Today was a hot, lazy day for me. I stayed in and didn't do much.
I'm almost finished Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel. Normally I'd wait till I've finished before writing about it, but it's a slow day today! It's a very enjoyable book, written in a clear style. ("The answer is unequivocal: no!") I've been learning a lot about early civilizations and stuff like the Austronesian migrations that started in Taiwan and spread all the way from Madagascar to Easter Island. I'd been wondering why the Bronze Age came before the Iron Age, and it turned out to be because smelting iron ore into steel requires bigger, more complex furnaces than just smelting copper and other ores into alloys like bronze.
One thing Diamond might have talked a bit more about is the importance of trade in the evolution of early societies. I couldn't help noticing that the leap to alphabetic writing systems was made by the Phoenicians, who were using it for far-reaching commerce, unlike earlier systems that just served bureaucracies within a single kingdom.
I found someone on Youtube who's posted whole episodes of The Carol Burnett Show! I just saw an episode from 1975 with Sammy Davis Jr., with a musical number built around Harold Arlen songs and the famous sketch about the no-frills airline passenger. (I remember seeing it at the time, of course.) I'm going to be looking at more of those.
This afternoon I saw an American Experience documentary about building the Panama Canal. It's a miracle that the project got completed: they really had to learn by doing. (Today the American nation's idea of an accomplishment is getting Osama killed.)
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