Seil
08-20-2011, 08:32 PM
So I went to a family reunion last week. Got a big sunburn. Found out I get a condition called "Swimmers Ear." Mosquitoes love me. Also, seeing the family was really great and I'm moving to Toronto early next year. Now that all that's outta the way, while I was in the airport, I walked around. (As I am wont to do.) In one of the wee shops they had a book called The Rational Optimist. (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/13/books/review/Easterly-t.html) It's by a dude named... lesse here... Matt Ridley.
But it's called rational optimism because it discusses how the quality of life, the quality of food and ideas and all sorts of stuff has evolved and gotten better and will continue to get better:
For two hundred years the pessimists have dominated public discourse, insisting that things will soon be getting much worse. But in fact, life is getting betterâ€"and at an accelerating rate. Food availability, income, and life span are up; disease, child mortality, and violence are down all across the globe. Africa is following Asia out of poverty; the Internet, the mobile phone, and container shipping are enriching people's lives as never before.
In his bold and bracing exploration into how human culture evolves positively through exchange and specialization, bestselling author Matt Ridley does more than describe how things are getting better. He explains why. An astute, refreshing, and revelatory work that covers the entire sweep of human historyâ€"from the Stone Age to the Internetâ€"The Rational Optimist will change your way of thinking about the world for the better.
Anyway, the intro is all like, him talking about the difference atwixt a stone age hand-axe and a computer mouse. (One was made by one person for a specific purpose, the other was made by lots of people after years of study and research.) Then he talks about ideas having sex.
Really. For realsies. The chapter is titled "Ideas Having Sex." He also talks about statistics a whole lot, which is what you have to do in a book like this, I guess.
Like that book thread about "The Moral Animal," I find the idea fascinating, but it's sort of like reading a textbook, and it puts me to sleep a little. It's really good for a plane ride, but I'd recomend Douglas Adams for after tea time at the family reunion.
But it's called rational optimism because it discusses how the quality of life, the quality of food and ideas and all sorts of stuff has evolved and gotten better and will continue to get better:
For two hundred years the pessimists have dominated public discourse, insisting that things will soon be getting much worse. But in fact, life is getting betterâ€"and at an accelerating rate. Food availability, income, and life span are up; disease, child mortality, and violence are down all across the globe. Africa is following Asia out of poverty; the Internet, the mobile phone, and container shipping are enriching people's lives as never before.
In his bold and bracing exploration into how human culture evolves positively through exchange and specialization, bestselling author Matt Ridley does more than describe how things are getting better. He explains why. An astute, refreshing, and revelatory work that covers the entire sweep of human historyâ€"from the Stone Age to the Internetâ€"The Rational Optimist will change your way of thinking about the world for the better.
Anyway, the intro is all like, him talking about the difference atwixt a stone age hand-axe and a computer mouse. (One was made by one person for a specific purpose, the other was made by lots of people after years of study and research.) Then he talks about ideas having sex.
Really. For realsies. The chapter is titled "Ideas Having Sex." He also talks about statistics a whole lot, which is what you have to do in a book like this, I guess.
Like that book thread about "The Moral Animal," I find the idea fascinating, but it's sort of like reading a textbook, and it puts me to sleep a little. It's really good for a plane ride, but I'd recomend Douglas Adams for after tea time at the family reunion.