Back from Vacation

I'm back from my vacation and will be posting regularly again starting Monday next week. While I was away I followed the Jonah Leher story with interest. In addition to Michael Moynihan's original piece exposing Lehrer's fabrications, I especially liked Eric Garland's piece about "our thirst for non-threatening answers" and Felix Salmon's piece making the (to my mind wholly correct) connection to the "dark arts" of the TED conferences. See also this post by Edward Champion about Lehrer's self-plagiarism and his plagiarism of Gladwell, though Gladwell himself defends Lehrer. Lehrer's resignation from the New Yorker also appears to have broken Gladwell's heart. I think this underscores the point the Daily Beast is making in this slideshow.