Gladwell Takes a Beating

If you like a good old fashioned literary beatdown (and you know that you do) you'll thoroughly enjoy Isaac Chotiner's recent evisceration of Malcolm Gladwell's new book, Outliers that really serves as a repudiation of Gladwell's entire ouevre. I tend to enjoy, but not place a great deal of stock in, Gladwell's magazine articles, but have not yet read any of his books, two of which are sitting on my bedside shelf to be read at some future date. I have been uneasy about what I have read about the books, and Chotiner's review does not do much to soothe my wariness. But it sure is fun to read! Mean stuff so often is.

The Never-Ending PED Controversy

There is so much hypocrisy, inconsistency, and overwrought fulmination over the supposed scourge of performance enhancing drugs in baseball that the critical mass of opinion has buried the ability of most observers to sit back and take a reasoned, rational look at the issue without the moralization snd mock outrage that characterizes the state of the debate. Malcolm Gladwell's recent postings on this issue at his blog are thus welcome. He has four salient posts, here, here, here, and here.