travel. It’s something that we’ve all heard of and as Murray Edgeton discussed in my first book, the subject of time travel has been pondered since the days of antiquity. But outside of fiction, is time travel possible? Well, the concept of time travel is supported by scientific research and Einstein’s theories of general and special relativity might demonstrate that it’s possible. Other theoretical phenomena such as wormholes and closed-timelike curves also suggest that time travel can be achieved, but that doesn’t mean that it’s a realistic proposal. Looking at Einstein’s theories, he theorized that time would slow as an object approaches the speed of light and once that object reaches the speed of light, time will stop. It stood to reason that once an object’s speed surpassed the speed of light, time would then go backward, that is, into the past. There were experiments in the early 1970s that involved two jumbo jets circumnavigating the globe—these experiments attempted to demonstrate that time travel was possible. Each of these jets carried a highly accurate atomic clock that was synchronized with two other atomic clocks on the ground that served as reference clocks. The jets then flew around the world, first in an eastward direction and then in a westward direction. Upon landing, it was discovered that the two airborne clocks were no longer “in synch” with the two reference clocks and some in the scientific community claimed that this was “proof” that objects moving at high speed could travel through time. Bearing in mind that Einstein stated that as an object approaches the speed of light, time would slow down. Proposing that this “experiment” offered proof of Einstein’s theories is a scientific stretch at best, theoretically correct, but not likely. A jumbo jet travels at approximately 550 miles per hour, but light travels at 186,000 miles per second, a bit of a difference there. But there is another law in physics that states that as an object approaches the speed of light, it gains mass. So, what does this mean for time travel? It means that it would require an infinite amount of energy to move that object at the speed of light and at this point in our technological journey, that does not seem plausible. But one thing that is does mean, it does make for a good story! Happy reading.
Neowise Comet