How do we know he's frugal?
Silicon Valley is a young white boys club - BOX
- Thread starter canyonrat
- Start date
MikeL
Well-known member
My thoughts on Guns, Germs, and Steel. FUCK THAT BOOK.
My reasoning: Roughly 50% of my professors at UCSB figuratively sucked Diamonds dick. So nearly every course had some bit about it, how great it is, and to read it again.
It just got old hearing about how great he is and his book BLAH BLAH BLAH.
Otherwise, brilliant man.
My reasoning: Roughly 50% of my professors at UCSB figuratively sucked Diamonds dick. So nearly every course had some bit about it, how great it is, and to read it again.
It just got old hearing about how great he is and his book BLAH BLAH BLAH.
Otherwise, brilliant man.
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Just grabbed it off Audible. We should start a BARF book club. :thumbup
Marcoose
50-50
According to OP's account, it isn't his case.
I know Mark, he's been to my house, etc.
Bay Arean
Well-known member
It doesn't invalidate his points. But yeah, people were eager to jump on it and ride it because it absolved the 400 year old Enlightenment argument that somehow, Europeans were innately superior to all the dark peoples of the world. In much of that interim, otherwise brilliant people reasoned as such. It offered a way to explain why other cultures seemed "stuck" at a certain level of ag, technology, etc etc. That thinking is the REAL basis of the term "racism" which gets thrown about and misused, because it includes a component of implied superiority.
Like I said, it will be challenged, revised, whatever, but it moved the argument forward by someone who bothered to do the calculus and propose something. Somebody had to explain how and why most of the world has basically settled on a Eurocentric science-based reality of daily living, wants and needs. Why this creation "won" and others didn't. Why we lived through colonial and imperialist times, how it got that way.
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Reli
Well-known member
Precisely.
carries an axe
meat bone meat meat meat
Its been a while since I read it but there were a few holes I always wanted answeres for.
Eldritch
is insensitive
It is what I do. :teeth
Very true, but Europeans mastered and improved the technology at an accelerated rate (Filthy War Pig Honkeys). By the time the arquebus was being heavily fielded in Belgium, the peoples of Africa and the Americas never had a chance.
ScorpioVI
كافر ლ(ಠ&
The follow-up was "Collapse", also very good.
He did a TED talk on it:
http://www.ted.com/talks/jared_diamond_on_why_societies_collapse?language=en
Ogier le Danois
Well-known member
His primary miss was lack of considering Monotheistic religion. Christianity united the continent of Europe against all outsiders and encouraged them to colonize/convert the heathens. Granted that they fought internally as well. Judiasm never had enough adherents and Islam came too late.
But, in my opinion, European culture as whole has shown to be superior for a longer span of time in terms of art, science and sociological measures.
mbsv
Well-known member
also full of documented errors which invalidate some of the theories entirely.
littlebeast
get it while it's easy
there are a shitload of different smiles. if someone holds a door for you, you smile and say thank you. it's a sincere, pleasant smile. some asshole at work pisses you off, you punch them in the face (verbally of course), smile, and straighten their tie - sort of an 'okay, are we clear now?' - you smile, but your eyes don't. in this particular case, the smile you use is the one that says, 'dude, i thought you were smart, and had good taste, but apparently you are a dumbass - and working with dumbasses is not a good fit for my skill level.' a lot of these young dudes with their first taste of real money often need to be gently reminded that they need to move past their college days of living on days old cold pizza and stale beer, and dumpster diving is obvious and unbecoming.