Another Malcolm Gladwell anecdote sorta bites the dust, in the form of "marriage happiness predictor" and scientist John Gottman, who does not actually predict marriage happiness it turns out. (Not that his work is wrong! He just doesn't do predictions.) @12:54 PM 4
The Malcolm Gladwell Digest: "The Sure Thing," Jan 18, 2010, the 'New Yorker' @2:20 PM
Malcolm Gladwell. Subtitle: "How Entrepreneurs Really Succeed." Ted Turner "inherited the largest outdoor advertising firm in the South." "He could advertise his new station for free." "Within two years, the station was breaking even." "In a recent study." "The truly successful businessman… is a predator." "Wall Street thought that [John] Paulson was crazy." "But Paulson wasn't crazy at all." "'There's never been an opportunity like this,' Paulson gushed to a colleague, as he made one bet after another. By 'never' he meant never ever." "Paulson's story also casts a harsh light on the prevailing assumptions behind corporate compensation policies…. to turn executives into risk-takers." "Many entrepreneurs take plenty of risks—but those are generally the failed entrepreneurs." "Failed entrepreneurs tend to be wildly undercapitalized." "Famous experiment with kindergarten children." "People who work for themselves are far happier than the rest of us." 14
Horror Chick, With Melissa Lafsky: Why 'The Fourth Kind' Needs to Suckle at the Teat of Malcolm Gladwell @11:45 AM
Collectively, we think alien abduction is dumb. I mean really dumb. Like, if I came home one day and said, "Hey, I was abducted by aliens," somehow that would launch me deeper into Fucking Nutcase Territory than "Hey, I was possessed by a demon who's been stalking me since childhood," or "Hey, I was screwed six ways from Sunday by a modern Dracula who looks like Fabio after a brief stay at Auschwitz," or even, "Hey, I turned an entire investment bank into a giant vampire squid." But really, why is alien abduction so much nuttier than demon possession or vampire sex or Matt Taibbi's anti-Goldman rage? It's simply a matter of agreement—we all agree that it's crazier, so it is. It's the same reason why, say, Scientology is grounds for unbridled derision, while Catholicism is a "legitimate" religion. At least Xenu lets you wear a condom. READ MORE 4
Malcolm Gladwell Explained @11:25 AM
"Gladwell's protagonists are generally intelligent but ordinary folks who have imbued their work with a passionate practicality. Their laboratories are courtrooms and high-concept shopping malls, office parks and African villages, but whatever their locale, they are always buried in data, endless stacks and reams and massive videotape libraries full of tens of thousands of hours of footage documenting their findings, their desks buckling under thick piles of 'carefully annotated tracking sheets.' With this abundance of evidence they espouse theories that Gladwell depicts either as regrettably naïve or courageously counterintuitive, depending on whether he is debunking conventional wisdom or advancing a hitherto unknown experimental truth."
Your weekend reading assignment: "Gladwell For Dummies," by Awl pal Moe "Maureen" Tkacik. This piece might have more amusingly been titled "Long," in the Gladwellian manner, but the 3000 words I've read so far are pretty good. 23
Janet Maslin and Malcolm Gladwell: Whose Side Are You On? @9:20 AM
So in today's Times Janet Maslin tears into Malcolm Gladwell's new greatest hits book collection. It is brutal, because she is endlessly making fun of his sentences and his paragraphs: "He liked to begin by framing some kind of broad question. Then he liked to change subjects abruptly. Let's suddenly talk about Ben Fountain and Jonathan Safran Foer." Ha ha, that is funny. For some reason though, this makes me uncomfortable! And when I am uncomfortable with conflict, I ask myself: whose side am I on? After some internal investigation, I realized: I'm not on either of their sides! Why should I be? What horse do I have in that race? I look around, and I see no horse present. Also what would the horses be racing towards? For what? Also here is Malcolm Gladwell in a new interview: "Aspiring journalists should stop going to journalism programs and go to some other kind of grad school." As they say in the opinion polls: STRONGLY AGREE. 5
Recessionary Times: Neiman Marcus Edition @1:08 PM
Further signs of The New Poverty: "Neiman Marcus Group Inc. mailed out its annual Christmas Book catalog, which each year features over-the-top "fantasy" gifts, to one million customers on Tuesday. But for the first time in a decade, there isn't a seven- or eight-figure price tag on the list. The most expensive fantasy item for 2009 is a $250,000 'his and hers' two-seater Icon aircraft, which comes with pilot training for two. That's a far cry from the $20 million submarine offered in 2000, the $10 million Zeppelin of 2004 or the $10 million stable of racehorses of 2008." Still, for $200k you can buy yourself a modern-day Algonquin Round Table Experience! READ MORE 19
Malcolm Gladwell on 'To Kill a Mockingbird': Is It Just Racist Against White Trash? @12:10 PM
Today's New Yorker brings a sort of unclosed-circle of a Malcolm Gladwell piece, about a book, To Kill a Mockingbird, which is based loosely on events including the trial of a black man who was alleged to have raped a white woman in 1936, a book that was published in 1960, and also a politician, Jim Folsom, when he was running for election in 1954, and also a 1954 Supreme Court decision, Brown v. Board of Ed, issued in May, which according to Gladwell ended Folsom's career, while even if that is true it also did not apparently prevent Folsom from being reelected for a second stint as governor of Alabama, six months after that decision, serving from 1955 to 1959, having received 73% of the vote. READ MORE 14
Chris Anderson Is Worse Than Wal-Mart @9:46 AM
Wired editor Chris Anderson raised issue with and made some explanations regarding yesterday's Malcolm Gladwell review of his book, Free, which has chunks of other people's work in it. Unfortunately, he ends his concluding paragraph with a question. To which he hedges the answer. And then he ends in disaster—proposing a system of labor divorced almost entirely from profit, a bizarre model so hyper-capitalist that it resembles nothing so much as a digital-age medieval society. He would even create a new class of corporate vassalage! Is this what he possibly really thinks? He says yes! READ MORE 24
The Shadow Editors: Malcolm Gladwell on Chris Anderson's "Free" @12:14 PM
Choire Sicha: Do not miss how amusing it is to have Malcolm Gladwell review Chris Anderson in the New Yorker.
Tom Scocca: Wha-
Tom Scocca: Zhu-
Tom Scocca: Huff?
Choire Sicha: So, yes, for starters? Gladwell finally makes the point that "approaching zero" is nowhere the same as zero.
Tom Scocca: That's how Richard Pryor's embezzlement scheme worked in Superman III. READ MORE 14
Malcolm Gladwell, LIVE ON TOUR IN THE UK! @10:55 AM
Malcolm Gladwell is bringing "his extraordinary alchemy of story-telling and intuitive thinking on a UK tour." He will deliver such insights as: "You can't start blogging at 23 and call yourself a journalist." Oh can't you? I suppose you can't start juggling and getting in tiny cars at 33 and calling yourself a clown, either. 25
Malcolm Gladwell Pounded On NYer Letters Page @2:25 PM
We were a little slow getting to a dissection of Malcolm Gladwell's latest piece over here, because, well, we are like the old times, we like to carefully weigh our opinions before publishing. (Just joshing!) But the U.S. mail and the letters desk is even slower, so it took until today's New Yorker for their letter pages to be dominated by people trashing Gladwell for the application of his ideas, for his understanding of history and, naturally, about the basketball. 2
Malcom Gladwell Now Doing Old Jackie Mason Routines @11:27 AM
Yesterday was tech day at the National Association of Broadcasters' big convention in Las Vegas, and writer Malcolm Gladwell (Blink, The Tipping Point, Outliers, This Theory Will Appeal To You Because It Is Based On Common Sense: Now Pay Me) was there for a conversation. Discussing the decline of newspapers, he suggested a "thought experiment… what if we had started with everything online and paper was only invented like five years ago?"
That is a provocative theory! I wonder why no one has thought of it before. 10
