Mark F. DeWitt's Blog
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Aug.07.2009
Just received an email that Dan Levitin, author of the excellent This Is Your Brain On Music, is having an online book event today at 5pm California time for the paperback release of his latest book, The World In Six Songs. I'll be at the office so don't know if I'll be able to check it out, so if...
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Aug.06.2009
For my undergraduate education, I attended an institution where very few of us majored in the humanities. All that study of math, science, and engineering can make one feel more like a tool in a factory than a member of the family, so one day I was hanging out with friends and one of them posed a...
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May.30.2009
Gladwell cites disparities in math skills as means to discuss the dual importance of hard work by the individual (the 10,000 hours theme) and cultural legacy. Building up to his arguments in the "Marita's Bargain" chapter, he provides two positive examples of cultural legacies that have...
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May.03.2009
The focus of Gladwell's public policy prescriptions for equal opportunity is K-12 public education. In the last full chapter, he brings the accumulated weight of his arguments to bear on the case of a twelve-year old pupil he calls Marita. Marita is the only daughter of a single mother, enrolled in...
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Apr.29.2009
In the realm of outstanding failures, what could be more compelling than mistakes that lead to loss of human life, especially when the same company makes the same mistakes repeatedly? Such was the case for Korean Air Lines and the Colombian carrier Avianca in the late 1980s-early 1990s, covered in...
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Apr.24.2009
I really wanted to like this book. After hearing Gladwell on the radio, I was motivated to read it because of his expressed impatience (one that I share) with the fetishization of the individual heroism of successful individuals, the inordinate value our popular culture places on Horatio Alger...
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Apr.20.2009
Notes on Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers: The Story of Success (New York: Little, Brown, 2008).
When I finished reading this book, I said to myself: "Very interesting. What was this about, again?" Arcane bits of research from psychology, sociology, and business history are woven together so...
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Dec.30.2008
On December 20, 2008, I took part in a birthday/book release party/dance with live music at Ashkenaz Music and Dance Community Center in Berkeley. Several musicians and dancers I had interviewed for the book were there that night, performing on the bandstand or otherwise in attendance. The birthday...
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Dec.19.2008
I had a conversation with host Larry Kelp about Cajun and Zydeco Music in Northern California: Modern Pleasures in a Postmodern World and about the December 20 show at Ashkenaz. I brought several historical and contemporary recordings which we played and discussed in terms of their relevance to...
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Dec.19.2008
Last Monday I had a conversation with host Kutay Derin Kugay about Cajun and Zydeco Music in Northern California: Modern Pleasures in a Postmodern World and about the December 20 show at Ashkenaz. Most of the Creole Belles (Delilah Lee Lewis, Karen Leigh, and Karen Celia Heil, along with Andrew...
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Dec.07.2008
I was fortunate enough to appear on the December 6, 2008 edition of West Coast Live, a radio program that airs locally on KALW-91.7 FM and on some fifty-plus other stations, mostly in the West. My foot in the door was the enticement of live music provided by the Creole Belles with Andrew Carriere,...
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Oct.13.2008
Now that I'm at the point of telling people that the book is out, the first question I usually get is, "How long did it take you to write it?" This is partly my fault because, more often than not, I share the news with an added "finally" or "it's been a long time coming....
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About Mark
I have a lifelong fascination with music, both as an amateur musician and as an academic pursuit. I grew up in suburban and small-town Ohio in the 1960s-70s, studied classical piano as a kid and added voice and double bass lessons in high school. My mother...