Monday, May 11, 2009

How David Beats Goliath

Illustration by Zohar Lazar

Fascinating article by Malcolm Gladwell in this week's New Yorker.  Called Annals of Innovation: How David Beats Goliath. Covers everything from girls basketball using the full-court press, to computer-designed naval war games, to, of course, the giant versus the shepherd. 

This kind of thinking is at the core of our martial art, so I found it particularly interesting. 

4 comments:

  1. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. I read the article yesterday. It struck me, like so much of Gladwell's writing, as having everything to do with martial arts.

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  2. Amusingly Douglas Lenat went on to a career in artificial intelligence and is famous for having the ``microlenat'' measure of ``bogosity'' named in his ``honour''.

    William

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  3. Welcome back, Rory. Kinda-sorta back, I mean, relatively speaking, from where you were to where you were ...

    There was another nice piece in that issue, by John Colapinto, on neuroscience, profiling an Indian-born doctor, Vilaynur S. Ramachandran. Only the abstract is available online:

    http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/05/11/090511fa_fact_colapinto

    but it's worth reading if you can find the treeware.

    More on Ramachadran:

    http://www.lankanewspapers.com/news/2009/4/42308_space.html

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