December 6th, 2009 at 08:58am
Under The Science Corner
A little while ago, I was driving somewhat late in the evening and had NPR on (WHYY in these parts). I listen to NPR very often while I am in the car, but I usually don’t end up hearing much outside of AM and PM rush hours. In this rare case, I was driving around 9PM and ended up catching what would quickly become one of my favorite shows on NPR. This new show, new to me anyways, is called Radiolab. I later came to find out that I showed up in the middle of an episode called “Beyond Time” which immediately struck me as a radio version of the Science Channel.
The style of this show is reminiscent of This American Life in that the story telling is very layered in with music and narration of the hosts, etc. The show is probably what would result if you replaced Ira Glass with Dr. Michio Kaku and Malcolm Gladwell. Actually, to be quite literal, it is exactly like what would happen if you replaced Ira Glass with Robert Krulwich and Jad Abumrad and had Malcolm Gladwell (Choice, Race) and Michio Kaku (Beyond Time) show up in a few episodes.
Within about a month of first hearing the show, I had listened to everything available on their website (linked above). There are currently 30 episodes that you can stream, each an hour long. I strongly suggest giving it a listen if you haven’t already. You will definitely learn some interesting things, your mind will be blown a handful of times, and you might even get a few good laughs. Somewhere in there, you will find a good story about a goat standing on a cow’s back.
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By Wisdom Lion
December 4th, 2009 at 10:39pm
Under Money Saving Miracles
In an attempt to save money, I have come to the border between frugal and cheap, as I am sure many people do. Maybe I am quibbling over semantics here, but I have always thought there to be a very distinct line between frugal and cheap. My basic view is that frugal is a positive and long sighted version of cheap – value over price. For example, a cheap bottle of wine and a 40 of St. Ides will get me equally as buzzed and leave me equally as hung over. While the bottom-shelf wine may cost an extra $3, at least it has a shot at tasting decent. Therefore, the wine has clearly assumed the position of the frugal choice with its value added ticket to flavor country. Seems like an easy decision to me.
The real frugal choice would be going with a tall glass of tap water, staying home, and reading a book (via library, borrowed or stolen* to up the frugality), but that would throw off the example. I will also add an exception regarding most men’s early college careers. This is right around the time when the badassness that comes along with polishing off the luke-warm ass of a Steel Reserve 40 has the ability to offset the mild enjoyment that comes along with drinking 750mL of Sutter Home merlot straight from the bottle.
*Please don’t steal stuff.
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By Wisdom Lion
November 11th, 2009 at 09:30pm
Under In Depth Book Reviews
I will start this out by saying that Malcolm Gladwell is a pretty awesome writer. I would put him in the genre of “ADHD friendly.” His books have all scored a perfect zero on my own special “readability index,” which is based on the number of other books I end up finishing in the process. For example, Ernst Becker’s Denial of Death scored a 3 (due in part to Malcolm Gladwell) and Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov is approaching infinity.
I have read his three major works which are The Tipping Point, Blink, and Outliers. First a quick synopsis of each book:
The Tipping Point (2000): The “tipping point” itself is the instant when a certain thing or idea suddenly spreads like wildfire out to all corners of the globe. For example, I spent my whole life never knowing about People of Walmart .com and all of a sudden Monday comes along and two different people tell me about it on the same day. People of Walmart therefore “tipped” recently. Gladwell details how ideas spread from point A to your face through the actions of three types of people: mavens, connectors, and salesmen.
Maven = An early adopter.
Connector = A person who knows a lot of people in many different groups.
Salesman = Someone who is persuasive.
Blink (2005): Blink is all about snap decisions. Through the book, Gladwell gives examples of how snap decisions can be beneficial in certain situations and lead to negative outcomes in others.
Outliers (2008): This book is mostly about people who became wildly successful in certain realms and how they got there. There are some examples of the theory that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to be an expert at something and that certain people gained an unfair advantage (or disadvantage) through their upbringing. Some of the better case studies include the Beatles and Bill Gates.
The one thing that seemed odd after going through all three books is the inconsistency in how closely the stories tied back to the overall theme, and also the amount of work he put into achieving this. The Tipping Point was spot on all the way through, a very cohesive work. Then Blink came along. Once again, each story very obviously related to his overall theme, but this time around he spent the last 2-3 pages of each chapter explaining why they are related. In addition, he would rehash each of the previous chapters and re-relate them to the theme. It got a bit ridiculous and whenever he would start talking about the statues at the art museum I knew it was time to fast-forward to the next chapter. Third chronologically, was Outliers. The first half of the book was nicely done, like he got his Tipping Point groove back. The second half of the book seemed to get more off track as it went on. I can still gather why the last few articles were included, but if they we left out I feel like the book would have been as good if not better. It seemed like near the end he was stretching to thicken up the book a bit.
All three books are worth reading, though The Tipping Point was my favorite. Even the least interesting chapters in the least interesting book are still more entertaining than some other stuff that I’ve read and been content with. If you try hard enough, you can probably find some potentially deep holes in his arguments. But, I think that if he really focused on supporting every possible aspect, each chapter could be spun off into its own book, and those books would be really long and boring. Keep in mind the made-up genre that I put him in.
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By Wisdom Lion
