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Sorry for two posts about Gladwell in one day, but I just found out that Gladwell has started a blog. Looks like he started the day after his Columbia speech which is interesting because he put some blame on the internet for our society’s bias towards Picasso. Maybe he’s trying to test his theories

Gladwell is one of most interesting writers I have read and is as adept a speaker as he is a writer. It’s funny though. If you were to grade his speaking based on some well accepted criteria, you’d say he was a poor speaker. He says “Ummm” and other interjections a lot. He goes off on tangents. There were times where he lost a word and he seemed stuck for a few seconds. He didn’t know the nitty gritty details of everything he talked about. At one point he was giving an example (during a tangent) and he couldn’t remember the name of the guy who Cheney shot, so he made up a name.

But he’s a great speaker because he tells stories very very well. He has a point that he wants passionately to get across. Finally, it’s obvious that he’s deeply thought about what he’s talking about. As a listener, you ignore the conventional shortcomings because you’re immersed in his story and you want to understand what he does. I thoroughly enjoyed his presentation and I’m subscribed to his blog.

We saw Malcolm Gladwell talk at Columbia on Tuesday. He’s the author of Blink and The Tipping Point and he’s a staff writer at the New Yorker. He spoke about different types of genius. I’ve tried to recreate his main points from memory, so I apologize in advance if I’ve remembered things incorrectly.

His talk was about the artists Picasso and C

Interesting article about SUV safety. Here’s a quote:

Most of us think that S.U.V.s are much safer than sports cars. If you asked the young parents of America whether they would rather strap their infant child in the back seat of the TrailBlazer or the passenger seat of the Boxster, they would choose the TrailBlazer. We feel that way because in the TrailBlazer our chances of surviving a collision with a hypothetical tractor-trailer in the other lane are greater than they are in the Porsche. What we forget, though, is that in the TrailBlazer you’re also much more likely to hit the tractor-trailer because you can’t get out of the way in time. In the parlance of the automobile world, the TrailBlazer is better at “passive safety.” The Boxster is better when it comes to “active safety,” which is every bit as important.

We think SUVs are safer because they’re bigger. But, they’re actually less nimble and take longer to stop than smaller cars. More dangerously, they give the illusion of safety, thus making the driver less careful or more aggressive. Perception and rationalization are powerful things. So, I’ll stick to my plan of driving small cheap cars… uh… that is, when I get one.

[Found on kottke.org]