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    History, And More
    History, And More
    History, And More
    Ebook43 pages41 minutes

    History, And More

    By Les Broad

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    About this ebook

    In this series of four unique essays you'll discover the complete history of the world from the Big Bang until yesterday afternoon, why there are more Greek philosophers that Inuit and why, in the author's opinion, we should all be deeply suspicious of the motivation of 'scientists'. You'll probably find it funny, too.
    The first essay describes the history of the world, with carefully calculated scores out of ten for each significant event so that you can miss out the bits of least relevance if you want to. The second essay is a made-up tale of two cavemen who wonder why the sun comes back every day and why rivers keep on flowing. They dream up answers to these questions, but each has a different answer. You can see where that's going, can't you?
    The third essay is where it all starts getting exciting. That one explains why, today, scientists get paid big lumps of money – usually your money – to produce theories that are too complicated for the likes of you to understand. The fourth essay takes that theme further, into the fairy-tale realm of quantum mechanics.
    Throw in some comments on the book, admittedly by people whose existence it might be difficult to prove, and what you've got is an entertaining, educational, funny, bizarre piece of work that will enrich your quality of life. (There is no guarantee about that outcome, by the way.)

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherLes Broad
    Release dateAug 24, 2011
    ISBN9781466036154
    History, And More
    Author

    Les Broad

    That picture isn't me. It's my much-loved Border Collie bitch, who I lost to a spinal tumour in April 2011. She deserves this memorial.I was born a very, very long time ago, very close to my mother in England. Now I live in Wales, which isn't England but is part of the UK. I've written all sorts of stuff, but mostly science fiction. It's sort of believable sci-fi - maybe it can't happen today, but might tomorrow, you know? The sci-fi novels are all on the theme of 'first contact' and the first one is being given away free. You'll have to pay for the others. Sorry.I've got other novels, short stories and things that are supposed to be funny too but whether they are is your decision, right?Some of the books are based on real incidents - I know they are, because they happened to me. There are five in total, I've released two, two are being tidied up and the last one won't be finished for a while yet. If you read one, remember it all happened to me and that I don't mind being laughed at. I'm used to it.A while back I released a free book, 'Top Of The Shop'. (If you're a writer you might want to read it. I'll say no more.) I've since released another one, 'Tea, Drums And Speed'. So now the first sci-fi novel is free, 'Top Of The Shop' is free, and there's a free volume of short stories. I must be mad, giving this stuff away. Mind you, it hasn't stopped me giving away a book of political thoughts. If you're from Wales, or British, or even interested in Welsh politics, it might be worth reading.There's also a free book about some films that appeal to me. You might find it interesting but I thought it would be a bit cheeky to want money for it. Have it on me.There's one little thing I don't understand. Of everything I've put on this site, I think the stories in 'Swift Shifts' are the funniest, yet it's the title that's looked at least often. Why is that, do you think?After a gap of several months I've now added a new three-story volume of funny stories. To balance this, there's a thoroughly miserrable one on its way!A word or two about my pricing strategy might be worthwhile. A lot of people on this site (and I apologise if I've got this wrong) quote prices that are just a bit cheaper than you'd see in a bookstore. I don't do that. Ebooks don't have production or distribution costs, so why should you, the book buyer, have to pay even a tiny share of something that doesn't exist? Isn't it better to spend, say, $3 on three little books than on just one? I want you to enjoy what I've written, and at a realistic cost to you that I can live with. Simple, isn't it?I'll add to this from time to time - there's no point saying everything at once, is there? You'd have no need to come back, would you?

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      Book preview

      History, And More - Les Broad

      Foreword

      The world has had a long history. This narrative concentrates only on those bits that both matter and are, in the words of Sellars & Yeatman, memorable. As you, dear Reader, browse through the following pages you can decide how much anything described matters or, if you are so disposed and think yourself cleverer than the author, how much anything missed out might matter. On the other hand, if you know little of the history of our world, you might appreciate the marks out of ten that everything has been given to show how much it matters. The author freely accepts that you may not want to give too much time to reading and these ratings have been given so that you can miss out the bits that don’t matter much

      1. From Creation To Mankind

      (8/10 if you think we should exist, 0/10 if you don’t)

      It all started with a Big Bang. Before that there was, we are asked to believe, nothing at all – no substance, no time, nothing. It’s an incredible concept so we'll move on.

      Suddenly all this nothingness blew up and became Something, supposedly an awful lot of Something, spreading out faster that the mind can grasp. This Something was composed of hot dust and gas and created Gravity. Gravity started to pull tiny little bits together to form bigger bits which in turn created more Gravity. Thus there came into being big shiny masses of burning gas (stars) with colder solid things (planets) whizzing round at such a speed that forward motion balanced the effect of Gravity (the speed necessary can be calculated by Mathematics which is different to History and therefore does not matter).

      What happened next is not at all clear, but for the purposes of continuity of narrative from this point on we must concentrate only on what happened here on Earth, the name we have given to our particular colder solid thing (planet, remember?) whizzing around a not particularly impressive star. Lots of different chemicals (Science, not History) swilled around forming Primordial Soup from which life started, perhaps by drinking the Soup. Life started in the sea (which is what the Primordial Soup became) with simple beings made up of just a single cell. With the passage of time these simple beings became more complicated and took on many different forms. Some stayed where they were and became Plants, others moved around and became Animals. Some animals developed appendages to help them move around and one day some of these discovered that the world wasn’t just sea. It had land as well. It struck these animals as a good idea to haul themselves out of the sea and investigate the land.

      Being on land called for different skills to being in the sea and as these skills developed animals gradually became able to walk, run, fly, climb trees and dig holes. They also discovered that animals that were different to themselves could be as good to eat as plants.

      Soon a pecking order was established in which little animals ate plants and were eaten by bigger animals who in turn were eaten by even bigger ones. This is called a Food Chain. Some types of animal became cleverer than others and discovered that they could use things they found lying around to make life a bit easier. For instance, snails could be got out of shells either by pulling with a stick

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