media

Malcolm Gladwell’s Weak Defense of the “10,000 Hour Rule”

The “10,000 hour rule” – the idea that 10,000 hours of practice is the amount needed to excel in an activity, as described in Malcolm Gladwell’s 2008 book Outliers – has been getting more attention than usual recently. The attention is partly because of the release of Gladwell’s new book, David and Goliath, but it’s also because of the discussion of the rule in another new book –  The Sports Gene, by former Sports Illustrated senior writer David Epstein. In his investigation of what leads to outstanding athletic performance, Epstein points out some contradictions to Gladwell’s rule – for example, that athletes at the same level of competition can have very different amounts of practice time or playing experience, and that success in sports isn’t determined only by how much an athlete practices.

A few weeks ago, in this article in the New Yorker, Gladwell responded to Epstein and to other critics of the “10,000 hour rule”.  Since I’ve written a blog post about Gladwell’s misinterpretations of the research cited in Outliers in support of the rule, I was very interested in what Gladwell had to say. But it seems that the article is full of  (more…)

Why (Most) Business Books Suck

Whenever I go to a bookstore, I always take a look at the section with business books, and inevitably I walk away feeling discouraged or mad. I couldn’t really put my finger on why, until I read this article by political scientist Andrew Gelman and this response by his blogging colleague Henry Farrell. Gelman and Farrell have identified some of the things that really annoy me about popular-press business books, and I’m going to (more…)

Sick Days “Abuse”: More Nonsense from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation

Generally I try not to write about any “news” coming out of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, because their anti-union and anti-public service bias is so obvious. I did break down a few weeks ago and write about their latest attempt to push public/private sector pay “equity” legislation. And while I really don’t want to dignify their Labour Day claims of rampant abuse of sick days in the public sector, the methodology behind their claims is so flawed that it has to be commented on. There also needs to be some response to (more…)

Cultural Products and Creativity: The “TMZ” Video and the Lego Librarians

Earlier this week I spent an afternoon reading trashy celebrity gossip magazines (give me a break, it’s summer). I learned way, way more than I ever needed to know about the antics of the Teen Moms, the possibly jail-bound Real Housewife, the sexting politician, and the Kardashians – and all that useless information about people I don’t even know made me think of one of my recent favourite music videos: (more…)

Randall Sullivan’s “Untouchable”: The Business of Music and the Art of Using Sources

Randall Sullivan’s Untouchable: The Strange Life and Tragic Death of Michael Jackson was released in November of last year. It’s an epic piece of work – 776 pages long, including nearly 175 pages of references – and it got some less-than-positive reviews, including the New York Times, which called it “dreary”, “bloated”, and “thoroughly dispensable”. I just finished reading it, and I think it deserves much more credit than that, because it’s a remarkable work on several levels. Sullivan has constructed an extremely complex narrative that is more than a biography – it’s also a very sobering look at how the music business operates. And it’s an excellent case study in how writers can manage challenging or difficult source material.

I get the sense that (more…)

Do Men Need Women To Call Them Out? Some Thoughts on Adam Grant’s Controversial Article

Last week, the New York Times published an article by Adam Grant that set off more than a few firestorms of debate. The article, titled Why Men Need Women, proposed that women have a “warming effect” on men, causing them to be more generous and compassionate. It cited a number of research studies suggesting that men behaved more selflessly when they had female relatives or co-workers, and concluded,

It’s often said that behind every great man stands a great woman. In light of the profound influence that women can have on men’s generosity, it might be more accurate to say that in front of every great man walks a great woman. If we’re wise, we’ll follow her lead.

The article received more than 300 responses on the New York Times website, and was the subject of a lot of harsh criticism on Twitter. From my reading, there seemed to be several major themes in the criticisms (more…)

Vancouver Sun Story Has Similarities to Other Online Sources

I wasn’t planning to have “Bash the Vancouver Sun Week” here at All About Work, but it seems like many questionable things are slipping through unnoticed at the beleagured daily Vancouver newspaper.

The July 19 edition of the Sun includes an announcement of a Sun-sponsored “architecture tour” to New Orleans. Accompanying this announcement (on page C9 of the print edition) is a sidebar story with the headline “A guide to the storied architecture of New Orleans“.  No writer’s byline is attached to this guide. And no sources are credited for the information in it, either in the print or online versions.

If you Google “New Orleans architecture”, the second link that comes up (more…)

Good Content, Bad Design: Not What A Struggling Newspaper Needs

When I last wrote about recent events at my former place of employment, the Vancouver Sun newspaper, I commented on the leak of a doom-laden memo from newly appointed publisher Gordon Fisher, warning of financial crisis, threatening staff layoffs, and telling employees to be “part of the solution”. Since then, 62 Sun employees have taken a voluntary staff buyout and left the paper, while Postmedia (the Sun‘s corporate owner) reported a financial loss of $112 million in its most recent three months of operation.

On July 3, Fisher issued another memo, this time to the print subscribers of the Sun and the Province, the other Vancouver daily newspaper owned by Postmedia. In full-page ads published in both papers, Fisher announced that on August 1 print subscription rates would be “adjusted” – as in, increased – and promised “platform-specific content”. He wasn’t too clear on what exactly this would look like, or how this “content” would be produced with a significantly reduced workforce. But I’m really hoping that one part of last Saturday’s print version of the Sun is not representative of what the Sun’s print readers will get in the future – especially if they have to pay more for it. (more…)

Reflecting on Glass: the Dale Chihuly Exhibition in Montreal

I’ve written before about different types of interactive displays at art museums, and the pros and cons of different ways museums get their visitors to think about and react to what’s on display. This past weekend, at the Dale Chihuly exhibition at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, I had the chance to experience yet another type of art museum interaction: a show (more…)

Poll Used to Support Bill C-377 Was Flawed

A poll that was allegedly the basis for proposing Canada`s controversial “union transparency” legislation, Bill C-377, is now being reviewed by a professional standards organization.

The Vancouver Sun reports that the Canadian Labour Congress has filed a complaint about the poll with the Market Research and Intelligence Association. The complaint, based on research by two University of Regina professors, alleges that the results (more…)