Danielelmochuelo

El pasado fin de semana fue asqueroso. El viento de poniente traía las cenizas y el olor de los incendios masivos en el interior de Valencia. Algunos de los mejores bosques mediterráneos desaparecían en minutos, para siempre. El cielo aparecía amarillo. La tarde era tremendamente cálida. Mi generación ya no volverá a ver esos pinos y esas sabinas. Algunos de los bosques que crucé en Colorado también estaban ardiendo, al otro lado del mundo, de nuestro pequeño mundo. Canal 9 insistía que el fuego de aquí era inevitable y que no tenía nada que ver con los recortes en prevención de los últimos 4 años. La ciudad estaba triste y briznas negras flotaban en la tarde del sábado caluroso. Murió un piloto. La semana anterior había estado en la presentación de este pequeño libro. Su autor, Ricardo Almenar es un biólogo dedicado a lo de la sostenibilidad. Mal trabajo en esta tierra donde se decidió vender el territorio para pagar las fiestas. Almenar  parece un tipo lúcido y...

My fellow, Tomás, lent it to me two years ago and I spent good moments reading it. I’m no sure if I give it back to him, because: “There was only one guy more stupid than the one who lent a book, is the one who gave it back”. I’ve read some books by the same author (" Collapse " and " El tercer chimpancé "), and all of them impressed me. Jared Diamond seems to know about everything. He writes about languages, history, genetics, politics. In fact, “Guns, germs and steel” has the pretentious subtitle: “ A short story of everybody for the last 13:000 years ”. The book studies the reasons of the apparent superiority of some human groups above others. Translating it into concrete questions: • Why Pizarro and his small group were able to beat Atahualpa and the Inca empire, instead of Atahualpa's coming to Castille to capture Charles I of Spain? • Why white people were able to kill the majority of Australian aborigins and substitute them? • Why Bantu people (black peo...

A colleague, though a friend, lent it to me. Two years ago, I read in Spanish “El tercer chimpancé”, about anthropology, by the same author. At that time, I thought Diamond was a very educated writer. But now, I am even more impressed because the matters described in “Collapse” come from very different fields of Science. It is a real pleasure to read this kind of Renaissance work nowadays, at the time of blind specialisation. The book is about some old and modern societies and civilizations. It is focused on the important question “Why some societies survived and other collapsed?” Obviously, it is a clever way of asking “Is our civilization going to survive or fail?” Diamond explains that societal collapses usually involve an important environmental component, climate changes, hostile neighbours and other minor factors. Each society gave different responses to those problems. He chooses civilizations from different ages and places, surrounded by different environmental conditions, and ...