Book of the Month April May 08 - 'Collapse' by Jared Diamond (Diamond Video Posted 26 April)

cactus flower wrote:

You've covered all types there cactus - I think the first is my style if anyone wants to do some recreational slumming with me.

Actually it isn't recreational for me.

I thought you might like the one made out of recycled tyres.

Just kick the dog off the sofa then and we can get started.
I'm just going to get snacks.

Anyone got anything to drink? Coke? Red Bull and peach juice?

Here are some drinkables;

And some more...

Perfect Ard-Taoiseach. After the humidity today, that looks really refreshing.

Did you make any headway with 'Collapse' this week?

cactus flower wrote:

Perfect Ard-Taoiseach. After the humidity today, that looks really refreshing.

Did you make any headway with 'Collapse' this week?

Glad to help out, we really do need refreshments in this weather.

Yep, I'm up to and beyond the frames of reference for this week. I'll make even more progress next week as well!

The little islands were quite interesting (Pitcairn, Henderson and Mangareva) - to some extent he used them as a metaphor for globalisation, do you think? Because they none of them had everything they needed and were interdependent.

cactus flower wrote:

The little islands were quite interesting (Pitcairn, Henderson and Mangareva) - to some extent he used them as a metaphor for globalisation, do you think? Because they none of them had everything they needed and were interdependent.

Yeah, they're very similar to our globalised, free market world today. They each specialised in the area in which they had the greatest comparative advantage and traded the rest of their requirements.

I get the impression that what happened was a pattern of people arriving at an island where initially the means of living were very easily got in a couple of hours a day - shellfish and birds eggs, fruit and so on. Then their numbers grew and the resource was damaged (rats or too many egg feasts and then they had to do progressively more agriculture.

Henderson had what though? Giant turtles? They only existed as luxury value - what would that be today? V12 6litre Jag sports cars?

Auditor #9 wrote:

Henderson had what though? Giant turtles? They only existed as luxury value - what would that be today? V12 Jag sports cars?

I'd be more likely to say diamonds. Henderson would be like Botswana today.

Auditor #9 wrote:

Henderson had what though? Giant turtles? They only existed as luxury value - what would that be today? V12 6litre Jag sports cars?

I loved Henderson - I reckon it was like the Las Vegas of the Polynesian islands.

Mountains of post party debris is a great sort of archaeology.

I pictured Henderson as Rockall. Wouldn't Diamonds be of high industrial usage if they weren't so precious as an accompaniment to the long white dress? Thus they are a tool. Or like Gold. The turtles were a finite resource or at least an eccentricity like truffles..

Auditor #9 wrote:

I pictured Henderson as Rockall. Wouldn't Diamonds be of high industrial usage if they weren't so precious as an accompaniment to the long white dress? Thus they are a tool. Or like Gold. The turtles were a finite resource or at least an eccentricity like truffles..

Yep, and the turtles' shells had industrial uses as building materials.

Ard-Taoiseach wrote:

Auditor #9 wrote:

I pictured Henderson as Rockall. Wouldn't Diamonds be of high industrial usage if they weren't so precious as an accompaniment to the long white dress? Thus they are a tool. Or like Gold. The turtles were a finite resource or at least an eccentricity like truffles..

Yep, and the turtles' shells had industrial uses as building materials.

Yes that's right where he described their efforts to survive as ingenious, desperate and pathetic or something like that. They ran out of wood on the mainland - was that the main cause of their downfall on Henderson?

henderson island (google earth)

Auditor #9 wrote:

Yep, and the turtles' shells had industrial uses as building materials.

Yes that's right where he described their efforts to survive as ingenious, desperate and pathetic or something like that. They ran out of wood on the mainland - was that the main cause of their downfall on Henderson?
[/quote]

It certainly was one of the major reasons why Henderson's society lost a lot of its complexity and indeed collapsed.

That picture of Henderson is chilling. There is so little in the way of foliage.

Feathers, he said, were a possibility.

Henderson's lack of a water supply seems to have been its biggest draw back.

Perhaps the lads brought the equivalent of six pack when they came for a feast.

Auditor #9 wrote:

Ard-Taoiseach wrote:

Yep, and the turtles' shells had industrial uses as building materials.

Yes that's right where he described their efforts to survive as ingenious, desperate and pathetic or something like that. They ran out of wood on the mainland - was that the main cause of their downfall on Henderson?

It certainly was one of the major reasons why Henderson's society lost a lot of its complexity and indeed collapsed.

That picture of Henderson is chilling. There is so little in the way of foliage.[/quote]

All of the islands he has looked at share the same pattern of a shift from hunter gatherer life to having to go into agriculture. The same with the Anasazi, was it?

I'm not sure that I think any post hunter gatherer society is sustainable. There were hunter gatherers for tens of thousands of years and it only seemed to take about 500 years of agriculture before we ran into trouble, and then a hundred years of industrial society.

Ard-Taoiseach wrote:

And some more...

Those fruit juices are delicious Ard-Taoiseach. Just the thing for an island paradise.

Did anyone read the NY Times review? The reviewer was going along quite nicely until he started saying that we could make a perfectly good life somewhere else in the universe if this planet was made uninhabitable.

cactus flower wrote:

Did anyone read the NY Times review? The reviewer was going along quite nicely until he started saying that we could make a perfectly good life somewhere else in the universe if this planet was made uninhabitable.

Yep, very odd indeed. It's like Samuel Beckett's quote:

"Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better."

We'd be doing that on Mars and the Moon if we follow the review's advice!

cactus flower wrote:

Indeed, cactus. Glad your enjoying the juices too.