The World Until Yesterday

 

 

If you were a frequent air traveller in the late 90s, you would have encountered Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" which festooned the shelves of every airport bookshop. I got my copy at Sydney airport and read it non-stop on a non-stop QANTAS flight to Shanghai in 1998.

 

 

In his most personal book to date, "The World Until Yesterday", Jared Diamond writes about his experiences over nearly five decades working and living in New Guinea, an island that is home to one thousand of the world's 7,000 languages and one of the most culturally diverse places.

Drawing on his fieldwork in New Guinea, as well as evidence from Inuit, Amazonian Indians and other cultures, Diamond explores how tribal peoples approach essential human problems, from child-rearing to old age to conflict resolution to health, and discovers that we have much to learn from traditional ways of life.

He unearthes remarkable findings - from the reasons why modern afflictions like diabetes, obesity and hypertension are largely non-existent in tribal societies, to the surprising cognitive benefits of multilingualism. As Diamond reminds us, the West achieved global dominance due to specific environmental and technological advantages, but Westerners do not necessarily have superior ideas about how to raise children, care for the elderly, or simply live well.

In keeping with my current more earth-bound lifestyle, I found my copy of "The World Until Yesterday" not at any airport but at Vinnies' op-shop.

 

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Other books by Jared Diamond:
Guns, Germs, and Steel : The fates of human societies
The Third Chimpanzee : The evolution and future of the human animal
Collapse : How societies choose to fail or succeed
Why Is Sex Fun?: The Evolution of Human Sexuality

 

Theeb, a Bedouin Western

 

Click on 'CC' to switch on the subtitles

 

This 'Bedouin Western', set in the land of Lawrence of Arabia, is about a boy who, in order to survice, must become a man and live up to the name - "Theeb"/"Wolf" - his father gave him.

The film takes place during the Middle Eastern theatre of the First World War, in the wake of the Great Arab Revolt against the ruling Ottoman Empire, and is a coming-of-age story about a Bedouin boy, Theeb, who must survive in the wide-open Wadi Rum desert.

It was filmed in the same area where "Lawrence of Arabia" was shot in the early 1960s, but it is an inversion of that film in that it is told from the perspective of Arab bedouins rather than a colonial adventurer.

It includes some beautiful scenery and wonderful performances by non-professional actors from a Bedouin community in southern Jordan. The only professional actor is Jack Fox who plays the British officer with a faint whiff of Lawrence of Arabia. I loved this movie as it brought back many memories of my own time in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

 

 

And here's the soundtrack of Lawrence of Arabia which, more than the money, made me go to Saudi Arabia. "What is it, Major Lawrence, that attracts you personally to the desert?" "It's clean." Turn up the volume!

 

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The Trouble with Islam

 

 

Irshad Manji calls herself a Muslim Refusenik. 'That doesn't mean I refuse to be a Muslim,' she writes. 'It simply means I refuse to join an army of automatons in the name of Allah.' These automatons, Manji argues, include many so-called moderate Muslims in the West. In blunt, provacative, and deeply personal terms, she unearths the troubling cornerstones of Islam as it is widely practiced - tribal insularity, deep-seated anti-Semitism, and an uncritical acceptance of the Koran as the final, and therefore superior, manifesto of God.

 

Read the book online at www.archive.org

 

In her book - subtitled 'A Muslim's Call for Reform in Her Faith - is an open letter to Muslims and non-Muslims alike, Manji breaks the conspicuous silence that surrounds mainstream Islam with a series of pointed questions: "Why are we all being held hostage by what's happening between the Palestinians and the Israelis? Who is the real coloniser of Muslims - America or Arabia? How can we read the Koran literally when it's so contradictory and ambiguous? Why are we squandering the talents of women, fully half of God's creation?"

Not one to be satisfied with merely criticising, Manji offers a practical vision of how Islam can undergo a reformation that empowers women, promotes respect for religious minorities and fosters a competition of ideas. Her vision revives Islam's lost tradition of independent thought. This book should inspire Muslims worldwide to revisit the foundations of their faith. It might also compel non-Muslims to start posing the questions we all have about Islam today. In that spirit, "The Trouble with Islam" is a clarion call for a fatwa-free future.

 

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On this Halloween in 1938

 

 

On this Halloween in 1938, CBS Radio Network broadcast "The War of the Worlds", beginning with a paraphrased beginning of the novel by H.G. Wells, updated to contemporary times and introduced by Orson Welles:

"We know now that in the early years of the 20th century, this world was being watched closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own. We know now that as human beings busied themselves about their various concerns, they were scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacence, people went to and fro over the earth about their little affairs, serene in the assurance of their dominion over this small spinning fragment of solar driftwood which by chance or design man has inherited out of the dark mystery of Time and Space. Yet across an immense ethereal gulf, minds that are to our minds as ours are to the beasts in the jungle, intellects vast, cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. In the 39th year of the 20th century came the great disillusionment. It was near the end of October. Business was better. The war scare was over. More men were back at work. Sales were picking up. On this particular evening, October 30th, the Crossley service estimated that 32 million people were listening in on radios..."

This broadcast became infamous for inciting a panic by convincing some members of the listening audience that a Martian invasion was actually taking place, but it's not the only novel by H.G. Wells that had enormous consequences. His novel "The World Set Free", which described "atomic bombs", influenced Leo Szilard's vital role in the Manhattan Project.

 

 

Perhaps without this book "Leo Szilard would never have conceived of a nuclear chain reaction and without conceiving of a nuclear chain reaction he would never have grown terrified and without growing terrified Leo Szilard would never have persuaded Einstein to lobby Roosevelt and without Einstein lobbying Roosevelt there would have been no Manhattan Project and without the Manhattan Project there is no lever at 8.15 am on 6 August 1945 for Thomas Freebee to release 31,000 feet over Hiroshima, there is no bomb on Hiroshima and no bomb on Nagasaki and 100,000 people or 160,000 people or 200,000 people live ..." (quoted from Richard Flanagan's "Question 7")

Anyway, here in Australia we don't really celebrate Halloween. Why, even Donald Trump hates Halloween. When you’re a deranged monster who scares shit out of people, you don’t want competition, do you?

 

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Hunt for the Wilderpeople

 

 

Any movie starring Sam Neill is a good one, and so I bought "Hunt for the Wilderpeople" several years ago at full cover price; today I found it in my favourite op-shop for two dollars. I picked it up - together with an armful of books - as a small gift for a neighbour who hasn't seen this entertaining New Zealand movie yet.

 

 

Ricky is quite a handful and unlikely to make use of what's on offer in his room. The 1947 children's book "Bart: The Story of a Dog" by Ormond Edward Burton seems to be appropriate reading for someone of his age, but Erroll Flynn's "My Wicked, Wicked Ways" could give him some wrong ideas, while he would have no idea at all that "Animal Farm", if it is the book by George Orwell, is meant to be a satire of the Soviet Union.

Which brings me to that aforementioned "armful of books": Manning Clark's "The Quest for Grace", Hugh Mackay's "Ways of Escape", and David Marr's "Panic". Let's hope the coming weekend is as cold and grey as has been most of this week. It would make for great reading weather!

While we had lunch at the Bay's only Thai restaurant, BHP shares hit a twelve-month high of $44.55. Perhaps I should have offloaded some, because they are down to $43.85 at the time of writing. Still, I had placed an order to sell 20,000 Pilbara Minerals at $3.33 before we left home this morning. They got sold this afternoon after I had bought them only two days ago at $3.14. That's a $3,800 profit before brokerage (and tax-free as I bought and sold them inside my SMSF which is in pension phase). Enough to cover this month's grocery bill four times over!

 

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