On Tue September 25 2007, Chris Muller wrote:
> Jared Diamond has spent some years researching and documenting the
> question.
>
>     http://www.pbs.org/gunsgermssteel/

really good book.

>
> On 9/23/07, Blake <blake at kingdomrpg.com> wrote:
> > On Sun, 23 Sep 2007 04:14:52 -0700, Lex Spoon <lex at lexspoon.org> wrote:
> > > Yes, but the root cause of starvation is a poverty of knowledge.  Food
> > > aid helps with immediate crises, but if they are to be prevented in
> > > the future, the populace needs to know what is going on.
> >
> > Actually, I'm prety sure starvation these days is caused by bad politics
> > and just plain evil. Not that knowledge doesn't help there, too.
> >
> > > Further, even leaving aside the possibility of big changes in the
> > > local society, better information helps in more immediate ways.  If a
> > > person checks out wikipedia and learns about germs, their life will
> > > get much better.
> >
> > I'm not particularly prepared to debate it (and it's not really
> > appropriate here), as the closest I've come to starvation is a 4-day
> > fast, undertaken as a sort of experiment.
> >
> > My main point is that I'm quite positive the OLPC crowd has researched
> > the topic better than those of us who are casually monitoring the
> > process.