‘Drinking games’ in The New Yorker

The current (February 15 & 22) of The New Yorker magazine includes an article by Malcom Gladwell called “Drinking Games” that tackles a bit of drinking and culture. Unfortunately it’s not one the magazine chose to make free online, but you can read the abstract here.

Hey, it’s The New Yorker and Gladwell, so ideas all over the place. Two to consider:

  • Gladwell writes : “When confronted with the rowdy youth in the bar, we are happy to raise his drinking age, to tax his beer, to punish him if he drives under the influence, and to push him into treatment if his habit becomes an addiction. But we are reluctant to provide him with a positive and constructive example of how to drink.”
  • He also writes: “Put a stressed-out drinker in front of an exciting football game and he’ll forget his troubles. But put him in a quiet bar somewhere, all by himself and he’ll grow mare anxious. Alcohol’s principal effect is to narrow our emotional and mental field of vision.” This is called “alcohol myopia,” and you can read more about it here.

    • Reading Gladwell it is always good to remember something Steve Pinker wrote in reviewing What the Dog Saw, a collection of Gladwell pieces.

    The themes of the collection are a good way to characterize Gladwell himself: a minor genius who unwittingly demonstrates the hazards of statistical reasoning and who occasionally blunders into spectacular failures.

    More than anything the article raises questions I wish more people thought about.

     

     

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