This Harvard Book Store-sponsored reading was, in typical Gladwellian fashion, mesmerizing.

Recently:

His gift for spotting an intriguing mystery, luring the reader in, then gradually revealing his lessons in lucid prose, is on vivid display.

Also:

"It's a yarn. In this case, it's an elaborate joke: it's a send-up of the seriousness with which journalists take themselves."

Finally:

Consider Joe Lockhart.

Malcolm Gladwell at First Parish Church

Malcom Gladwell:

We should be lowering our standards, because there is no point in raising standards if standards don’t track with what we care about.

Most Likely to Succeed

Are the new ascetics masters of self-denial or just self-promotion?

Thoreau's Worst Nightmare

In 1955, before the national highway system was developed, the median home was 1,000 square feet and had 3.6 people living in it.

Now, the median home is 2,400 square feet and shelters 2.3 people.

"Seclusion is a fact of life."

Louis Menand:

The interstates changed the phenomenology of driving.

Verlyn Klinkenborg:

Someone from the future, I’m sure, will marvel at our blindness and at the hole we have driven ourselves into.

Earning More, Commuting Farther

Michael Schaffer, in Obit Magazine:

For most people who weren’t counting on a paycheck from Lehman Brothers, the central drama of the 2008 collapse has been the more personal matter of their retirement savings and their property value. Unfortunately, those two things constitute the bulk of most families’ net worth.

The rug has been yanked away. But how to say farewell?

On a society-wide level, the year’s vibe also involves having to wrap our minds around a future where we’ll just have less -- less money, less power, less flexibility.

Clinton led a true superpower, the sort that had the economy to go with its armaments. A central facet of American life in the coming decade will be accepting the demise of that status. That we might not be such a country anymore creates a kind of vertiginous feeling, like stepping out a window in your childhood home only to realize that the balcony that’s been there all your life is gone.

From the archive:

In the 21st century, we "shy away from death," and we tend to think of a good death as a sudden one.

Not so in the 19th century. Dying well meant having time to assess your spiritual state and say goodbye -- which is difficult to do if you're killed in battle.

And of course:

Today I write not to gloat. Instead, I am writing to say goodbye.

Fuck you, Fuck you, Fuck you, You're cool... Fuck you, I'm out.

Finally:

Every 20 years or so, the end of America is nigh.

Only Yesterday

Ira Glass:

"We tell ourselves that everything is in bad shape. But the opposite is true. There’s an abundance of really interesting things going on all around us."

From the archive, Ira Glass:

"Not enough gets said about the importance of abandoning crap."

"If you're not failing all the time, you're not creating a situation where you can get super-lucky."

Have you seen Happy-Go-Lucky?

The Age of Mass Intelligence

Virginia Postrel:

Brilliant. Blogging Queen Arianna Huffington gets free writers. You get therapy. Readers get Depression Porn. How can Tina Brown ever compete?

From the archive:

After years of relentless ugliness, beauty is the new subversion.

Recently, Stephen Colbert:

I felt so dirty. I felt like a piece of meat. I find being a piece of meat very exciting.

Depression Lust, and Depression Porn

Virginia Postrel:

In these uncertain economic times, we’d all like a guaranteed investment. Here’s one: it pays a 24-cent dividend every four weeks for 60 weeks, 15 dividends in all. Then it disappears. Unlike a bond, this security has no redemption value. It simply provides guaranteed dividends. It involves no tricky derivatives or unknown risks. And it carries absolutely no danger of default. What would you pay for it?

From the archive:

More clothes to wear, bigger cars to drive, more space to live, more power, more influence -- the plague of gigantism has hit us. In our mad rush to the big, we should remember that dinosaurs were not the most successful form of life on this planet.

Pop Psychology

Paul Graham:

Even if Internet-related applications only become a tenth of the world's economy, this component will set the tone for the rest. The most dynamic part of the economy always does, in everything from salaries to standards of dress. Not just because of its prestige, but because the principles underlying the most dynamic part of the economy tend to be ones that work.

For the future, the trend to bet on seems to be networks of small, autonomous groups whose performance is measured individually. And the societies that win will be the ones with the least impedance.

The High-Res Society

The Economist:

The World in 2009 is the 23rd edition of The Economist's annual collection of predictions for the year ahead -- with views from journalists, politicians and business people.

The World in 2009