A timely reminder about the influence of Jared Diamond.

Guns, Germs and Steel may be Jared Diamond's signature achievement, but for unknown reasons, Collapse affected me more deeply. Both are due for rereading. So much to learn, so little time.

INFLUENCES: JARED DIAMOND, by Charles Marohn (Strong Towns)

... A couple of years before the housing crisis, I came across his book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, which taught me again how to think systematically about places, people and societies. The mental image of the Norse Greenlanders, too stuck in the hierarchy of their culture to consider changes necessary to their survival, refusing to eat seal or fish and perishing from starvation while the Inuit, living in parallel, demonstrated a viable way to survive, was powerful. To think of the Eastern Islanders tearing, down every tree on their island (growth at all costs) until they could not even build a boat to leave when the society -- tens of thousands -- descended into starvation and cannibalism cutting their numbers to a few hundred, is chilling. These case studies are powerful because we're the same people with the same motivations and likely to make the same rationalizations until it is too late.

Jared Diamond: The human antidote to Creation Museum claptrap is coming to Louisville.

The scientist and author Jared Diamond will be appearing on January 9 at the Kentucky Center as part of the University of Louisville Kentucky Author Forum.

Will we see a "white-hot sphere" of GOP "Collapse", or a timely reinvention?

As usual, The Onion nails it.

After Obama Victory, Shrieking White-Hot Sphere Of Pure Rage Early GOP Front-Runner For 2016

But I'm in a mellow, post-coital ecstatic, counter-intuitive mood today -- in fact, I'm craving a cigarette, and I don't even smoke -- so read it here first:

I predict that in 2016, the GOP will have a Latino and a woman on the presidential ticket.

The party will have little choice; it's either reinvention, or extinction. I'd prefer the latter, but suspect that while Republicans are crazed and enraged, they'll not opt for self-immolation.

Or will they? Perhaps it is time to re-read a very good book:

Man vs nature: Jonathon Porritt appreciates Jared Diamond's timely reminder of our destructive instincts, Collapse (Guardian)

 ... How could this particular collapse have happened? Or, as one of his own students put it, what do you suppose the islander who cut down the last tree on Easter Island said to himself as he was doing it?

Duh: According to Diamond, "Romney Hasn’t Done His Homework."

Are we surprised that Romney's millions distracted him from the non-paying task of reading? Has there ever been a more out-of-touch candidate from a major American political party? GHW Bush springs to mind, but the teetotaling Romney surely distances him when it comes to sheer aloofness from reality. Thanks to JV for the link.

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR: Romney Hasn’t Done His Homework, by Jared Diamond (New York Times)

... It is not true that my book “Guns, Germs and Steel,” as Mr. Romney described it in a speech in Jerusalem, “basically says the physical characteristics of the land account for the differences in the success of the people that live there. There is iron ore on the land and so forth.”

That is so different from what my book actually says that I have to doubt whether Mr. Romney read it.