I enjoy Malcolm Gladwell's writing, and often feel I come away with fresh insights into the way the world works, as opposed to how it appears to work. But I will read Gladwell with more skepticism after reading a spectacular takedown in an unlikely blog called "Ask-a-Korean." If you have followed media coverage of the July 6 crash of Asiana Flight 214 at San Francisco Airport, you have doubtless heard speculation that Korea's culture of deference to authority, a culture deeply embedded in the Korean language, played a role in the crash. This theory owes much to Gladwell, who devoted a...

21 July, 2013

To illustrate Adam Gopnik's piece on National Geographic* in last week's New Yorker, photo editor James Pomerantz riffled through hundreds of images from NatGeo's online archive of more than 11 million photos. This week, the New Yorker website reproduced "a handful of particularly intriguing images" from "the photo booty" Pomerantz uncovered. National Geographic being the source, one of the images naturally featured Cape Breton. Can you guess what's being pictured here? The caption: "Men wear the waistcoat of Cape Breton’s famous giant named Mcaskill (sic)."**  Gilbert H. Grosvenor took the photograph. * A subscription is required to read the entire piece. ** I assume the...

23 April, 2013

When I was a teenager, my parents were friends with Malcolm Hobbs, publisher of what was then a weekly newspaper in Orleans, Massachusetts. The Cape Codder was a respectable example of what might be called the golden age of community weeklies. From time to time, it ran detailed articles — "profiles" — of local worthies, a habit that one day generated a warning letter from a lawyer for The New Yorker magazine. The term, "Profile," he asserted, was a trademark of the great journal, who legendary founding editor, Harold Ross, first applied it to detailed articles about individuals sometime in the...

26 July, 2012

How does The New Yorker come up with ideas for its Talk of the Town column? Here's the great magazine's helpful instructional video: Yes, with this post, Contrarian has succumbed to shameless viral marketing, but it's New Yorker shameless viral marketing....

15 June, 2011

The appalling Wikileaks video showing a US helicopter gunship mowing down a group of Iraqis, including two Reuters journalists, two children, and a pair of Good Samaritans whose only offense was to come to the aid of a badly injured man, continues to provoke reaction. Reader Cliff White writes: You can't help wondering after watching that terrible video if killing has just become a game to those soldiers in the helicopter.  It's both terribly disturbing and dismaying to listen to their casual banter as they go about their "work".   Even when they learn that children have been injured it's no big...

08 April, 2010