Seattlest Does Not Have a Friend in the Diamond Business
Professor Jared Diamond might be wicked smaht (said with a proper Bawston accent like his), but he's no Edward Tufte. Stay with us on this one... We've attended one presentation by Tufte, and even considering the potentially drought-worthy material in some people's eyes (The Visual Display of Quantitative Information), he is more entertaining than Space Mountain. Despite the fact that Seattlest is mighty interested in the subject of Diamond's most recent book, that couldn't save his lecture for the Town Hall Science Series last night.
Rules for those on the lecture circuit: 1) A book reading/lecture is not supposed to be a point-by-point summary of your book. We can all read, that is why you are here. We want a peek at something we can't find in between the covers. (The stories about your college students' ficticious bylines for the cutting of the last tree on Easter Island was on point -- more of that, please.) 2) You are orating, and we are not your students. Please, be smashing. Surprise us. Use humor. Oh god, at the very least use inflection and rhythm. 3) A big No on the Blue Jacket with Black Pants.
Despite the lackluster delivery and absence of substantial connection with the audience (two "raise your hands if..." questions do not a connection make), Professor Diamond did echo a theory about decline that Seattlest has ascribed to for many years. We once dated someone who became so filthy rich thanks to the internet bubble, that he will never be troubled by public transportation, cleaning his house, paying his bills, or even, we suspect, wiping his ass ever again. We have since postulated that the decline of our relationship was inversely proportional to his financial rise to conquistador of the .com world. We could not walk that path with him, and not because we aspire to some bourgeouis romantacism about sympathizing with the blue collar worker, but because we believe that losing touch with the daily rhythms of the rest of the world leads priviledged people to selfish foolishness at the detriment of the very populous they've "left behind." That, and he turned into a complete ass. Diamond proffered that one road to societal collapse is paved by the elite who no longer feel the direct consequences of their actions (or inactions), witness Katrina and New Orleans.
Fortunately for Seattle, some filthy rich people still have their wits about them, and boy were they out in droves at this lecture. We did not see an empty seat in the house (we also passed the 45-minute post-ticket-purchase wait at the Hideout, a Town Hall Science Series tactic we will be employing again in the future). Following the lecture proper, when Dr. Diamond opened the event to questions from the audience, our Seattlest cohort leaned ever so slightly our way and whispered: "Send in the clowns." We noted only one semi-decent question from the whole lot ("What society might still be around in 1,000 years?"), while the rest were self-aggrandizing in the form of non-questions, each one nearly ripped from a dusty Monty Python playbook: "Look at me! I'm so smart! No, I'm smart! I'm smarter, I've already read his previous book AND this one. Twice!!!" We wonder how this audience would feel about Diamond's early literary triumph, Why Is Sex Fun?, and we also wonder why the damn Germans get a much better cover than we do.
