Basic Instructions by Scott Meyer for December 30, 2019

If only there was a book that can make me look skinny.

It will make him look smarter than having a bookshelf full of Danielle Steel.

My brother and I have vastly different personalities, mine suits me, and his suits him. One of the things that brought us together was discussing books, first, Encyclopedia Brown, then we moved on to Hardy Boys, then bikes, girls and cars took up our attention and we went our separate ways. Still keep in touch though.

That was a great book. But Collapse (same author, Jared Diamond) was even better. I still need to get around to reading Upheaval.

My global class spent a unit criticizing the book. Our teacher very much disliked the book.

Alas, my hometown has lost even its last used bookstore. Only the library remains. I continue to support the one non-used bookstore in the next town over.

Read the book and the way he portrays germs is not quite accurate. The author speaks about how a large temperate region (Eurasia) allowed food plants and animals from anywhere in the region to be cultivated anywhere else in the region which made large dense populations to be possible. The dense populations created fertile grounds for epidemics which then created a large population that became resistant to those epidemics. When they went to new areas, these epidemics would clear out the local population allowing the invaders ease to fill in the gap. The author admitted the advantage but did not imply the Europeans were complicit on it or they somehow controlled it as “having access to germs” implies.

And Rick’s description is so not the actual point of the book, either.