Malcolm Gladwell, 2 articles

[fiefoe]

"Getting In"

• "Thus the renowned (some would say notorious) Harvard admission practice known as the ‘happy-bottom-quarter’ policy was born," Karabel writes.
• Élite schools, like any luxury brand, are an aesthetic experience—an exquisitely constructed fantasy of what it means to belong to an élite.
  

(UC) cherishes their brand's emphasis on social maladroitness, academic rigor, and general unpleasantness.
posted by Rutherford B. Hatch at 9:13 PM PST on October 5

"John Rock's Error"

• Whenever a woman ovulates, an egg literally bursts through the walls of her ovaries.
• He assumed that the Pill was natural because it was an unobtrusive variant of the body's own processes. In fact, as more recent research suggests, the Pill is really only natural in so far as it's radical--rescuing the ovaries and endometrium from modernity.
• If the conventional Pill works by convincing the body that it is, well, a little bit pregnant, Pike's pill would work by convincing the body that it was menopausal.
• It was the fault of the haphazard nature of science, which all too often produces progress in advance of understanding.
  

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