This week in Malcolm Gladwell schadenfreude: the 10,000 hour rule isn’t real
It’s the election in NZ soon, and as with most constituencies, the parties need to work really hard to actually get people to the voting booth. NZ independent journo Nicky Hager, talking in the wake of his expose book about dirty political tactics in NZ (it would all be pretty ordinary stuff in other countries but we are trying to keep a lid on those tactics here), offered his big suggestion for election day:
Hager: host a get-together on election day and take everyone to the voting booth – defeat #dirtypolitics
— Sacha Dylan (@kaupapa) August 27, 2014
This, I note, is precisely the plan I came up with after a conversation with a Green party candidate when I tried to apply my social psyc masters to electoral strategy. If we can make voting a social event, participation will jump. A little. (Note that in NZ, like in all sensible countries, voting is on a weekend day.) It’s a really good idea.
Vice.com says D&D is officially cool again. Unsure where the “again” part of the headline comes from, but, yup – more & more hipsters been flinging those twenty-sided dice lately. Artisan, hand-crafted action adventure fun – how can you go wrong?
Peter Capaldi’s Oscar-winning 20-minute short film:
“On the evidence of the last few weeks, what we are seeing is the end of gamers, and the viciousness that accompanies the death of an identity.” The end of gamers (via Kieron Gillen)
Israeli & Palestinian kids go to the U.S. together, and it helps. An interesting & encouraging exploration of the contact hypothesis, and like the best psyc experiments, it’s about boys going to camp.
The Fawlty Towers hotel set recreated in Lego. Marvellously done!
Thoughts about class in Australia (via saniac/Stephen Judd): “I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that citizens in contemporary Australia are now implicitly divided into those who bother and those who don’t. It seems poverty and wealth can no longer be attributed – even in part – to social origins; they are apparently manifestations of character.”
This made me lol:
Via Allanah: enter the Useless Web
The final linky is always something baffling, but you might wonder how I can find something more baffling than those two items. Don’t worry, I got you covered…
And finally, Irresistible Horse Hoods