

Thomas Friedman: The Earth Is Full - rblion
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/08/opinion/08friedman.html?ref=general&src=me&pagewanted=print

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aaronbrethorst
Friedman is an idiot[1], but even a stopped clock is right twice a day[2].

[1] Try reading _The World is Flat_ — it's 300 (edit: apparently 600!) pages
of stupid platitudes and anecdotes. I literally threw it away after I made it
through the first third. It's like _The Four Hour Workweek_ meets the worst
aspects of American liberalism (and that's spoken as a self-described
liberal).

[2] Unless you're: a) using a digital clock, or b) anywhere in the world that
has abandoned the AM/PM system.

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dantheman
It's one of few books that I've just put down and thought was completely
useless and unnecessarily verbose. I couldn't get near finishing it.. The copy
I have (hard cover, ughh) weighs in @ 600 pages of drivel.

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phlux
Have you read " The world without us " - it was a demonstration of the
zoological vocabulary of the author and nothing more. Freaking horrible book.

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Eliezer
The next six months will be the critical period for Earth.

( <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedman_%28unit%29> )

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monkeypizza
after reading this [1] I realized I no longer had to take Friedman seriously.

[1] <http://www.nypress.com/article-11419-flathead.html>

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grannyg00se
Most of the article is critical of Friedman's writing and communication style.
For example the author quotes Friedman:

I stomped off, went through security, bought a Cinnabon, and glumly sat at the
back of the B line, waiting to be herded on board so that I could hunt for
space in the overhead bins.

Then the author critiques: Forget the Cinnabon. Name me a herd animal that
hunts. Name me one.

This critique was surprising to me. I found Friedman's passage to be quite
understandable and it did not offend on any level. Being "herded on board" is
a common phrase, and "hunting for space" is also a common phrase. To me they
are fine used together because I don't actually expect the writer to be
latching onto the herding metaphor in such a committed way. They are simply
cliched phrases and the metaphorical herding phrase isn't meant to be used as
a metaphor but rather a cliched way to communicate a common experience.
Perhaps this style of writing is less than ideal, but for someone critiquing a
book about ideas it seems weak to complain about the writing and communication
style and ignore the actual ideas that are being presented.

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werg
I'd agree with the gravity of the problems described, but I sincerely disagree
with the almost-inevitable turn to optimism towards the end. "Gilding insists
he is a realist". Straightfacedly Friedman hands on the assurance that given
the choice to trod on as always or change, we'll suddenly wake up and give up
greed, sloth, consumerism for some happiness-based economy (which is bullshit,
in a catatonic collapse nobody's happy, no one except a few mavericks I
guess).

How is that supposed to happen? I get it, miraculously, so we don't have to
get off our precious asses now and can wait it out till the crisis sweeps us
off into some kind of all-together-now rapture.

Already the ice-caps are melting off, within my lifetime world population has
doubled, food-prices are rising, life for very many people in this world is
starting to get more difficult, bit by bit. Yes, there is technological
advancement, yet the price of energy has steadily been rising, at the same
time fundamental world problems are on the rise as well. It does not suffice
to assume that we invariably will find technologies in time to mitigate all
these problems. We are in for trouble and very many people will feel the
consequences.

How harsh they'll be is hard to tell in advance, but there's reasonable
evidence that they (and arising social dynamics, i.e. war) could be lethal to
the social and economic world system du jour, when given several decades to do
their magic.

So it's better to think ahead and take action, as individuals and as society.

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woodall
Whoop-de-do, what are we going to do about it? Mass murder? Birth rate
control(ala China)? Build more land? This type of nonsense is no better than
the rapture preacher.

