Malcom Gladwell

Malcom Gladwell

I found this bit about Malcolm in Matt Taibbi's piece The Overlooked Factors in Police Abuse Cases. It's so great I had to share.

The English-Canadian Gladwell may be the most bankable writer in the American publishing market. The #1 spot on the New York Times bestseller list is as much his home as the Super Bowl is for Tom Brady. There’s an intellectual drive-thru quality to his approach, which takes an idea and draws it out in bite-size chapters built around familiar pop culture episodes. He does this again in Talking to Strangers, a book about police brutality that somehow contains chapters about Amanda Knox, Bernie Madoff, Jerry Sandusky, and the TV show Friends. Gladwell makes it capital-E Easy for the medicine of thought to go down, a talent I once grumbled at, almost surely out of jealousy. I now see it’s a blessing in the United States, a country where a fair portion of the mass audience is capable of losing at tic-tac-toe.

 

Fuck Heads of the First Order

IOU-niversity by Victor Juhasz

The Trillion-Dollar Lie by Matt Taibbi takes a look at the student loan business. Congress passed a law a few years ago that supposedly meant students could not declare bankruptcy. Turns out that might not be true. His story talks about some of the people fighting against this absurd financial juggernaut. I thought this bit about how the Federal government works was especially clear / repugnant.

The passage of the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 was a classic demonstration of how America works, or doesn’t, depending on your point of view. While we focus on differences between Republicans and Democrats, it’s their uncanny habit of having just a sliver of enough agreement to pass crucial industry-friendly bills that really defines the parties.

Whether it’s NAFTA, the Iraq War authorization, or the Obama stimulus, there are always just enough aisle-crossers to get the job done, and the tally usually tracks with industry money with humorous accuracy. In this law signed by George Bush, sponsored by Republican Chuck Grassley, and greased by millions in donations from entities like Sallie Mae, the crucial votes were cast by a handful of aisle-crossing Democrats, including especially the Delawareans Joe Biden and Tom Carper. 

 

Mass

Josef Váchal’s Cry of the Masses (source: vachal.cz)

We operate according to our beliefs. There is the good old American stand-by - work hard, save your money, be a good citizen and you can have a safe, comfortable life. Or we profess a belief in God, or in bourbon , as in 'I believe I'll have another drink'. What we believe might be the most important part of who we are. Joseph posts a long quote from The Quest for Community by Robert Nisbet on Arimathea that has a few words to say on the subject. Here is an excerpt:

“Masses,” writes Dr. Arendt, “are not held together by consciousness of common interest, and they lack that specific class articulateness which is expressed in determined, limited, obtainable goals. The term masses applies only where we deal with people who either because of sheer numbers, or indifference, or a combination of both, cannot be integrated into any organization based on common interest, into political parties, or municipal governments, or professional organizations, or trade unions.”

The essence of the masses, however, does not lie in the mere fact of numbers. It is not the quantitative but the qualitative aspect that is essential. A population may be vast, as is that of India, and yet, by reason of the stability of its social organization, be far removed from the condition of massdom.

What is crucial in the formation of the masses is the atomization of all social and cultural relationships within which human beings gain their normal sense of membership in society. The mass is an aggregate of individuals who are insecure, basically lonely, and ground down, either through decree or historical circumstance, into mere particles of social dust. Within the mass all ordinary relationships and authorities seem devoid of institutional function and psychological meaning. Worse, such relationships and authorities come to seem positively hostile; in them the individual can find not security but despair. “The despair of the masses,” concludes Peter Drucker, “is the key to the understanding of fascism. No ‘revolt of the mob,’ no ‘triumphs of unscrupulous propaganda,’ but stark despair caused by the breakdown of the old order and the absence of a new one.”

Howling Around My Happy Home

Howling Around My Happy Home (Margee Rework) - Daniel Norgren
Margee
YouTube served this up a couple of days ago. I thought it sounded kind of like one of Moby's tunes that sounded like a reworking of old blues songs, so I imagined the singer as a large, middle aged black woman. Color me surprised when I find the Daniel Norgren is from Sweden.

Update September 2024 replaced missing video.

Reading and Thinking

Espetinho Do Ze Filho

Detroit Steve sent me this link: The 4 Reading Levels: Different Ways To Read Different Books. I have gotten more particular about what I read these days, mostly because I seldom have the time and the energy at the same time, to read like I want to, which is to become totally immersed in the story.

Steve's email reminded me I wanted to say something about the being tired. What I can do depends on how tired I am. Here's a first shot at a scale.

0 - Nothing, I am asleep.

1 - Dead tired, but I can sit up and watch TV, though I will probably fall asleep.

2 - Tired. Walking is possible, though navigation might be tricky.

. . .

5, or there abouts - I can do stuff I have done before, wash dishes, change a tire, eat dinner.

. . .

9 - Able to write a coherent blog post or a simple computer program

10 - Peak mental capacity, able to find and fix obscure problems in complicated computer programs.

11 - Sound asleep, sorting out conflicting requirements.

Details Matter

[LOL]Direct Hit: F-16 jet shoots down drone in mid-air target practicealbert gulyamov

On a Wing and a Whim has a post up about writing and in particular about writing about aerial combat. I enjoy tales of death and destruction as long as they are three or four levels removed from my immediate vicinity. Her post qualifies. I wouldn't want to get any closer. I have enough difficulty riding herd on everything going on here without adding any real trouble.

Update July 2022. RT has been banned from YouTube. I found the same video on albert's channel. Looks he got his copy from LiveLeak

I'm not entirely useless,

Uline Folding Table

I fixed the folding table today. Some fat ass sat on it the other day (probably a couple of months ago) and half a dozen of the screws holding the frame to the top popped out. They sounded like bullets when they hit the hard laminate flooring. 

It was a simple enough project, all I had to do was turn the table upside and put in some more / larger screws. First, however, you have to clear all the stuff off of the table, and since I hate having to bend over, what I want is another table. Well, there is one in the next room and there is enough room for all the stuff that is sitting on the broken table. Now I need a place to set the table. I could work on it on the floor, but getting up is a pain. A table to set the broken table on would be nice. Fortunately I have such a table. Apparently I am loaded with tables. When I found out how useful tables can be, and that they could be had from Office Depot for $40 (okay, that was a zillion years ago) they became the solution for all of my space problems and I ended up with half a dozen of the things.

Used to be when I needed to move one of these table, I would tip it over sideways. Now I work from one end and when I tip it over, I end up with my right hand supporting the edge of the top and my left hand supporting the leg. The other end is down on the ground. That way the center of mass is about at the same height as it was before I tipped it over. Now I can set it down gently and we don't have big slam bang we get with other technique.

Getting the folded, broken table onto my work surface, that just took plain old effort. Some things I can still do. Look at the underside and count the missing screws - six. I found four of them when I was clearing off the broken table. They were the last things lying there.

Examine the screws. They seem to be of two types. One is the course sheet metal thread I was expecting. The other was much finer. That might be why this thing failed. My solution is go to Lowe's and buy some fatter screws. Okay, I can do this. I can drive to Lowe's. I have preferred Lowe's for a long time. Back before all the crazy happened (my family bought three houses), Lowe's was nice and quiet. They seemed to have higher quality merchandise, so it was a more pleasant experience. Yes, I know, when you are trying to get the job done and all you want to do is get in and get your stuff and get out, ambiance is the last thing on your mind. And there were times when the crowds at Home Depot actually started to get in the way. Besides I've got $30 of store credit at Lowe's.

#12 Sheet Metal Screw, half-inch long
Yes, I know the picture is of a two inch long screw.
You'll just have to use your imagination.

I drive to Lowe's, it might be ten-fifteen minutes away, cross-town traffic through residential neighborhoods. The screws in my hand look like number ten, so I'm looking for some number twelves (just a little fatter, ya' know), half an inch long, and boom! There they are, a bag of six. It can't be that easy can it? I send a couple minutes looking for #14 screws. They have some, but none as short (half an inch) as I need. Take your prize, Chucky, and go home.

$1.28 at the self-serve checkstand. For some reason I am in a bad mood and don't want to talk to anyone. Might be because of my brother. Jerk. Why did he have to end up in the hospital? Pisses me off. Anyway. Can't use the store credit at the self-serve machine, they need to check your id and all that hooey. And it's only $1.28. And they let me use my charge card. Which I use for frigging everything now, even though I think credit card companies are vampires, but maybe that's the cost of security these days. Remember when businesses used to post bad checks by the cash register? The display was always labeled with this line: "No checks, we have several from last year." Haven't seen one of those lately, though maybe I just don't frequent the same kinds of places anymore, or maybe it's the part of town.

Screwed the new screws in the old, ripped out holes using just a regular screwdriver, which I had in my office. The killer driver-drill youngest game me for Christmas is upstairs, and climbing stair ranks right up there with bending over. Besides, I'm still useful, dammit.

Now all I had to do was muscle the fixed table back into my office, set it up, and transfer all my valuable stuff back. I think elapsed time was about two hours.

The table might have cost $40 twenty (or thirty?) years ago, but now they are $150. So maybe this repair was a worthwhile project. The tables Office Depot sells are different. They still have tables with particle board tops, but the frames are different. They also have plastic tables. I was a little sceptical at first, but then I remembered that toolbox makers are putting holes for padlocks in their toolboxes. Plastics have gotten a lot tougher than they were back in the day. It might be interesting to trace the evolution of plastic. When was the last big advancement in cheap plastic? I am sure there are new advancements being made all the time for special purposes.

And don't forget Waste Management. If I had just replaced the table, I would have had to get rid of the broken one, which would have meant cutting it up into pieces small enough to go in the garbage / recycling / compost bins. Can you compost particle board? Seems like you ought to be able to. Some of the stuff isn't much different than compost anyway.