Posts filed under “Books”
All together now
From Jared Diamond’s Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed: Today the world no longer faces just the circumscribed risk of an Easter Island society or Maya homeland collapsing in isolation, without affecting the rest of the world. Instead, societies today are so interconnected that the risk we face is of a worldwide decline. […]
The future awaits
From Jared Diamond’s Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed: …the world’s environmental problems will get resolved, in one way or another, within the lifetimes of the children and young adults alive today. The only question is whether they will become resolved in pleasant ways of our own choice, or in unpleasant ways not […]
Who cares if some scraggly weed goes extinct?
I mentioned in the first Extinction Thursday why you should care about the extinction of seemingly insignificant plants. Jared Diamond puts it much better in his book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed: But biodiversity losses of small inedible species often provoke the response, “Who cares? Do you really care less for humans […]
Overpopulation
From Jared Diamond’s Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed: The Norse were undone by the same social glue that had enabled them to master Greenland’s difficulties. That proves to be a common theme throughout history and also in the modern world … : The values to which people cling most stubbornly under inappropriate […]
Qualms
From Jeanette Winterson’s Written on the Body: My job was to go into the urinals wearing one of Inge’s stockings over my head. That in itself might not have attracted much attention, men’s toilets are fairly liberal places, but then I had to warn the row of guys that they were in danger of having […]
Berry Go Round
Biology in Science Fiction’s post on A Field Guide to Surreal Botany was featured in this month’s Berry Go Round. I am now desperate to read it: an anthology of fictional plant species that exist beyond the realm of the real. … Fully illustrated in gorgeous full-color by Janet Chui, the specimen entries are by […]
Pain
Sugarbutch asks “what’s in your box of darkness,” referring to this poem. I was reminded of this passage from “Musing on Pain, Love, and Others” by Laura-Zoe Humphreys in Bisexual Women in the 21st Century. Storyteller: Scrape of metal and a rustle as the white curtains close me in with them. One takes my hand […]