At 07:28 PM 4/27/00 -0400, you wrote: >At 6:11 PM -0400 4/27/00, Jim Burnes wrote: >>Tim May wrote: >>An interesting analysis would be whether or not Weberian societies >>chose the temperate zones or the temperate zones made them possible. >>You may not be able to determine that. > >Agreed, an interesting analysis. Did North America prosper, compared to >many other places colonized at the same time, because of its memes or >because it was so spectacularly well-suited to colonization? I tend toward >the latter. The relative youth of North Americans, susceptibility to European deseases, the lack of large animals suitable for plowing (probably from predation) and domestication of crops leaving them without the means to build complex hierarchical societies and professional armies, all of which left them easy prey to Europeans. >>(2) Las Vegas has a burgeoning economy yet it lives right smack >>in the middle of a very forbidding environment. Certainly way >>over on the die-off side of the ecotone for humans. > >I've spent time in Vegas, and this is not true. (Steve Schear, as I >recall, has spent even more time there.) Las Vegas has abundant water and >power, courtesy of the Colorado River, Hoover Dam, Lake Mead, etc. This is >why the suburbs are spreading north toward Beatty and southeast towards >Henderson and the dam. > >It's also close to L.A. and easily reachable by air. Gambling and >entertainment change the ecotone equation dramatically. > >The dry air and (usually) warm temperatures make it a popular retirement >and vacation spot. Few folks contemplate Dacca or Lagos as retirement >destinations. Amen. Its a great place to live October - May/June. The price of quality homes, food and entertainment is unrivaled. >>> Those who live in dankness, in frozen wastelands, in fetid swamps, in >>> the shadow of sand dunes, in clouds of tsetse flies and >>> mosquitos...well, they fertilize the soil. >> >>Thanks, Tim. Very informative. > >You're welcome. It's why we need to "harden our hearts" when we see >billions of Biafrans and Bengalis with flies ice-skating on their >eyeballs. There is no way that Dacca or Bucharest or Moscow or Ulan Bator >will ever compete with Palo Alto or Paris or Las Vegas in the lifetimes of >anyone now reading this list. A cold truth, but truth to be sure.
