The Fates of Human Societies If you see Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond at a rummage sale -- grab it. In fact this is one book that's worth buying from a bookstore. (Don't tell anyone I said that.) Diamond has an encyclopedic knowledge of biology, archaeology, anthropology and a jillion other ologies; not only that he has the ability to take an overarching view of the whole body of knowledge and show how all these ologies can inform one another.

Guns, Germs and Steel is nothing less than a comprehensive history of the human race, with an emphasis on the plants and animals that people domesticated. Want to know why horses can be domesticated, but zebras can't? Want to know how the wild almond, which is poison, became the luscious delectable nut that we enjoy today? It's all in there, every domestic animal and every crop ever cultivated.

But the work has a higher purpose, a very worthy one in my opinion. He's looking for an answer to a question he was asked by a hunter in Papua-New Guinea: "How come the white guys have all the stuff?"

He wonders why South America didn't colonize Europe instead of the other way around.

To get at a valid answer to this question, he first has to debunk explanations based on cultural or racial or national superiority, and other less offensive, but equally invalid explanations such as the idea that warm climates inhibit human creativity and energy. Though widely held, these explanations are not supported by evidence; quite the contrary. Diamond obliterates them in short order in a very readable way.

"The objection to such racist explanations is not just that they are loathsome," Diamond writes, "but also that they are wrong."

Intelligence, he points out, continues to increase through the process of evolution in New Guinea societies where the principal cause of death is hunting accidents and homicide, but not in European societies where, for thousands of years, the principal cause of death has been infectious disease.

"Intelligent people are likelier than less intelligent ones to escape those causes of high mortality in traditional New Guinea societies. However, the differential mortality from epidemic diseases in traditional European societies had little to do with intelligence, and instead involved genetic resistance dependent on details of body chemistry."

Diamond's final explanation for the dominance of Eurasian societies is that Eurasia is fatter than America and Africa. (I'm summarizing blithely here.) It has much more longitude along the same lines of lattitude. This gave them the advantage in agriculture and in domesticating large mammals. Exposure to the large mammals' diseases built up people's resistance to human diseases just as the dairy maids who had been exposed to cowpox were effectively immunized against smallpox.

I haven't finished the book yet, so I'm a little sketchy on the details, but I have to say this is the best written and the most comprehensive history book I have ever read.  ¶ 5:09 PM 0 comments

  Some More Tips on the French Legal System Benvenuto Cellini, while in France, had a model named Caterina "whom I maintain principally for the service of my profession, since I could not do without her," he explained to his young steward "and whom I also, since I am a man, have employed for my carnal satisfaction."

Benvenuto further explains to the steward that he does not wish to provide for other people's children and still less would he endure such an insult, etc. etc. but does the young steward listen? Not a chance.

Now if Caterina is the model for the woman on that 58 million-dollar salt cellar, we would have to offer that as a mitigating circumstance.

Anyway Benvenuto catches Caterina with the steward and drives her and her mother out of the house "with violent blows, both kicks and thumps."

"They meditated how to revenge themselves for this injury, and having consulted a Norman lawyer, he instructed them that she (Caterina) should assert that I had had intercourse with her after the Italian fashion: by which he meant contrary to nature, saying:

"'At least when this Italian hears of this kind of accusation and understands how great is the danger he runs, he will immediately give you hundreds of ducats, in order that you may speak no more of it, recollecting the great penalty that they exact in France for this species of crime.'"

So Benvenuto is summoned to court again. He thinks of taking off and "leaving France to her own perdition," but then he hears a voice that says, "'Benvenuto, be yourself and have no fear.'"

So he resolves, "to fight this battle also and see for what end God had created me."

So he arrives in court with a large well-armed retinue, and Caterina recounts the accusation, i.e. that Benvenuto had had intercourse with her in the Italian fashion.

Now I've been trying to keep these entries short, but I believe this passage has to be cited in its entirety because it addresses some questions of great historical importance and illustrates a sure-fire legal strategy for defendants in a position like Benvenuto's:

"To this I replied that that was not the Italian fashion; rather it must be the French fashion, since she knew it and I did not: and that I would like her to describe exactly in what fashion I had had intercourse with her.

"This shameless wh___ wickedly stated openly and clearly the disgusting fashion that she meant. I made her repeat it three times in succession: and when she had said it, I cried in a loud voice:

"'My Lord Judge! Lieutenant of the Most Christian King, I demand justice. For I know that the laws of the MCK ordain the stake for this crime, for both agent and patient. She confesses to the crime: but I know nothing whatsoever. Her bawd of a mother is here also, who for one crime or the other deserves the stake. I demand justice!'

"And I repeated these words so frequently and in a loud voice, always demanding the stake for her and her mother: telling the judge that if he did not put her in prison in my presence I would hasten to the King and tell him of the injustice that a lieutenant of his in criminal affairs was exercising toward me.

"At this great noise of mine, they began to lower their voices: thereupon I raised mine the more: the young wh___ along with her mother began to weep and I kept shouting to the judge 'Fuoco! Fuoco! [To the stake! To the stake!]

"That great coward of a judge, when he saw that the matter had not come off in the fashion that he planned, began with many soft words to excuse the weak female sex.

"At this I thought that it seemed I had won a great battle, and muttering and threatening, I gladly went away: but I certainly would have paid five hundred scudi not have ever appeared there."  ¶ 8:19 AM 0 comments

  Some Tips on the French Legal System While Benvenuvto Cellini was in France, King Francis gave him this big block of apartments to use for his workshops, but Benvenuto had to kick out the nobles who were already living there, some of whom were pretty well conected. He went to the king and said he might have to use a little force, and the king said, "Go ahead, and if a little force doesn't work, use a lot."

I guess that was how things were back then. Anyway one of the guys he kicks out sues him. "They have a habit in France," he reports, "of making very great capital out of any law-suit that they commence with a foreigner, or with any other person whom they see may be careless litigation."

People bring these lawsuits, Benvenuto explains, and then turn around and sell them to someone else who knows how to collect on them.

"They have another ugly custom," he adds, "that the men of Normandy, almost the larger number of them, have for their profession the giving of false evidence: to such purpose that those persons who buy the causes [suits], immediately instruct four of these witnesses, or six, according to their need, and by means of these the man who is not warned to produce as many on the opposite side -- one who does not know the custom -- immediately has the case given against him."

Benvenuto found that the solution to this problem was the same one he had used for almost every other problem he had ever encountered in his life: that is, the judicious use of edged weapons:

"When I saw them pass certain judgments upon me through the medium of these lawyers, not seeing any means of being able to help myself, I had recourse for my assistance to a great dagger that I had, for I always delighted in possessing fine weapons.

"And the first man that I began my attack upon was that principal who had set in motion against me the unjust suit; and one evening I inflicted upon him so many wounds, taking care, however, not to kill him, that I deprived him of the use of both legs.

"Then I sought out that other person who had purchased the suit and wounded him also in such a way that he abandoned that suit."  ¶ 2:52 PM 0 comments

  Benvenuto Cellini
  ¶ 12:48 PM 1 comments

  A Confederacy of Dunces There are some books you should always buy for a quarter, even if you already have them, so you can give them to friends. One of them is A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole. It was a pretty popular book, so I find it quite often, and many friends have enjoyed it as much as I did.

I'm rerereading it right now to find out what makes it so enjoyable, and I find it is a study in self indulgence.

The main character, Ignatius Reilly, has a master's degree in Medieval Studies and he's 30 years old, but he lives with his mother and seldom leaves his room except to go to the movies. And he's overweight and becomes more and more so throughout the novel.

He likes to watch Yogi Bear and soak in the tub and scribble profound thoughts about the crisis of our age on sheets of Big Chief notepaper that lie scattered around the room. He can also put away two dozen jelly doughnuts at a go.

He and his mother have a comedic automobile accident and damage a building and they have to pay, so Ignatius is forced out into the working world as a file clerk and then as a hotdog vendor, and we hear these incessant self-indulgent laments and invocations of obscure saints laced with vitriolic attacks on his sort-of girlfriend Myra Minkoff and complaints about his pyloric valve which is always closing up on him and causing a buildup of gas in his stomach.

It's set in New Orleans, so he meets all kinds of characters pushing his hot dog cart around, and of course he eats all the hot dogs himself and grows fatter still.

I can't tell you why it's funny. But it is. We all know someone like him. And it tests our own beliefs about self indulgence. It's good to give yourself a break once in a while; but at the same time it's easy to give yourself so many breaks that you wind up like Ignatius Reilly.

The greatest strength of the book is the author's ear for dialogue and his sense of character. Too bad he killed himself before the novel ever got published. He could have written many more enjoyable books.

His mother shopped it around from publisher to publisher until finally Walker Percy read it and it got published and won a Pulitzer Prize.

Ignatius Reilly is so pathetic that he makes the perfect protagonist for the modern age where everyone's goal is to go on a talk show and talk about what a feeb they are and blame all their problems on someone else. Too bad the brilliant novelist who created him (possibly in his own image) chose to end his life in despair.

"To despair is to turn your back on God." So says Marilla Cuthbert in Anne of Green Gables, and I believe it to be a great truth. I believe that all who have despaired have turned their backs on God, that is to say, on eternal joy.

If only John Kennedy Toole had chosen to live on and give us more hilarious masterpieces.  ¶ 5:56 PM 4 comments

  Malice Toward None Since I work as an editor, people occasionally ask me how they can improve their writing. I tell them to read Lincoln. Just about everything he ever said or wrote, it seems, is thoughtful, concise and beautifully expressed -- at times uproariously funny, at others deeply moving.

Some other writers (and speakers) come close at their highest moments, like Winston Churchill's "Blood, Sweat and Tears" speech, or Roosevelt's "Fear Itself" speech. But with Lincoln this incredible power of language seems in evidence all the time.

And it is just possible that Lincoln's highest moment was the Second Inaugural Address, shortly before Lee's surrender at Appomattox. I was just reading a story about it in American Heritage (February 1958) by Philip van Doren Stern, which quotes an account in the New York Herald.

There's a funny bit about the buffoonery of Andrew Johnson being sworn in after drinking several tumblers of whiskey. But then the narrative turns serious. It had been raining hard for two days, and some of the 30,000 spectators were ankle deep in mud.

"As the President came forward there was a cheer, but not a great one, and at the same time the sun burst through the clouds and lighted up the whole east face very brilliantly...

"The President rose and stepped forward to the reading desk... He looked unusually handsome. When delivering his speech his face glowed with enthusiasm, and he evidently felt every word that he uttered."

You probably know the speech -- Lincoln wound up becoming kind of famous -- but let me quote it here because it still carries enormous power:

"Fondly do we hope -- fervently do we pray -- that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, 'The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.'

"With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow, and his orphan -- to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and a lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations."  ¶ 4:38 PM 0 comments

  The Gross National Happiness When you hear about the Gross National Product going up, that's good, right? Well, not exactly. If everyone in the United States had a safe and sane Fourth of July and did not smash into anyone else on the highway, the Gross National Product would go down.

Sad to say, if people stopped assaulting and killing other people, the GNP would go down drastically. Hospital bills, funerals, coffins, these all add to the GNP. People getting AIDS is bad news, but it increases GNP.

Al Gore points out that when you cut down a forest, the Gross National Product goes up by the amount they make from the sale of the lumber, plus all the people who get paid for labor, fuel and equipment. No one takes into consideration the O2-generating capacity of the forest, not to mention the amenities the forest offers to the creatures that live there.

The king of Bhutan, when told about the concept of the Gross National Product, coined the concept of the Gross National Happiness.

In Bhutan you can't cut down a tree without planting three.

Would it be beneath our national dignity to learn a thing or two from people who clearly know what they are talking about?

Read more about Bhutan on GoNOMAD.com.  ¶ 4:59 PM 0 comments

  The Amazing JQA
So who was the US President who witnessed the Battle of Bunker Hill, visited Finland, met Catherine the Great of Russia and owned a pet alligator?

More important than that, when the crew of the liberated slave ship Amistad sailed to the State of Connecticut, in what was supposed to be the Land of Liberty, and were then clapped in irons and were about to be sold back into slavery, which former US president showed up to represent them and ultimately won them their freedom?

This could only be one of the most remarkable presidents in US history: John Quincy Adams.

JQA opposed slavery right at the beginning of the American Republic.

Harriet Beecher Stowe's son points out in her biography that Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton and Franklin (of course!) and nearly all the founding fathers opposed slavery, although they had to put up with it, and condoned it with the approval of the Constitution (which contains the "three-fifths" provision, condoning slavery).

John Quincy Adams was a devotee of Ben Franklin and throughout his political career he did everything he could to oppose the expansion of slavery. He was an abolitionist sixty years ahead of his time.

His presidency was not a smashing success, but he went on to a remarkable 18-year career in the House of Representatives that is unequaled in history.

As an elder statesman, he protected the fledgling republic from sectionalism and partisanship. Then he died, as perhaps he might have wished, on the floor of the House.

The House of Representatives lost the mentor it had relied upon for 18 years, who had for forty years told everyone who cared to hear that slavery was evil.

As the chairman of the committee to make arrangements for the funeral of John Quincy Adams, the House of Representatives appointed a newly-elected congressman from Illinois.

You'd recognize him; he's on the money -- tall and lanky, stovepipe hat.

Abraham Lincoln and John Quincy Adams fit my model for true patriots. They saw something terribly wrong with their country and they did something about it. There's something very moving about the way one passed the torch to the other.

When the Amistad sails into your town, will you stand up with JQA?  ¶ 9:35 AM 0 comments