Showing posts with label malcolm gladwell. Show all posts
Showing posts with label malcolm gladwell. Show all posts

Bee-Man (link roundup)



Bee-Man t-shirt design by TheArtySmarty. For a chance to buy it, vote at Design By Humans.

And a few more links:

1. You know what's funny? Scott McCloud criticizing the Kindle design because he believes the optimal shape of print is wider than tall. Why is it funny? Because his blog posts look absurdly narrow and vertical. Via.

2. The Verizon MiFi sounds spectacular. (I'd never buy a iPhone because Verizon is so superior to AT&T.) Via.

3. Like I said about Jared Diamond, beware of scientific conclusion based on anecdotal evidence. Malcolm Gladwell's latest article (like much of his writing) is apparently easily disproved.

4. Enjoy the reviews for this $220,000 diamond ring on sale at Amazon.

*Previously: Stunning diamond necklace - - only $25.

*Buy jewelry at eBay.

Beyonce's new album is called "I Am...Sasha Fierce"



Beyonce's new album is called "I Am...Sasha Fierce." As I understand it, "Sasha Fierce" is supposed to be her alter ego. You can listen to her babble about it here (halfway down the page).

Here's a few more links

1. Jake Plummer, who quit the NFL and had to give back a $3.5 million advance, is a competitive handball player. He should absolutely have his own reality show. (His wedding was called off an hour and a half before it was scheduled to begin.)


2. I give Quantum of Solace a B or B- (there's basically no plot at all, and too many of the action sequences are a mess of jump cuts and closeups). But Daniel Craig gets an A+. I'd rank Another Way To Die in the top 5 of James Bond themes.


3A. Malcolm Gladwell describes his new book, which attempts to figure out why some people achieve incredible success. Apparently "a surprising number of the most powerful and successful corporate lawyers in New York City have almost the exact same biography: they are Jewish men, born in the Bronx or Brooklyn in the mid-1930's to immigrant parents who worked in the garment industry."


3B. Here's a profile of Gladwell, who apparently commands a speaking fee of $80,000.


3C. And finally, here's Gladwell's latest article about people who achieve enormous success despite major disadvantages such as coming from poverty or growing up with dyslexia. One of the men profiled grew up poor, and in his later years would buy Phi Beta Kappa keys from pawnshops and hand them out to visitors like party favors.


4. Go here to read about a fashion show that was just held in Japan for adult diapers. Via.


5. Megan McArdle artfully describes her experience being jobless after 9/11 effectively eliminated her six-figure salary.


6. Rick Astley Simpsonized.


7. Star Trek Starfleet logo folder desktop icons.

*"James Bond Movie Posters: The Official 007 Collection" is 34% off at Amazon.

The nature of technological advances indicates the hand of god?

I'm not religious in any traditional way, but I got chills reading this paragraph by Malcolm Gladwell about the phenomenon of simultaneous discovery:
This phenomenon of simultaneous discovery—what science historians call “multiples”—turns out to be extremely common. One of the first comprehensive lists of multiples was put together by William Ogburn and Dorothy Thomas, in 1922, and they found a hundred and forty-eight major scientific discoveries that fit the multiple pattern. Newton and Leibniz both discovered calculus. Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace both discovered evolution. Three mathematicians “invented” decimal fractions. Oxygen was discovered by Joseph Priestley, in Wiltshire, in 1774, and by Carl Wilhelm Scheele, in Uppsala, a year earlier. Color photography was invented at the same time by Charles Cros and by Louis Ducos du Hauron, in France. Logarithms were invented by John Napier and Henry Briggs in Britain, and by Joost Bürgi in Switzerland.
It's almost as if some hand is directing makind to make technological discoveries at a specific pace.

As with everything else by Malcolm Gladwell, I highly recommend you read the whole thing.

*Previously: Warning, wrath of god ahead.

*Buy Malcolm Gladwell's books for 40% off at Amazon.