I was somewhat disappointed with the book
Posted: Wed 18 May 2005, 20:11:45
Hi all.
I was looking forward to a rollicking good read, after I read some of the reviews, but I found the book disappointing, especially the bit on Australia.
Y'see, I LIVE in Australia, and have a somewhat more intimate knowledge of the place that Jared Diamond indicates.
Sure, we've got dry-land salinity, he was right there, but some of his throw-away lines are downright misleading & display a curious lack of knowledge about Australia, viz:
"Australia was more British than Britain." (he was talking about his first visit to Australia, during the 1960's).
This is simply laughable.
The start of the Australian disgust with Britain happened with the Bodyline series in the 1930's, where one Donald Bradman (a cricketer, and a very famous Australian batsman) was targetted by one Douglas Jardine (a bowler from England) - it was the first formal use of the saying "play the man, not the ball". Jardine was ordered to aim squarely at Donald Bradman's head (instead of the wickets), in order to "take him out".
With a cricket ball travelling at 60 miles an hour, one's brains could VERY effectively concussed.
Donald Bradman, y'see was a fantastically good batsman, and the Poms (Aussie contempt word for anyone of British extraction) did NOT like the idea of continuously losing to "the colonials".
It was so blatant and so obviously wrong, it damn near caused Australia to become a Republic.
The SECOND of the two "incidents" was the humiliating collapse & surrender of Singapore in 1942 - after telling everyone that Singapore was "impregnable", and could "never fall", the surrender of 87,000 Commonwealth troops to 6,500 Japanese soldiers, all of whom had just ran out of ammunition, well, that caused the Aussies to lose ALL faith in Britain.
It was revealed that the "big guns" of Singapore Station were facing the wrong way (ie: away from the enemy, not towards them) and could not be turned around to fire at the attackers. Winston Churchill wrote of it afterwards: "I no more considered that the guns at Singapore could not be turned around that one would launch a battleship without a bottom."
The Aussies jumped on the American bandwagon from 1942 onwards.
Jared Diamond seems not to know this.
The other thing that Jared Diamond tries to do (oddly) is play DOWN the effcts of world-wide climate change (for the LIFE of me, I cannot figure out why, in a book vurtually about climate change).
For example, he notes (hurredly) that the collapse of the Mayans happened "about 1450".
Then, in another chapter, he notes that the collapse of the Greenland Norse "happened about 1450".
Uh, Jared, don't you think that this was due to the same thing?
It seems he wants to push the idea that "all collapses" were due to human stupidity alone, and climate change was just ...well, secondary.
He also seems not to know of the humongous asteroid impact that happened in the late 1400's/ early 1500's off the coast of New Zealand (I will have to look up the links...hang on) which lowered the Earth's temp's at a time when the Earth was already cooling after the extraordnary warming of the period 800AD to 1400AD (when the climate warmed by 4 to 6 degrees C - odd, how "catastrophic climate change" is going to be caused by a 2 degree warming, now).
URL's: Ted Bryant on ABC Australia's Catalyst Science program
I have only read the book once, so p'raps I should not be so hasty, but it's just that he does start talking about a subject I am intimately familiar with - Australia.
We have huge "ecological" problems, yes, but the ...assessments...about Australia are more like the small "cut-back" versions one finds in travelogues issued to tourists who do not plan on reading them.
Anyway, I want to re-read it.
I was looking forward to a rollicking good read, after I read some of the reviews, but I found the book disappointing, especially the bit on Australia.
Y'see, I LIVE in Australia, and have a somewhat more intimate knowledge of the place that Jared Diamond indicates.
Sure, we've got dry-land salinity, he was right there, but some of his throw-away lines are downright misleading & display a curious lack of knowledge about Australia, viz:
"Australia was more British than Britain." (he was talking about his first visit to Australia, during the 1960's).
This is simply laughable.
The start of the Australian disgust with Britain happened with the Bodyline series in the 1930's, where one Donald Bradman (a cricketer, and a very famous Australian batsman) was targetted by one Douglas Jardine (a bowler from England) - it was the first formal use of the saying "play the man, not the ball". Jardine was ordered to aim squarely at Donald Bradman's head (instead of the wickets), in order to "take him out".
With a cricket ball travelling at 60 miles an hour, one's brains could VERY effectively concussed.
Donald Bradman, y'see was a fantastically good batsman, and the Poms (Aussie contempt word for anyone of British extraction) did NOT like the idea of continuously losing to "the colonials".
It was so blatant and so obviously wrong, it damn near caused Australia to become a Republic.
The SECOND of the two "incidents" was the humiliating collapse & surrender of Singapore in 1942 - after telling everyone that Singapore was "impregnable", and could "never fall", the surrender of 87,000 Commonwealth troops to 6,500 Japanese soldiers, all of whom had just ran out of ammunition, well, that caused the Aussies to lose ALL faith in Britain.
It was revealed that the "big guns" of Singapore Station were facing the wrong way (ie: away from the enemy, not towards them) and could not be turned around to fire at the attackers. Winston Churchill wrote of it afterwards: "I no more considered that the guns at Singapore could not be turned around that one would launch a battleship without a bottom."
The Aussies jumped on the American bandwagon from 1942 onwards.
Jared Diamond seems not to know this.
The other thing that Jared Diamond tries to do (oddly) is play DOWN the effcts of world-wide climate change (for the LIFE of me, I cannot figure out why, in a book vurtually about climate change).
For example, he notes (hurredly) that the collapse of the Mayans happened "about 1450".
Then, in another chapter, he notes that the collapse of the Greenland Norse "happened about 1450".
Uh, Jared, don't you think that this was due to the same thing?
It seems he wants to push the idea that "all collapses" were due to human stupidity alone, and climate change was just ...well, secondary.
He also seems not to know of the humongous asteroid impact that happened in the late 1400's/ early 1500's off the coast of New Zealand (I will have to look up the links...hang on) which lowered the Earth's temp's at a time when the Earth was already cooling after the extraordnary warming of the period 800AD to 1400AD (when the climate warmed by 4 to 6 degrees C - odd, how "catastrophic climate change" is going to be caused by a 2 degree warming, now).
URL's: Ted Bryant on ABC Australia's Catalyst Science program
I have only read the book once, so p'raps I should not be so hasty, but it's just that he does start talking about a subject I am intimately familiar with - Australia.
We have huge "ecological" problems, yes, but the ...assessments...about Australia are more like the small "cut-back" versions one finds in travelogues issued to tourists who do not plan on reading them.
Anyway, I want to re-read it.