Malcolm Gladwell has posted a followup on his blog. Reading the comments there might be highly entertaining after a box of chardonnay but are merely dreary in the pre-coffee morning hours.
I think Gladwell has missed one of the most important differences between teachers and quarterbacks: Good ball handling skills may be ultimately detrimental to one but is definitely beneficial to the other*.
My original post on his original article is here.
*Sorry, I had to take out my Facebook frustrations somewhere.
Raising a family in Thailand // Documenting Issan food, culture, music, and people
You’re probably not interested, but Steve Sailer has his critique of Gladwell’s latest up on the Internets, from http://www.vdare.com/sailer/081221_malcolm.htm:
But, not surprisingly, Gladwell also embodies the chief shortcomings of contemporary journalism: a complete lack of realism and skepticism.
He has neither the intellectual capacity nor the moral character to question his sources rigorously. So he ends up just recasting their self-interested talking points in a more reader-friendly format.
Let me be frank about my trade. On the whole, we journalists aren’t very bright.