Dawkins on tipping points

Having recently read Malcolm Gladwell's book, The Tipping Point, as well as currently discussing with my friend Jim Rix ways to nudge sales of his book Jingle Jangle: The Perfect Crime Turned Inside Out to a tipping point (and even having watched an episode of the TV program "Mad Men" last night—about Madison Avenue advertising in the 'sixties), I was fascinated this morning to come across the following passage in Richard Dawkins's book, The Blind Watchmaker (about how Darwinian evolution can produce complex organisms like the human brain):

It appears to be a fact that many people will buy a record for no better reason than that a large number of other people are buying the same record, or are likely to do so....
    To a lesser extent, the same phenomenon of popularity being popular for its own sake is well known in the worlds of book publishing, women's fashions, and advertising generally. One of the best things an advertiser can say about a product is that it is the best-selling product of its kind. Best-seller lists are published weekly, and it is undoubtedly true that as soon as a book sells enough copies to appear in one of these lists, its sales increase even more, simply by virtue of that fact. Publishers speak of a book "taking off," and those publishers with some knowledge of science even speak of a "critical mass for take-off." The analogy here is to an atomic bomb...When a book's sales "go critical," the numbers reach the point where word-of-mouth recommendations et cetera cause its sales suddenly to take off in a runaway fashion. Rates of sales suddenly become dramatically larger than they were before critical mass was reached, and there may be a period of exponential growth before the inevitable levelling out and subsequent decline. [from Chapter 8, "Explosions and Spirals," pp. 219-220]

Theologically speaking, that is

For her light piece, "Dinner Companions," inside the back cover of the March 8, 2009 New York Times Book Review, Leanne Shapton asked some writers what authors they would take to dinner. Daniel Kehlmann replied:

Schopenhauer's World as Will and Representation is the most enjoyable, and the funniest, of all the major works of philosophy, perhaps because it's the bleakest—a reminder that a world in which living beings have to survive by eating each other can hardly be called a good place [theological emphasis mine].

Twelve-week birthday

April 17

Neighbor Killdeer

There's a nest of killdeer eggs out behind our place, on the bank of the drainage pond.

The eggs look (without disturbing the mother to examine them closely) to be at least an inch in diameter. See how Mother Killdeer tried to distract us (predators) by feigning at a distance from her nest to be wounded (and hence easy prey, so why go after her eggs?).

I estimate I was 8-10 feet from the nest and 20-25 feet from the mother when I took the photos, using a Nikon D60.

Apotheosis

Funny thing. I don't believe in god or heaven, but this morning I was feeling so extraordinarily buoyant that, quite spontaneously, I exclaimed to my friend Jeff, "I feel so good—as though I've been apotheosized!" [The painting shown to the right is "The Apotheosis of St. Ignatius" by Giovanni Battista Baciccio (1639-1709). Ignatius is still, I suppose, believed by some to have been literally apotheosized after being killed by one or more lions for the entertainment of the citizens of Rome.]

The latest Grisham cup of tea

On Monday night I reached about page 284 in John Grisham's 2009 legal thriller, The Associate. If the book was a cup of tea, it still had heat to that point. But last night, as I read the last ninety pages, the heat fled, and I was let down to realize that for all the tea's comforting warmth for three-fourths of the cup, it had little flavor or body. Just not that good a tea.
    I'm left wondering, though, whether Grisham's depiction of big law firms as using the best and brightest young law school graduates to operate a sort of billing mill is accurate. Do they really set their associates to spend long hours doing research they know will likely never be used but for the purpose of billing a client for the privilege?
    Also, since the bad guy....No, I can't go there. I might spoil whatever plot enjoyment you could otherwise slurp from Grisham's latest disappointing cup. (The ending is reminiscent of the unsatisfactory, if clever, way Nelson DeMille ended his 2004 novel, Nightfall.)
    For a much fuller bodied, more savory tea, I recommend John Le Carré's latest, A Most Wanted Man. It actually gets hotter as it goes along, up to the very last delectable sip, so apt a comment on the Bushevik foreign policy it delivers a kick to the American groin.