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. All the examples, I noticed, had a few attributes in common: They involved simple interventions— a vaccine, the removal of a pump handle. The effects were carefully measured. And the interventions proved to have widely transmissible benefits— what business types would term a large ROI (return on investment) or what Archimedes would have called, merely, leverage.

By 2004, surgeons were performing some 230 million major operations annually— one for every twenty-five human beings on the planet— and the numbers have likely continued to increase since then. The volume of surgery had grown so swiftly that, without anyone’s quite realizing, it has come to exceed global totals for childbirth— only with a death rate ten to one hundred times higher. Although most of the time a given p

Three decades of neuropsychology research have shown us numerous ways in which human judgment, like memory and hearing, is prone to systematic mistakes. The mind overestimates vivid dangers, falls into ruts, and manages multiple pieces of data poorly. It is swayed unduly by desire and emotion and even the time of day. It is affected by the order in which information is presented and how problems are framed.

It is hard to contemplate the human appetite without wondering if we have any say over our lives at all. We believe in will— in the notion that we have a choice over such simple matters as whether to sit still or stand up, to have a slice of pie or not. Yet very few people, can voluntarily reduce their weight for long. The history of weight-loss treatment is one of nearly unremitting failure.

Yes, injury produces nerve signals that travel through a spinal-cord gate, but it is the brain that generates the pain experience, and it can do so even in the absence of external stimuli. If a mad scientist reduced you to nothing but a brain in a jar, Melzack says, you could still feel pain— indeed, you could have the full range of sensory experience.

striking. On average, female students reported pain at sixteen seconds and pulled their hands out of the ice water at thirty-seven seconds. Female dancers went almost three times as long on both counts. Men in both groups had a higher threshold and tolerance for pain— as expected, since studies show women to be more sensitive than men to pain..ballet dancers— a group distinguished by self-discipline, physical fitness

Indeed, the most important talent may be the talent for practice itself. K. Anders Ericsson, a cognitive psychologist and expert on performance, notes that the most important way in which innate factors play a role may be in one’s willingness to engage in sustained training. He’s found, for example, that top performers dislike practicing just as much as others do. (That’s why, for example, athletes and musicians usua

It was not the privileged and the fortunate who took in the Jews in France. It was the marginal and the damaged, which should remind us that there are real limits to what evil and misfortune can accomplish. If you take away the gift of reading, you create the gift of listening. If you bomb a city, you leave behind death and destruction. But you create a community of remote misses.

The excessive use of force creates legitimacy problems, and force without legitimacy leads to defiance, not submission. You could kill André Trocmé. But in all likelihood, all that would mean is that another André Trocmé would rise in his place.

Gladwell, Malcolm (2013-10-03). David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits and the Art of Battling Giants (pp. 273-274). Penguin Books Ltd. Kindle Edition.

My father was himself a college professor and a pedant to the bone. Every exchange contained a lesson, like the pit in a cherry. To this day, the Socratic method makes me want to bite someone.

Fowler, Karen Joy (2014-03-06). We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves (p. 6). Profile Books. Kindle Edition.

Empathy isn’t just listening, it’s asking the questions whose answers need to be listened to. Empathy requires inquiry as much as imagination. Empathy requires knowing you know nothing. Empathy means acknowledging a horizon of context that extends perpetually beyond what you can see:

Jamison, Leslie (2014-06-05). The Empathy Exams: Essays (Kindle Locations 110-112). Granta Publications. Kindle Edition.

“My upbringing allowed me to be comfortable with failure,” he said. “The one trait in a lot of dyslexic people I know is that by the time we got out of college, our ability to deal with failure was very highly developed. And so we look at most situations and see much more of the upside than the downside. Because we’re so accustomed to the downside. It doesn’t faze us. I’ve thought about it many times, I really have.

And because he likes to practice so much, he gets even better, and on and on, in a virtuous circle. That’s “capitalization learning”: we get good at something by building on the strengths that we are naturally given.

Gladwell, Malcolm (2013-10-03).

There is a set of advantages that have to do with material resources, and there is a set that have to do with the absence of material resources— and the reason underdogs win as often as they do is that the latter is sometimes every bit the equal of the former.

Gladwell, Malcolm (2013-10-03). David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits and the Art of Battling Giants (pp. 24-25). Penguin Books Ltd. Kindle Edition.

Stouffer’s point is that we form our impressions not globally, by placing ourselves in the broadest possible context, but locally— by comparing ourselves to people “in the same boat as ourselves.” Our sense of how deprived we are is relative. This is one of those observations that is both obvious and (upon exploration) deeply profound, and it explains all kinds of otherwise puzzling observations.

The economist Levin has done some fascinating work, looking at Dutch schoolchildren. He counted how many peers children had in their class—that is, students at a similar level of academic ability— and found that the number of peers had a surprising correlation with academic performance, particularly for struggling students. * In other words, if you are a student—particularly a poor student

And the fact of being an underdog can change people in ways that we often fail to appreciate: it can open doors and create opportunities and educate and enlighten and make possible what might otherwise have seemed unthinkable. We need a better guide to facing giants—

Gladwell, Malcolm (2013-10-03). David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits and the Art of Battling Giants (p. 6). Penguin Books Ltd. Kindle Edition.

Boredom can be a useful tool for a psychoanalyst. It can be a sign that the patient is avoiding a particular subject; that he or she is unable to talk directly about something intimate or embarrassing. Or it can mean that patient and psychoanalyst are stuck; the patient is returning again and again to some desire or grievance that the psychoanalyst is failing to tackle.

It's amazing so far. Beautiful, delicate writing.

It's just amazing...

Deals with a very timely topic of international interest and that is a two-edged sword. Apart from the topic- explaining radical Islam to the west- the book has proved very disappointing so far.

I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow. I see how peoples are set against one another, and in silence, unknowingly, foolishly, obediently, innocently slay one another. I see that the keenest brains of the world invent weapons and words to make it yet more refined and enduring. And all men of my age, here and over

We are two men, two minute sparks of life; outside is the night and the circle of death. We sit on the edge of it crouching in danger, the grease drips from our hands, in our hearts we are close
to one another, and the hour is like the room: flecked over with the lights and shadows of our feelings cast by a quiet fire. What does he know of me or I of him? formerly we should not have had a single thought in common

Mist and the smoke of guns lie breast-high over the fields. The moon is shining. Along the road troops file. Their helmets gleam softly in the moonlight. The heads and the rifles stand out above the white mist, nodding heads, rocking barrels. Farther on the mist ends. Here the heads become figures; coats, trousers, and boots appear out of the mist as from a milky pool. They become a column. The column marches on...

Might be an interesting school project to contrast this with "Journey's End".

so much like "The Curious Incident...." so far that it is quite dull.