Smooth Pebbles

A highly interesting review of Gladwell's "Outliers"

Micheal Nielsen gets swiftly to a problem many scientists (and not a few writers) have with Gladwell's books -- and highlights their redeeming factors as well:

All three of Malcolm Gladwell's books pose a conundrum for the would-be reviewer. The conundrum is this: while the books have many virtues, none of the books make a watertight argument for their central claims. Many scientists, trained to respect standards of proof above all else, don't like this style. A colleague I greatly respect told me he thought Gladwell's previous book, Blink , was "terrible"; it didn't meet his standards of proof. Judge Richard Posner wrote a scathing review criticizing Blink on the same grounds.

Gladwell's gift as a writer is not for justification and proof of his claims. What Gladwell does have is an extraordinary gift to use stories to explain abstract ideas in a way that is vivid and memorable, a way that brings those abstract ideas quickly to mind at later need. This shamanic gift is dangerous, for if you read his books credulously, it leaves you open to believing ideas that may be false. It%u2019s also incredibly valuable, for what you learn you internalize deeply. In my opinion, this more than makes up for whatever Gladwell's books lack in rigorous justification.

Hat tip: Neuronarrative

Technorati Tags:
Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers

Did the shoe-thrower go doolally, or was he acting rationally?

I won't replicate the Word-of-the-Day email every day, but this was too good not to pass on. "The Dingle duo are seriously concerned that Jasmine's about to go doolally."

doolally

PRONUNCIATION:
(DU-lah-lee)

MEANING:
adjective: Irrational, deranged, or insane.

ETYMOLOGY:

After Deolali, a small town in western India. It's about 100 miles from Mumbai with an unusual claim to fame. It's where British soldiers who had completed their tour of duty were sent to await transportation home. It was a long wait -- often many months -- before they were to be picked up by ships to take them to England. Consequent boredom, and heat, turned many a soldier insane, and the word doolally was coined. At least that's the story.

More likely, soldiers who were going soft in the head were sent to the sanatorium there. At first the term was used in the form "He's got the Doo-lally tap", from Sanskrit tapa (heat) meaning one has caught doolally fever but now it's mostly heard as in "to go doolally". In Australia, they say "Calm down, don't do your lolly".

USAGE:
"The Dingle duo are seriously concerned that Jasmine's about to go doolally."
Mike Ward; What's Hot to Watch Today; Daily Star (UK); Dec 5, 2008.

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Papa on work routines

INTERVIEWER Could you say something of this process? When do you work? Do you keep to a strict schedule?

HEMINGWAY
When I am working on a book or story I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you and it is cool or cold and you come to your work and warm as you write. You read what you have written and, as you always stop when you know what is going to happen next, you go on from there. You write until you come to a place where you still have your juice and you know what will happen next and you stop and try to live through until the next day when you hit it again. You have started at six in the morning, say, and may go on until noon or be through before that. When you stop you are as empty, and at the same time never empty but filling, as when you have made love to someone you love. Nothing can hurt you, nothing can happen, nothing means anything until the next day when you do it again. It is the wait until the next day that is hard to get through.

The Paris Review, Issue 18, 1958

From Daily Routines, a site that describes how "writers, artists and other interesting people organize their days."

You seldom hear Hemingway mentioned anymore, and who ever confesses to loving him? Yet I have always loved -- I can swim in it, rub it on me, immerse my brain in as if it were music or water -- most of this passage from Hemingway's justly famed interview in Paris Review. The second sentence especially is just perfect -- perfect language, and perfectly Hemingway. It's as good as the the first or the last sentence of A Farewell to Arms, which are two of the singingest sentences in print.

The interviewer, btw, is George Plimpton, who gets pie in his face several times during their conversation, which is -- like this very passage -- full of great writing wisdom layered around loads of Heming-hooey.

But really -- "There is no one to disturb you and it is cool or cold and you come to your work and warm as you write" -- that's music, and I can just about weep reading it.

Technorati Tags:
Ernest Hemingway, George Plimpton, LIterature, Writing