What a marvelous paragraph. It almost makes me want to give Taleb a second chance (Fooled by Randomness did nothing for me). This is a sharp observation:

Glander is what children without soccer moms do when they are out of school.

I'm reminded of someone (maybe John Taylor Gatto) who wrote about the education he got as a boy from long hours spent at a pond.

Also interesting that while he addresses the lack of similar words in Arabic and Italian, he doesn't mention the lack of such a word in English, which of course is the only reason he's writing the paragraph to begin with. "Idleness" is loaded with a Protestant strain of the moralism he's objecting to. I suppose colloquialisms like "hanging out" and "chilling" convey something of the idea, but lack its generative core. "Reverie" comes to mind as having a similar quality; telling, perhaps, that it too is French.