Not long before he died, I heard an interview with Charles Bowden in which he praised the work of Howard T. Odum for “changing his life” and as a result the way he thought about a vast number of subjects. However he also mentioned that Odum’s ideas were so far (beyond, above, outside of) conventional thinking that he had – according to Bowden – become something of “a pariah” to many in the Academy. Such is often the way with the truly brilliant among us – rock the intellectual boat too much and they throw you out of it.