Father's Day First

It was Father's Day today and the kids took me out for dinner. Yep, that's a first! The kids decided to split the bill between themselves and pay using their own hard-earned money. Mom offered to pick up a share of the bill too. It's not the amount that counts but that they recognize that they have a role in contributing in the family. This is good.

Tags: Family

Guns, Germs and Steel (Jared Diamond, 1997)

It's been a while since I've read an entire book. That is, a proper thick book with over 400 pages. However, I recently finished reading "Guns, Germs and Steel" by Jared Diamond. It won the 1998 Rhone-Poulenc Science Book Prize. Its subtitle is "a short history of everybody for the last 13,000 years".

Diamond sets out to explain why human history turned out the way it did. His thesis is that the big picture of history is completely a product of environmental factors and has nothing to do with racial capabilities.

He covers the early human disporas, the rise of food production and the invention and spread of technologies. It's a fascinating story.

The gist is that the Fertile Crescent had an overwhelming advantage in the number of domesticatible seeds and animals. China had the next best collection. These areas developed agriculture and the earliest civillisations giving them a head start. Because of the East-West primary orientation of the Eurasian continent, food production and technologies spread easily. Meanwhile, the Americas and Africa had a poor collection of domesticatible seeds and animals and a primary North-South orientation. Farming developed slowly and did not spread easily in these regions. With greater food production, Eurasia developed higher population densities which led to increases in disease and immunity, sophisticated government, technology development and warfare.

China was, for most of history, the most advanced nation on earth. The anomally of China's recent isolation and stagnation left the world to western domination in the last few hundred years. It's interesting to watch the explosive development of China as it takes back its historic position in the world.

Diamond does discuss in detail developments in North and South America, Africa, China, Polynesia and Australia. What I'm left not understanding is why India did not play a more powerful role. It had a head start in the Indus Valley, early food production and access to technology and trade with the other early civillisations. I need to read more about Indian history.

Home Alone

Last Sunday we had the almost bizarre experience of being home alone without any kids.

K* spent the weekend camping with the cub scouts. It was his first big trip away from home. Lots of pictures on the website. Unfortunately, the weather turned bad and some of their tents blew down Sunday night! Lots of rain but he enjoyed it and still likes camping.

R* was away for four days hiking the Brecon Beacons in Wales as part of a school trip. She didn't say much about it but she seemed to have enjoyed herself.

So we had Sunday free to ourselves! For a treat, we went and saw comedian Shazia Mirza at Norden Farm. Overall, she was very good. As a Pakistani Muslim woman, she can draw on a lot of cultural and ethnic material and she does it well (F*** Off, I'm a Hairy Woman). Amazingly, she also receives death threats which she reads out and makes fun of during her show. Respect.