Criticism of Gladwell Reaches Tipping Point

Some interesting commentary at CJR on the reaction to Malcolm Gladwell ends with this:

Gladwell’s earlier books The Tipping Point, Blink, and Outliers have been publishing phenomena. Tipping Point alone has been on bestseller lists for five years. Gladwell in many ways is the social science equivalent of the New York Times foreign affairs columnist Tom Friedman, another favorite target of critics whose books sell huge numbers. Both are popularizers, in some sense hucksters, adept at phrase-making and simplifying (and often over-simplifying) complex subjects. A key difference, however, is that when Friedman is wrong, he helps start wars. When Gladwell makes a mistake, he dilutes public understanding of science – not a good thing, surely, but he’s a feature writer; that’s what they do.

Finding the laws that govern us

The Official Google Blog describes an important new source:

As many of us recall from our civics lessons in school, the United States is a common law country. That means when judges issue opinions in legal cases, they often establish precedents that will guide the rulings of other judges in similar cases and jurisdictions. Over time, these legal opinions build, refine and clarify the laws that govern our land. For average citizens, however, it can be difficult to find or even read these landmark opinions. We think that’s a problem: Laws that you don’t know about, you can’t follow — or make effective arguments to change.

Starting today, we’re enabling people everywhere to find and read full text legal opinions from U.S. federal and state district, appellate and supreme courts using Google Scholar. You can find these opinions by searching for cases (like Planned Parenthood v. Casey), or by topics (like desegregation) or other queries that you are interested in.

Click the Official Google Blog link above to learn more. Attorneys must be used to this kind of access, but the cross referencing seems new to me. At least new to have it for free.

Best line of the morning, so far

“Katey can dribble a basketball, juggle a set of knives, and text a friend all at the same time. It’s not so much impressive as it is terrifying.”

dooce®

Jeez, and I can’t even fill the kitchen sink and text at the same time. (The iPhone has just about fully recovered though.)

My view

OutTheWindow

Taken through the window from my chair at the iMac. 38 degrees, 50% humidity. Gorgeous.

It’s 3.3 miles as the GPS flies to the platform near the visitor center at the top of the Sandia Crest (the center and the towers are just visible if you click on the image and view the larger version). It’s 10,678 feet above sea level up there; just 6,070 where I sit.

Best line of last night

“You know who’s coming to New York City? Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is coming here. He’s coming to New York City for the big trial, and also, he’s promoting his new book, ‘Really Going Rogue.'”

David Letterman

No witnesses

EL PASO — A 7-year-old Glen Cove Elementary School third-grader was attempting to run away from gunmen when he was shot several times in the back, Juárez police say.

The same gunmen had just shot and killed his father.

The boy, Raul Xazziel Ramirez-Ramirez, is the youngest student from an El Paso school to die in the savage and unrelenting war among rival drug cartels in Juárez. The death toll this year has already reached a little more than 2,200.

Raul was reportedly visiting his father in Juárez when he was gunned down.

El Paso Times

Idle thought

I see the U.S. Supreme Court has declined a cert to review the trademark protection for the name of the Washington Redskins. A group of American Indians has challenged the protection because under the law you may not trademark a racially offensive term. The group won 10 years ago before the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, but the NFL franchise appealed and won in federal court on the grounds the group had not been timely in their challenge. (The name was taken when the franchise moved from Boston to Washington in 1937.)

Among my Indian acquaintances the name is considered offensive. A boss I had in Washington many years ago, a long-time Redskins fan and season ticket owner, told me he couldn’t understand what was offensive about it. He was African-American. I asked if he would approve of a racially equivalent name.

You know, the Washington Darkies.

On the other hand.

The sad state of publishing

On book tours, I used to fly into a city and then be immediately taken to a morning TV interview, or radio, and then I’d do another show or two, and then have lunch with a book journalist, and then do magazine stuff in the afternoons, and maybe more radio, and then I”d get a quick dinner, and a shower, and then I’d do the reading in the store. On this book tour, I barely had any local media to do. There is no book media anymore, certainly not on the local level, in most of the country.

I saw a lot of matinees on this book tour.

Lots of afternoon movies. And popcorn. Lonely for the book world that used to exist.

From transcript, Sherman Alexie on “War Dances,” Basketball, and Cinematic Book Tours: The Book Club : The New Yorker

More Alexie:

But the handful of books that I continually reread are: The Great Gatsby, Ellison’s Invisible Man, Emily Dickinson’s Collected Poems, Joy Harjo’s She Had Some Horses, James Wright’s The Branch Will Not Break, Philip Roth everything…

That list could go on and on…I’m a writer, yes, but I’m also a huge fan boy.

What do you suppose was going through her mind?

A Bernalillo County Sheriff’s deputy escorting Vice President Joe Biden’s motorcade was hit this afternoon at Gibson and Carlisle.
 
Police say a woman drove around two police units blocking the intersection and hit  a car driven by a sergeant with BCSO.

ABQNews

She drove around two police units blocking an intersection!

Idle thought

Alas, I wasn’t watching the Colts’ great fourth quarter comeback last night (they won 35-34 after being down 31-14 with just 14 minutes to play). I think New England Coach Belichick made the right call going for it on fourth and two at the Patriots’ own 28 with two minutes left ahead 34-28. The Pats didn’t make the first down and the Colts took it in on four plays, but it was a gutsy call, statistically correct.

New national park could save high plains in Kansas

The Kansas City Star editorial board suggests a million acre national park in northwestern Kansas.

 Kansas is vastly under-represented in national parkland, and can accurately be considered parkland poor today.

 The prairie is the greatest long-term carbon sequestration landscape available, as the grasses take carbon from the atmosphere and bury it deep in the ground, where it stays to nurture plant growth.

 A new national park would attract tourists. Europeans, in love with the romance of the American West, would be drawn to it, as would other international visitors and Americans. Parks of similar size and remoteness in Texas and North Dakota attract at least 300,000 visitors a year. With the central location of Kansas, it has the potential to attract more.

 Tourism could grow into a lifeline for surrounding counties, all of which are struggling to find ways to keep native sons and daughters at home, but have largely failed to build enough industry or create enough jobs.

 Grasslands are the world’s most endangered eco-system, and re-establishing a large patch is important to America’s natural and cultural heritage.

Buffalo Commons is an idea whose time has come.

Read the details.

Link via National Parks Traveler

Line of the day

“The last time the caldera in Yellowstone blew, the entire North American continent was under about a foot of ash. People who’ve gone diving in Yellowstone Lake say that there is a bulge in the floor that is now about 100 feet high and the whole thing is just sort of pulsing. From different people you get different answers, but it could go in another three to four thousand years or it could go on Thursday. No one knows.”

Cormac McCarthy from a good interview at WSJ.com