(no subject)

If you really want to defeat me, give me a list of people to call. Make sure that they are wrong numbers, or people who don't answer, or who put me on hold and then forget about me. And then make sure it's something related to me having a piece of bone taken out of my hip, because that's so much fun.

(I know. Woe Saga long since stopped being interesting. I'm bored with it too.)

...And a pony?

Please let's just reform health care. Please. I have just been through over two hours of unpleasantness trying to find anyone who would draw my blood and take my insurance. Tell me we can do better than this.

Outliers

I've snarked about Malcolm Gladwell. I'll no doubt continue to snark about Malcolm Gladwell. But if Outliers can make the idea break through, to his huge audience, that the people who succeed succeed not just because of their own efforts, but because of the way the rules of their societies are set up to make success easy for some and difficult for others -- because of the roles that luck and privilege play in our lives even if we want to put our fingers in our ears and pretend they don't exist -- well. I gotta give the guy some credit.

(Entertaining book, incidentally, but it's kind of lightweight and leans heavily on the anecdata...)