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The Mountain People (August 2011)
  • JonBresciaJonBrescia
    KNin's feedback early on rang true with me, so I am going to make a single thread for each book. Use spoiler tags if appropriate.
  • JonBresciaJonBrescia
    Anyone working through this one yet? Any initial thoughts?

    This is one of a select few books that has been capable of making me weep profusely in public. Reading it reaffirmed for me that, when given a choice between Preventing or Allowing the human race to come into being, the only morally correct choice is to Prevent.
  • The JoelThe Joel
    I'm about 100 pages in. The casual brutality of the Turkana is strange and hard to grapple with.

    Edit: looked up wrist knives.
    http://www.bluegecko.org/kenya/tribes/turkana/images/w-knife.htm
  • JonBresciaJonBrescia
    My copy is in Ohio, and I am in Austria, so I can't reference it for names, sorry.

    The story of Kid Who Runs Himself to Death and the story of Adupa, in particular, struck me as just horrible. There's another bit about an elderly woman later on, too, that is striking in its horror. It's hard to imagine that the Ik are real people. I'm by no means saintly, but Jesus fuck, man...

    I would cut off both my legs with those knives. Even with the leather wrapping. I'd be the worst African plains raider ever.
  • DregDreg
    The Joel said:

    I'm about 100 pages in. The casual brutality of the Turkana is strange and hard to grapple with.

    Edit: looked up wrist knives.
    http://www.bluegecko.org/kenya/tribes/turkana/images/w-knife.htm



    Best quote from that article:

    the wrist-knife's usefulness is gradually being made redundant by automatic rifles such as the AK-47.


    Yeah, I could see how if you had both an AK-47 and a wristblade, and a backpack only big enough to fit one of them...you might leave the wristblade at home. Or wear it on your wrist. You could always just wear it on your wrist. Maybe that's why it's not entirely redundant yet.

  • JonBresciaJonBrescia
    The Turkana are so raw, they don't give a fuck. They will tear you up, gun or no gun. (Seriously, I just saw a 20k cattle raid happened in the Sudan this week, says the 20 minutes of BBC news I managed to catch.)
  • The JoelThe Joel
    Saw thus and immediately thought of the Ik: http://www.theonion.com/articles/high-integrity-moral-decency-has-cost-idiot-man-mi,26639/ .
  • xenomousexenomouse
    He obeys the law and is nice to people? What a douchebag.
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