As far as a book goes I'm not crazy about but it's full of facts that I didn't know and that are so neat. For example, did you know a key barrier to the domestication of the zebra was that, unlike horsies, they can follow the trajectory of a lasso as it sails through the air and then dodge it, so they were almost impossible to catch unharmed? Neat. And of course some of his ideas are also interesting. For example, he goes on a bit about the role of literacy as a way to monopolize rather than simply preserve knowledge - in that one small class is literate, and therefore has access to written information that the illiterate classes can't hope to access reliably or first hand.
That got me thinking about lawyers and about how the legal systems of most countries are so inaccessible to the defendants and accusers who use them. It's rather frightening, the degree to which a largely legally illiterate population trusts its fortunes to a small legal class who we believe has access to all this legal literature and jargon and history we can't possibly understand.
So today I'd like to say bravo to this crazy chick who managed to get £10 million more than her estranged husband was offering even though she sacked her lawyers mid-trial and represented her own fantasistic ass. The outcome probably says more about the clarity of UK divorce laws than about her competence, but nonetheless, what a gutsy move. Now she has £10 million more than she might have had, that she can devote to ruining the livelihood of our East Coast natives, because baby seals are cuter than the Canadian aboriginal population.
Just remember, beeyatch, those cute little pups grow up to eat the cutest animals of all:
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Because it seems I can no longer read books, I've never actually read G.G.and S. However -even thugh I can barely concentrate long enough to actually watch dvd's -I watched GGS and Loved it. He also gave a speech @ the Harold Washington Lib a few years back on his Collapse tour, and I loved listening to him (both his ideas and his wierd accent). Zebra thing is kool, and all the other shit he comes up with. His ideas have been accused of something bad - I will not go into it because i can't remember what 'unsavory claim' they were eing accused of - but I like the guy. I'm glad y brought him up, and if there ever is a time machine to bring me back to when I was 12, I'll read it. Well, I'lll try.
It's true. The law system is a scam. Law should be made accesible to all. But it makes the shithead class easier to rule their riches if the illiterate ones believes it's the shitheads rite simply 'cause it's writte down somewhere. The shitheads - @ least in most of the modern world -realise that "Because God said so" doesn't work that well anymore.
He wrote a very short book called 'Why is Sex Fun?' that the shortest attention span could handle, and that I reccommend - certainly that I reccommend over this one. It's about sex being fun, so it's fun.
I'm not sure what the big complaints are about 'Guns, Germs, and Steel' although any book about why Europeans kicked everyone else's ass is always going to be problematic.
MY big complaint is that he has a Richard Dawkin-ish vision of cultural 'evolution' that I just can't take seriously. Luckily he waters it down with fun bagatelles about zebras or writing or kleptocracies.
Isn't google great. five seonds w/ "Jared diamond" and "complaints" and here 'tis
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/25/science/25diam.html?em&ex=1198818000&en=075e6d1bcad0c583&ei=5087
I'm not saying that GG&S isn't gibberish, but its critics in that article look like they're variously spouting post-modern gibberish, anthropocentric gibberish, and/or green-eyed gibberish because a book that they didn't write won a Pulitzer.
I hope their opinions were just being badly reported by a journalist who was writing gibberish. Honestly, I don't fucking care what he listens to in his car or what billboards he drives by. What's he writing, a blog or something?
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