Hi LJK

Yes I have read the book and also "The Anthropic Cosmological Principle" - the latter the superior of the two IMHO - and so I know the bit you mean. That argument was an exercise in fun but it had a certain air of intellectual onanism too.

IS he spanking the monkey in the whole exercise? No - he's sincere if a little defensive about the whole exercise. He spat bile about a certain GR specialist's cosmological speculations when I suggested that cosmologist had made a good case for scepticism about the future evolution of lambda - Tipler said that that person habitually ignored real physics.

Hmmm... irony there I am sure.

Adam