June 13, 2005

• MONDAY BOOK(S)

  The Tipping Point and Blink
  Author – Malcolm Gladwell

  Out of curiosity I checked the current New York Times Bestseller List to see what America is reading and noticed one author’s name appearing twice in the top 5 nonfiction categories – The Tipping Point #1 in paperback nonfiction and Blink #4 in hardcover nonfiction. These two books and their author hadn’t hit my radar before so I looked him up and found out the following: He’s 41, half black and half Jamaican with stick-your-finger-in-the-lightsocket hair. He was raised in a home in Canada with no TV by parents who were both authors and won a writing competition himself by age 16. He was also a track star. He got his start in journalism by publishing a “zine” in high school called “Ad Hominem: A Journal of Slander and Critical Opinion.” He graduated from the University of Toronto with a history degree and landed his first job as an editor for the conservative magazine, An American Spectator. Fired for oversleeping, he then worked for the Washington Post for 9 years, becoming the New York bureau chief. From there he jumped to being a New Yorker generalist staff writer. You can read his work here at his very own web site. A “Malcolm Gladwell story” is apparently a combo of the commonplace and the bizarre that uses both research and personal moments to change the way you think about an idea. In 2000 he produced his first book, The Tipping Point, which spent 28 weeks on the NY Times bestseller list and reveals a map for how ideas, products, and behavior become contagious within a culture. Companies have built their business practices around his ideas. His new book, Blink, came from the experiences he had when he let his hair grow out several years ago to its current “fro” length. Suddenly, he began receiving speeding tickets and was mistaken for a rape suspect. He decided to give split-second decisions a closer look and thus, Blink, a book about “rapid cognition.” So today he is a much sought-after speaker and is courted by business firms, but really describes himself as part of a bigger movement. “I feel like there’s been a kind of intellectual awakening in the business world in the past 20 years or so, where people began to realize that there was an enormous amount to be learned from the world outside of business,” he says. “I think of myself as one of the many people who are trying to feed that curiosity.” So there you have it, now we’ve heard of Malcolm Gladwell and I expect – his being bright, young, and charming – we’ll hear a lot more. I hope it will be good news.
  

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  Deep Thought: “I’d like to see a movie where a guy is going to die when the sand runs out of an hourglass, but then at the last minute an ant stops the sand from running out. Then the rest of the movie is about the ant.”
  Today I am grateful for: Fire
  Guess the Movie: “ “That groupie”? She was a Band-Aid! All she did was love your band. And you used her, all of you! You used her and threw her away! She almost died last night while you were with Bob Dylan. You guys, you’re always talking about the fans, the fans, the fans; she was your biggest fan, and you threw her away! And if you can’t see that, that’s your biggest problem. And I love her! I love her!” Answer: Almost Famous, 2000. Winner: nullwinkle.
  House to Vote on Sanders’ Patriot Act Amendment to Protect Americans’ Reading Records
  WASHINGTON – June 10 – On Tuesday, June 14, the U.S. House will vote on Congressman Bernie Sanders’ amendment to limit Section 215 of the Patriot Act in order to keep the federal government from accessing Americans’ reading records without a traditional search warrant. The amendment has the support of a large bipartisan coalition that believes that Section 215 obstructs Americans’ constitutionally guaranteed right to read and access information without governmental intrusion or monitoring. (Rest of article here.)
  End of Day: 9:03 pm
  + = My grandson is now an 8th grade graduate!
  - = Boy was it hot in that gym.

  • 12:01 pm
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