On Sun, 15 Nov 2009 07:31:48 -0800, Christopher D. Green Wrote:
>Mike,
>
>That's a little like comparing a scholarly treatise on life in neolithic
>times with the old Reiner & Brooks "2000 Year Old Man" routine with ("We
>spoke Rock." "Really, could you give me an example of Rock?" "Yeah. 'Hey
>you, don't throw that Rock at me'.")
Only if one considers Gladwell to be a shtick comic like Mel Brooks.
Though I do tend to think of Gladwell in these terms, I must stress that
I find him no where near as funny as Brooks. It may come as a surprise
to some, however, that Gladwell is doing a shtick but this is, of course,
his most adorable/annoying characteristic. :-)
>Of course, Mike has never had a cynical thought about Christmas,
As a native New Yorker (infused with the spirit of those New Yorkers
who helped to create our current conception of Christmas) I know the
true spirit of Christmas:
To make money.
As the U.S. Census points out, the months around the Christmas holidays
represent some of the highest levels of business activity. Quoting from
their press release for the Christmas 2008 holidays:
|$28.2 billion
|Retail sales by the nation’s department stores (including leased departments)
|in December 2008. This represented a 40 percent jump from the previous
|month (when retail sales, many holiday-related, registered $20.2 billion). No
|other month-to-month increase in department store sales last year was as
large.
|
|Other U.S. retailers with sizable jumps in sales between November and
|December 2008 were book stores (95 percent); clothing stores (32 percent);
|jewelry stores (125 percent); radio, TV and other electronics stores (38
percent);
|and sporting goods stores (62 percent).
|Source: Service Sector Statistics http://www.census.gov/retail
http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/pdf/cb09ff-23_holidayseason.pdf
So, Happy Holidays to All and don't go over your credit limit! You
know how the banks have jacked up the penalties this year! ;-)
>or (more to the point of this admittedly trite Gladwell piece) about the
>kind of overly obvious research conclusions that psychologists sometimes
>like to dress up as being Scientific Discoveries. :-)
But isn't this Gladwell's shtick? Or, more to the point since he is only
a story teller or something like a reporter, taking what others claim to
be "Scientific Discoveries" and reporting them in ways that some find
entertaining?
Sidenote: I actually subscribe to Vanity Fair which I recommend to
anyone who is a fan of magazines with a high glossy ad-to-text ratio.
But I have to admit finding something really useful in the same issue.
In their "Proust Questionnaire" featurette, they ask tennis player Andre
Agassi (who is promoting his memoir "Open") a series of brief questions.
I found his motto both profound and practically useful:
"Never bring a knife to a gunfight."
It is rare that one sees insight like this these days. Why, it's almost as
good as the advice given to Navin Johnson such as:
|"Lord loves a workin' man; don't trust whitey; see a doctor and get rid of it.
"
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079367/quotes
However, this does exclude the shinola reference. For more on shinola
and being able to distinguish it from things that merely look like it, see:
http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Shinola
-Mike Palij
New York University
m...@nyu.edu
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