Jared Diamond Sold Out

Tonight I was supposed to see Jared Diamond who is in town to present his new book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed as the fourth installment in the Seattle Science Lectures Series. Imagine my surprise when I got to Town Hall only to find a line of people wrapped around the block! From the looks of the crowd, I think people might have thought they were there going to see Neil Diamond instead of Jared Diamond. There serioulsy must have been a good 200-300 people who were left standing outside without tickets which was quite surprising to me given that there were plenty of open seats at the previous three lectures in the series.

Seeing the turnout tonight reminded me of some comments that Seattle mayor Greg Nickels made when we saw him speak on the opening night of SIFF last year. Nickels said that in addition to having the largest movie going audience per capita, Seattle also checks out the largest number of library books per capita and has the highest ratio of bookstores to people of any city in the U.S (of course I can't find jack on line to prove or disprove any of these statements). So there you have it. I don't know whether to be proud of my fellow townsfolk or just disappointed that I didn't get in.