What I'm Reading

Read the Institutes in a year.

All the cool kids are doing it.

[ht: Meg]

Reading literature can change their lives — and ours. The thing is, we don’t quite understand how this process works — nor will we ever understand. Certainly we can’t predict it past a certain point. That’s why reading literature can’t be a discipline. I, a straight white American male, can see myself in a black character or a female one, understand a point made by a dead Russian or a living Albanian, meditate on an abstract point made by an anonymous author. But that equally means that an X reader (say, black, gay, Albanian) need not read an X author (or character?) to get something from a work. Reading literature doesn’t require us to check our list of identifying adjectives to see if we’ll understand. Instead, we just have to dive in. Maybe we’ll sink, maybe we’ll swim. Nobody can tell beforehand. That’s the beauty of books.

Interaction with literature can never be the basis of a systematic undertaking: It’s all too scattershot. All we can do is describe the sense of looking up from a page full of little black and white squiggles with the feeling that suddenly we understand our own lives, that names have been given to things that lacked them, and that the iron filings that hitherto were scattered about have configured into a clear pattern. Things are different now — somehow. Maybe that will cause us to act differently, maybe not.

“All brands want consumers to be their ‘friends.’ Oh, boy, do they!” But speaking for himself, he said he had reservations about the very premise. “I don’t want to be best friends with a brand,” he said. “It’s just stuff.”

[ht: Bethany]

[If you’re like most people, the number of people with whom you can carry on meaningful relationships is probably 148.5, give or take a few.

Unless, of course, you have a larger-than-normal neocortex.]

There is, to be sure, lemonade to be made of living next to Wendy’s. Because this one was built in the classic Wendy’s architectural style, and not in any way that acknowledged its dense urban surroundings, it has one of those greenhouse-like dining rooms with windows that look out over two streets. I’ve always found the Wendy’s solarium to be a nice touch for diners, but, against a sidewalk, it means that pedestrians have the pleasure of an up-close look at what people are eating. I like seeing what people eat. I also get to see how people treat a space like a Wendy’s dining room, which can be equally interesting. Some will sit there for a while after eating, reading or doing crossword puzzles below plastic ivy in hanging baskets. I’ve seen some who sit there for hours and just stare out the window. A lot of these people are recurring characters in the Wendy’s tableau.

My favorite part about this weather forecast is that it contains the phrase “explosively developing low pressure system.”

A group of researchers—Thomas J. Kane, an economist at Harvard’s school of education; Douglas Staiger, an economist at Dartmouth; and Robert Gordon, a policy analyst at the Center for American Progress—have investigated whether it helps to have a teacher who has earned a teaching certification or a master’s degree. Both are expensive, time-consuming credentials that almost every district expects teachers to acquire; neither makes a difference in the classroom. Test scores, graduate degrees, and certifications—as much as they appear related to teaching prowess—turn out to be about as useful in predicting success as having a quarterback throw footballs into a bunch of garbage cans.

Have you ever had the nagging sense that there’s something not quite right with the adulation that follows Malcolm Gladwell - the author of Tipping Point? But you couldn’t quite put your finger on it? We’re here to help, dear reader.

…Who is Malcolm Gladwell? What’s he really saying? Who are these people who lap it all up? And what is it that he’s saying that hold so much appeal?