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A shameless plug (I’m one of the editors) for Melbourne Historical Journal volume 36, which was launched this week. This year’s theme is the historical significance of the apology to the Stolen Generations: we have an interview with Gary Foley, and feature articles by Robert Kenny and Chris Healy. Also research articles on war and Australian national identity, a French revolutionary’s use of Roman history, and YouTube as public history. Plus book and exhibition reviews, one of which is mine!
A subscription for MHJ 36 can be ordered here.
squakond…I mean second
Thrid
I just finished Malcolm Gladwell’s book ‘Outliers’. It’s an interesting read that you can knock off in a single day or two. It’s basic premise – hardly surprising to some of us – is that genius and even hard work count for nothing by themselves. Success requires further factors, like culture, or arbitrary externalities such as date cut-offs in sporting junior leagues (e.g. a huge percentage of Canadian ice-hockey players are born in Jan/Feb/Mar).
The really interesting thing that I took away from it – that I didn’t suspect beforehand – was the 10,000 hour rule. That is, once you reach some threshold of being “good enough” at some (most? all?) human endeavours, the difference between “brilliant”, “good”, and “adequately professional” is basically the dedication and hard work you put into practicing the endeavour. And about 10,000 hours is the threshold you need to put in to get to the top of your game. This applies to programming, music, anything really, even mathematics (success at maths has a correlation to persistence of effort, not any natural brilliance). And there’s no such thing as either a “natural” (someone’s who is brilliant at something without that 10,000 hours) or a “plodder” (someone who puts in that 10,000 hours and is merely mediocre).
So according to Gladwell’s thesis, hard work, dedication, and right-time right-place right-culture (i.e. “lucky” in a structural sense) are basically the keys to success. Oh yeah the middle class have massive structural advantage over the lower classes (not a surprise to a social democrat!).
I just want to add that Sly & The Family Stone’s album “Stand!” is still fucking brilliant after nearly 40 years.
My head hurts.
Tyro rex @ 4,
That’s 417 days, I think.
But I suppose it would actually take a bit longer than that, perhaps 417 x 3. (1251 days.) ( I have a calculator,) ie about 4 years. ie, the time it supposed to take to complete a Ph.D.
Do you think somebody, apart from this author. might have thought of this before?
Of course, all my calculations could be skewiff, given my innumeracy.Very foolish of me to enter into any discussion involving numbers.
Paul, oh yes he’s condensing a lot of research into these phenomena in his book, and linking it all up in a nice narrative.
In the book he equates the 10,000 hours with 10 years. If you assume a five-day week (not really true for someone who’s obsessed with something); 360 days a year * (5/7) = 257 days a year * 10 years = 3.9 hours a day. So there is something else going on there.
There’s a great example with violin players. The one who become soloists with major orchestras (i.e. Tognetti, not Rieu) put in a LOT more hours of practice especially as they reach their teenage years over those who are only good enough to become music teachers.
But it’s not just that. It’s also structural. There’s also a great example as to why so many successful New York law firms were started by Jewish boys born in the early 1930s whose parents and/or grandparents worked in the garment trade. It’s partly their cultural background – and partly structural luck – the leading WASP-laden firms of the 1950s wouldn’t employ them because they were Jewish, so they founded their own firms and took any work on offer, which turned out to be the work the WASP firms didn’t want — corporate litigation — because it was seen as “bad form”. But along came the 70s and hostile takeovers became all the rage, and all of a sudden experienced corporate litigators where in strong demand.
Also another more serious example of “why culture matters” – certain cultures are very adept at crashing aeroplanes because of the culture of their pilots. Airlines have to take serious measures to have their pilots “unlearn” cultural habits and attitudes in the aircraft cockpit.
On his website he says about the book – http://www.gladwell.com/outliers/index.html
Bear in mind it’s not an academic book – it’s a popular book. I bought it for light summer reading. When I described it to my wife she said it sounded like a “‘Guns Germs and Steel’ of the individual” which is definitely in the ballpark.
And now I have to tackle Arkady’s Plotnitsky’s “The Knowable and the Unknowable: Modern Science, Nonclassical Thought, and the ‘Two Cultures’”. A much more serious philosophical tome which is in part a refutation of Sokal and Bricmont. In the introduction there is a devastating critique mounted against them – I can’t wait to read the chapter. But hardly a single-day book!
I went to post Plotnitsky’s comments about Sokal and Bricmont in the ban post-modernism thread but it was closed. ;=( Probably rightly though.
So I put up the quote here – http://typhon.autonomous.org/post/63288566/the-scholarly-and-intellectually-unacceptable
This particularl LOLcat struck me as one with potential to be used as commentary in a variety of situations: which whinging pundit first comes to one’s mind when viewing this image, for instance?
more animals
Andrew Bolt.
Yeah, Andrew Bolt.
The one-fanged kitten in the linked pictures is undoubredly Julie Bishop.
And the one that’s hiding is Nick Minchin because he knows a very pissed off Malcolm turnbull is looking for him.
Tyro Rex,
Its actually four years, omne month approximately.
YouTube ad for protests against Internet Censorship to be held next Saturday, December 13th in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Hobart, Adelaide and Perth.
Links to Facebook events in the sidebar (click “more info”)
50,000 ejaculations = 1 stuffed prostate!
Zorronsky -where’d you get that figure from? I just did a quick calculation… have booked a PSA test for Monday a.m.
Sadly it looks as if Wednesday nights episode of NEWStopia was the last episode for good. The final episode will stay up for free viewing on their SBS website for another couple of days so do check it out at this link. It’s basically an entire episode devoted to their “Inspector Herring” skits. Andre Rieu may make an appearance and meet an untimely demise.
http://programs.sbs.com.au/newstopia/
I do really hope the show will be back again and NEWStopia’s Kat Stewart picked up an award at the AFI Awards tonight for her role in Underbelly too.
“Zorronsky -where’d you get that figure from? I just did a quick calculation… have booked a PSA test for Monday a.m.”
Egad, Ozymandias @15, you must work for News limited.
joe2 @ 17 -that’s a mere five times daily for forty years, mate. I’ve slowed down a bit since early puberty, but had quite a head start by then. If I’d had a generator strapped to my wrist at 13, I could have powered a small city throughout my teen years.
BTW, I never worked for News Ltd, though I did spend a year at the West Australian. Mostly I’ve freelanced.
Too. much. information.
Came across this fabulous celebration of wrongness at Bitch, PHD, where it comes with a monstrous coffee/soda-nasal-sprayage warning.
http://chrisdaneowens.com/video/Shine_large.html
… The album it’s off is called blue stone, but I’m thinking Blue Steel.
Where’s Owen Wilson?
The explosions and giant pterodactyls are fab, but let me say, in the light of the AFIs being on and everything, that sometimes a big budget can be more of a curse than a blessing.
I’ve already been passing word of that around, Helen (but thanks for the hi-res version!) It is, quite possibly, the best music video EVAR.
What did it for you, Brett? the giant pterodactyls? the evil flying witchy-poo types? or the massive explosions about 2 mins in?
It’s all a seamless tapestry, Helen! The epic struggle between good and evil, the acrobatic swordplay, the lime green guitar, the constant use of the wind machine …
Here’s a silly meme to consider if you’re bored.
Since Windows Vista seems to mow carry the “Chess Titans” chess program as a standard feature, it’s now possible to rate your own chess ability by using a fixed, common reference point.
For instance there are ten levels of play; I could defeat the computer pretty much reflexively, almost like tic-tac-toe, up to level three. At four I had to think about each move for a bit in order to stay ahead; by five the program was roughly equally matched with me, and by six the program could beat me regularly though not consistently. (At nine I got utterly clobbered.)
So I’d say I scored a five, not very good. I think Kasparov can sleep well at night without worrying about me.
If you’re running Vista you can test your skillz.
Helen, that is gloriously naff. I think he missed the memo that the New Romantics trend long ago dropped off the perch. I found the switch between the Errol Flynn moustache as the hero and his Botoxed-smoothness in front of the wind machine very distracting.
Perhaps it was during- and post-Movember.
Actually, I just did a search on him, and he has an IMDB bio that’s heavily slanted towards satirical comedy, so I think this music video may just be a viral for some new project. In which case, well played sir.
It pretty much has to be, TT.
If it’s still possible for that much energy to be expended on such ridiculous crap without ironic intent, than I’d be even more impressed though.
@Helen @tigtog @FDB I got about six bars in and I had to shut it off. “Ironic” or not (and we’ve been I thought post-Ironic at least 5 years), bad overproduced music, is bad overproduced music.
now here’s a funny video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pXfHLUlZf4
Nickws, I’m calling the closed thread a win.
Liam, I’m afraid that when Leonard Cohen gets brought up on a thread, then nobody wins.
Reminds me, re L. Cohen, back in college we used to call him Nihil Young.
But don’t let me rain on the parade — have a great time at the concert, PC and the rest of you Cohenheads, and I hope it’s a grand show.
Btw, technical note re the recent blog outage: on a mobile, the home page now appears but you can’t access the links. Don’t know if that’s a generalized problem or not, though.
Damn, and that other thread shut down before I could use “I see a little silhouetto of a Manning Clark”. Vida es sueno.
And I was about to use “Enter Manning Clark: 36th Chamber of Australian History”. Too bad.
Heh.
But was Manning Clark Missy?