Age: 50.
Appearance: Art Garfunkel plus Sideshow Bob, minus food.
Thin, is he? Yes. He does a lot of running.
Does he do anything else? He writes counterintuitive journalism for the New Yorker, and counterintuitive books for a lot of money.
I see. What are those? They're books that explain why the opposite of what you think is true.
Example, please. You know how people who are much more powerful than other people have a big advantage in any contest between them?
I am familiar with that idea. Well, it's nonsense! Or occasionally nonsense anyway, as Gladwell argues in his most recent book, David and Goliath.
My mind is reeling. You know how people are sometimes geniuses?
Yes. That's nonsense, too! In a previous book, Outliers, Gladwell argued that high achievers were usually just weird enough to do a lot of practice when they were young. Or often were. Or at least occasionally.
It's as if my eyes are open for the first time. And you know how thinking carefully about problems is the best way to solve them? That's not true either, according to Gladwell in Blink. Not always.
Wow. I'll never think carefully about anything again. Great plan. Anyway, a judge in Oregon has just sentenced an ecoterrorist called Rebecca Rubin to five years in prison and ordered her to read Gladwell's latest book.
Couldn't her lawyer plead for six years, plus one of his New Yorker articles? Very funny. In fact, many people read Gladwell voluntarily. He's the world's most accessible sage.
So what is this judge playing at? Well, she had some sympathy for Rubin, and felt that David and Goliath could help her learn about the power of nonviolent protest. She also ordered Rubin to read a book called Nature's Trust by Mary Christina Wood.
And what's that about? Reconfiguring environmental law around the concept of a public trust.
That doesn't sound very counterintuitive. What does it mean? I'm not telling you.
Why not? Unlike Gladwell, I don't believe in simplifying complex subjects for the general reader.
You haven't read it. That's another reason.
Do say: "Gladwell's work may be provocative and popular, but it is based on a dispassionate assessment of all the available evidence."
Don't say: "Apart from when it isn't."
