Provocations

A quote for family and community in a challenging season

My wish with Outliers is that it makes us understand how much of a group project success is. When outliers become outliers it is not just because of their own efforts. It's because of the contributions of lots of different people and lots of different circumstances— and that means that we, as a society, have more control about who succeeds—and how many of us succeed—than we think. That's an amazingly hopeful and uplifting idea. - Malcom Gladwell

According to Gladwell, it's the extreme that tells us most about the middle.

• See also: Provocative quotes

Gian Gomeshi interviews Margaret Atwood on her new book: The Year of the Flood

Margaret Atwood keeps Gian Gomeshi in line. She's the adult here. I hardly ever read books but this one tempts me. And she gets her facts straight - and current too.

Find out where this fits in: "St. Robert Burns of Mice"!

Just one more quote. "Politicians: 90% of their brain space is occupied with 'How do I get elected next time?'"

Enjoy the interview - the 21 minutes just zip by.

• Margaret Atwood
• The Year of the Flood - her new book

Carl Honoré on his new book on parenting, Under Pressure

I heard an interview with Carl Honoré about his new book on contemporary parenting, Under Pressure".  It makes a natural follow-up to the consideration of the success of the Finnish school system.  Here's Carl introducing himself and his new book:

Wildlife needs dead trees

From Wildlife & Trees in British Columbia:

It is important to remember that, under natural conditions, a tree remains part of the forest ecosystem long after its death. It's rate of decay varies according to the species, cause of death, climate and other factors. If left undisturbed by humans, a dead tree may remain standing in the forest for up to half the time it stood while alive. A tree's ecological importance continues as it breaks apart and falls to the ground or after it topples, and eventually all its nutrients are cycled back into the soil to be taken up by new plants.

Naomi Klein: The Shock Doctrine

This video, unlike many move "trailers', pretty clearly speaks for itself. Here's a brief introduction By Naomi Klein, author of the book and co-producer of the movie (with Alfonso  Cuarón).

When I finished The Shock Doctrine, I sent it to Alfonso Cuarón because I adore his films and felt that the future he created for Children of Men was very close to the present I was seeing in disaster zones. I was hoping he would send me a quote for the book jacket and instead he pulled together this amazing team of artists -- including Jonás Cuarón who directed and edited -- to make The Shock Doctrine short film. It was one of those blessed projects where everything felt fated.

The book:

Daniel Gilbert's prize for Stumbling on Happiness

There are very few countries (including my own - the US) where a somewhat cheeky book about happiness could win a science prize - but the British invented intellectual humour and have always understood that enlightenment and entertainment are natural friends. So God bless the empire!  -  Daniel Gilbert (quoted by the BBC)  on receiving this year's Royal Society Prize for Science Books for Stumbling on Happiness.

Care for the planet by living like a tree: Wendell Berry

Quote for the day:

"We must see that it is foolish, sinful and suicidal to destroy the health of nature for the sake of an economy that is really not an economy at all but merely a financial system, one that is unnatural, undemocratic, sacrilegious, and ephemeral. We must see the error of our effort to live by fire, by burning the world in order to live in it. There is no plainer symptom of our insanity than our avowed intention to maintain by fire an unlimited economic growth. Fire destroys what nourishes it and so in fact imposes severe limits on any growth associated with it. The true source and analogue of our economic life is the economy of plants, which never exceeds natural limits, never grows beyond the power of its place to support it, produces no waste, and enriches and preserves itself by death and decay. We must learn to grow like a tree, not like a fire."

Wendell Berry, from Conservation and Local Economy in The Art of the Commonplace.

Leonard Cohen - poet again

Tomorrow is a big day . . .  and I'll tell you why:

Leonard Cohen is launching his first book of poetry in many years. For a man I first knew through his poems -  because at that time he hadn't yet entered "the tower of song" -  this will be a big day.  I know he lost a lot of money recently (stolen it seems) and that may have something to do with new music and now poetry being launched.  But I like to think that also he is returning to his first love.  He has said something to the effect that he took up singing because poems weren't much at paying the bills. 

So, here comes The Book of Longing.

To add to the occasion, the official launch, at Indigo Books in Toronto, will include performances by the Barenaked Ladies, Ron Sexsmith and Anjani.

See also Leonard Cohen - a Tower of Song-writing and Poetry

Canadian government tries to control what we see

A Canadian civil servant was advised  by the Canadian environment minister not to attend a promotional event for his new book. The advice (which he took, in fear of losing his job) came at the last minute and left his publicist trying to explain what she didn't understand herself.  The title of the book?  Hotter than Hell - a novel described by the CBC as "set in the not-so-distant future and dealing with the effects of global warming and a Canada-U.S. battle over fresh water."  And, guess what?  Thanks to the publicity this ministerial intervention gave to the book, it's now going for its second printing.  Who needs a book promotion? 

The Canadian government, getting increasingly controlling as it exercises power, claims the book promotion would have given the impression that the government endorses the book. Sounds fair on the surface but their reason for preventing media from attending the return of slain Canadian soldiers from Afghanistan also sounds fair on the surface:  protection of family privacy. As one father of a deceased soldier said today, that decision should be up to the families, not the government.  Why anyone would want to borrow a page from George Bush's copybook beats me but the media and Canadian public are smelling cover-up: an attempt to control the optics of the war in Afghanistan - which is looking more like Iraq with every passing day.

In the US,  slain soldiers in their caskets are flown in at night and the media is prohibited from photographing them.  Perhaps that's why, when an image does find its way through the censorship, it has great impact.

Pollan on food and culture in The Omnivore's Dilemma

"A country with a stable culture of food would not shell out millions for the quackery (or common sense) of a new diet book every January," he writes. In France and Italy, by contrast, people "decide their dinner questions on the basis of such quaint and unscientific criteria as pleasure and tradition, eat all manner of 'unhealthy' foods, and lo and behold, wind up actually healthier and happier in their eating than we are."

- Michael Pollan, in his newly-released book, The Omnivore's Dilemma

No Bar Code - excerpt from The Omnivore's Dilemma (in Mother Jones)

See also: Why French Women Don't Get Fat.