The Tipping Point

By Malcolm Gladwell
Published in 2000

Gladwell goes into looking at how neutral a facial expression can be. He describes how three reporters were reacting to a variety of subjects. Based on a scale of 1-21, 1 being the most negative and 21 being the most positive, two of the reporters were seen as unbiased to a political subject on Mondale and Reagan, two people from different political parties. The third reporter, working for ABC News, seemed to change his facial features in a more positive way when speaking of Reagan. The analysis of that is that he is biased towards Reagan. From just his facial expressions, he influenced just about 75% of the people watching ABC News into voting for Reagan in an election. I like to think of my facial expressions as being neutral. My friends seem to think so, and I feel as if my face seems to decide that it has to look happy half the time and neutral the other half the time, which seems to mean that I am unhappy. That is just what I have been told. Personally I'm not to sure, but I could agree with it.

The Tipping Point

By Malcolm Gladwell
Published in 2000

The salesman, Tom Gau, had a very interesting quote,"if you don't try, you'll never succeed". This quote is described in literary by a special name, that I can't remember, that means that these are words of wisdom. Tom Gau is right, how can something be accomplished if never attempted? In my life, I tend to sit by and let things happen. As described in the book, Tom Gau tries and has moments of success, such as when he able to persuade a home owner to sell his beautiful home at a ridiculously price for its value. But what is success? I see success as a description of how the aspects of a person's life changes. It is when you are in a decent, if not good, position, and it doesn't get worse. Just as long as things don't get worse. But that isn't really a description of success, it is rather a description of life and how I see that life should isn't bad till it gets worse.

The Tipping Point

By Malcolm Gladwell
Published in 2000

The “Tipping Point” is dense. That is to say it brings about an in depth way of describing how epidemics are caused by. I just finished a part where Gladwell explains 3 types of people that can cause epidemics. These people are known as Connectors, Mavens, and Salesmen. Connectors basically know lots of people. Mavens are experts in their fields of information and have a need to help others. Salesman are charismatic men who are very good at persuasion. Of course these are not the only ways that Gladwell describes these people, I am only touching on them and their traits. Gladwell knows lots of people to help further describes these people in his book. I know a great amount of people, Facebook tells me I have a lot of friends. I am not sure how to classify them, if I could, as Connectors, Mavens, or Salesmen. The television can be a great help however, because I was watching “Spongebob Squarepants” and saw the best example of a Maven. The episode was about Spongebob sharing his jellyfish jelly with a customer of the Krusty Krab. That customer spreads the word of the amazing taste of a jellyfish jelly krabby patty and everyone listens to him. The word spreads so fast and Mr.Krabs, the owner of the restaurant, becomes obsessed with making a profit of the jelly. That customer is exactly how Gladwell describes a Maven.

Mission Black List #1

By Eric Maddox with David Seay
published in 2009

One thing I like about this book, other then the insightful facts from the books, is that in the middle of the book, there a pictures. While reading the book, I had a hard time visualizing some of the characteristics of of Iraq. At many times in the book, there are references to many places and people, as I stated before. When reading a book, a good thing to do to keep track is to visualize the plot and setting. The pictures really help with that visualization by giving me a view of the area. They also show the High Value Targets cards. Many books do not have pictures. True, pictures are a bit childish but they can help the reader understand the book. One picture isn't a picture at all. It is a diagram that shows the family tree of Saddam Hussein. This family tree really helps you follow the long complicated array of names the Maddox uses in the book.

Mission Black List #1

By Eric Maddox with David Seay
published in 2009

The title of this book is interesting. Mission: Black List #1. This title explains the method of how fugitives were titled. There is a list of the fugitives called the Black List. There were 55 fugitives for the U.S. Military in Iraq. There are 55 cards in a deck of cards, if you add 3 jokers. Put two and two together and you get a deck of cards with the faces a number of an order of fugitives. These people are described as High Value Targets. The first one is obvious, Saddam Hussein, the main fugitive of this book. Saddam was the Ace of Spades. The book even has a photo of Saddam's Ace of Spades card. His two sons were Black List #2 and #3 but they had died in a bloody shoot-out. Black #4 was his presidential secretary, #5 was his notorious chemical user, #6 was a military advisor, and etc. This list was devised as a way of keeping track to those who had the most power in Iraq. Because of the organization to this information, the events that occurred in Iraq were executed swifter and the connections between people that could lead to Saddam could be made.

Mission Black List #1

By Eric Maddox with David Seay
published in 2009


The slightly different path that Maddox uses came from an interpretor named Jared. Jared describes to Maddox a list, he has developed and kept up to date, that shows bodyguards of Saddam Hussein. Jared's advice that leads Maddox to find Hussein is to “Focus on Saddam's bodyguards. For that reason, this book has so many names that sometimes it gets hard to follow. Anyway, all the bodyguards are related to Saddam and also have sub-tribes. After going over the list with Maddox, Jared makes sure to inscribe some important names into Maddox, names such as Muhammad Al-Haddoushi. Basically, Jared believes that there may be still be a connection between Saddam and his bodyguards. Maddox agrees with this theory and tries to use his skills as an interrogator to find the information he is looking for. Now before you can interrogate, you must first have a suspect. In this book, the way to obtain a suspect was by means of raids. These raids were preplanned by 12 hours and executed by an elite team of soldiers. At first, the team doesn't understand why Maddox wants to obtain certain people that almost have no relation to Saddam, but then as he becomes more experienced, they take his advice. Because he gained that experience, he was able to lead the team to their end goal, Saddam Hussein.

Mission Black List #1

By Eric Maddox with David Seay
published in 2009


This is a change in books because I became fascinated as I picked this books from the shelf of the public library, and I do believe I plan on returning to “The Tipping Point” in time. It was immediately fascinating because of the bold letters on the cover that said, “The inside story of the search for Saddam Hussein-as told by the soldier who masterminded his capture.” One of the major words in this is obviously Saddam Hussein. That name stuck out to me, more than it should have for me. The reason that I don't believe it should have sparked interests is that I rarely know anything that is going on in the world. The Iraq war is a war of controversy. Israel is having problems with Palestine. In my mind all I knew of Saddam Hussein is that he is/was a fugitive like Osama Bin Laden, yet another person I don't know anything about. This book must have stood out because it provided information of a topic of interests that I had no idea about and therefore interested me. This book is a story of an interrogator, in the front lines of battle, that discovered a slightly different path to finding Saddam Hussein, a fugitive hiding somewhere in Iraq.

The Tipping Point

By Malcolm Gladwell
Published in 2000


On pages eighteen and nineteen of this book, Gladwell brings up a new concept to help explain his theory of how epidemics are tipped. This concept is described as three agents of change he calls “the Law of the Few, the Stickiness Factor, and the Power of Context. To prove his agents, he uses sound examples to make his point indisputable. In explaining the Law of the Few, Gladwell looks at a commonly talked about 80/20 principle. This principle explains that in some situations, 80% of the work will be done by 20% of the participants. An example he uses is that 80% of alcohol is drunken by 20% of all alcohol drinkers. This shows that a few people can amount to most of the work in a situation. In explaining the Stickiness factor, Gladwell describes a brand of cigarettes that made good use of contagious messages as propaganda. Winston is that brand of cigarettes, and it was introduced with a sticky message, “Winston taste good as a cigarette should.” This phrase, when added with a small jingle tune, tipped Winston and Winston cigarettes were highly regarded. The Stickiness shows that contagious messages can make a big impact on the subject. In explaining the Law of Context, Gladwell looks at a map that describes how many patients come into a public hospital for treatment of syphilis and gonorrhea in Baltimore. In summer, the cases of syphilis are high. But in the winter, the cases drop because people are less likely to travel from their homes. The Law of Context explains that epidemics are affected by the situations they are in.

The Tipping Point

By Malcolm Gladwell
Published in 2000

As a child, I have always considered Hush-Puppies to be a good tasting round bread. This book starts by describing a different kind of Hush-Puppies, shoes. Gladwell uses this brand of shoes to describe its "Tipping Point". "The Tipping Point is that magical moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire." This is the description of a theory that Gladwell explains in his book. For example, Hush-Puppies started as a pair of shoes that made their producer, Wolverine, famous. The trend of these shoes steadily decreased and by 1994, the shoes sold only 30,000 pairs a year. Just when the company was thinking about putting these shoes away, sales sky-rocketed. It became so famous that 120,000 pairs were sold in 1995. In later years, that number would only increase as Hush-Puppies became a staple for the male wardrobe. Gladwell analyzes this statistical data to show how in a span of two years, Hush-Puppies underwent a tipping point that caused them to dramatically increased and became a fashoin statement. He explains how just a group of kids wearing these shoes could have sparked a chain reaction thatcauses the change in the shoe's trend. In this introduction of his book, Gladwell explains his theory of "The Tipping Point".

WWW:WAKE

WWW:WAKE
by Robert J. Sawyer
published in 2009

“And then Webmind added one final word, which she heard and felt and saw: “Together.” I hate this ending. The main reason is that I expected more. I expected a journey with both Caitlin and Webmind, the proposed name of the entity, in which they work together to do something incredible. Instead, the pages to the end of my book disappeared and I felt that Sawyer just ends the book too soon. Fortunately, once I finished the book, I actually read some of the author information and discovered that this book is part of a trilogy. Unfortunately, WWW:WAKE is the first and only book to have come out so far and the next one, WWW:WATCH comes out sometime in 2010. I never had patience but this first book was great, so I expect the second to be better.

WWW:WAKE

WWW:WAKE
by Robert J. Sawyer
published in 2009

The Web can connect people from across the world together. It was the only way a connection could be made between Caitlin and the entity. What I didn't understand was why a manifestation of the internet in China's internet would be interested about signals from a blind girl's only chance at seeing. The signals it would have received would be mixed and not interpretative at the comprehension level of the entity at the time. There is also little to describe why the entity would be interested with signals coming from around the world. Only after Caitlin can see is there a plausible explanation for the presence of the entity. The signals from her Eye-pod device would be transferring video signals which could be interpreted be the entity. This is how the entity connects to Caitlin. Through this and Caitlin's ability for complex math, the two are able to connect and form a bond that ends the book.

WWW:WAKE

WWW:WAKE
by Robert J. Sawyer
published in 2009

WWW: WAKE is an interesting title. When I first saw this title, I thought of a web address. Reasonable enough because www. Is the way URL addresses start. As I read this book, I realized that the title simply restates the plot, something “wakes” up from the internet. This thing was a being that seemed to adapt through its perception of its existence. In previous blogs, I have already said that Robert Sawyer describes this entity at almost every chapter beginning. He shows that the entity has almost no perception of itself and questioned its existence at the beginning. Then with use of a different plot, Sawyer gives that entity an awareness of self being by having China unleash a massive firewall. This firewall makes the entity split, and the main identity, Sawyer is following, recognizes that the other is feeding data to it. By doing this the entity knows it exists because the other exists. Sawyer describes the growth of a very fast child in this book. It started out not knowing anything at all and ends knowing almost everything about human society.

WWW:WAKE

Caitlin Decter is described to be unique individual. She has always had to live without sight. That is something that I have never encountered in a book before, a weakness in the main character. I have tried exercises without the use of sight, such as pin the tail on the donkey and pinatas. I do not operate very well without my vision. Caitlin was born with a disfunction that causes her brain to not interpret the information coming from her eyes. The intresting thing about this is that she is able to react to her JAWs program, which reads her information from websites, and browse the Internet faster than many people. I was suprised when I read this because I always thought that it would have been harder to browse the Internet without sight. This use of brain interaction has caused her cerebral cortex to be more developed than an average blind person's would be. The cereral cortex is a part of the brain that plays a role in perceptional awareness. Sawyer, once again, draws the reader back to an idea of awareness.

WWW:WAKE

As I began every chapter, I was lost in what Sawyer meant by going back to awareness. In the first chapter, the introduction made sense in that he wanted to give the reader an idea of what is to come. In the second chapter, he describes about awareness and also creates a sense of being, as if something is becoming aware. Not to be a plot spoiler or anything, but this is his intention. Sawyer uses the beginnings of chapters to progress a being through its stages of awareness. This being is affected by events that occur in the book, such as China's Great Firewall. This particular event affected the being directly because it somehow split it apart. Sawyer also confuses me when he describes how apes could communicate through computers by their sign language. One particular ape, Hobo, loves to paint and paints a picture of one of his caretakers from memory. Hobo relates to the entity in that they both can develop inteligence and understanding of complex ideas. Other than that relationship, Hobo confused me throughout the book because of the few brief times he is mentioned through sub stories, and how unclearly Hobo is related to the main story of the book.

WWW:WAKE

"Not darkness, for that implies an understanding of light. Not silence, for that suggests a familiarity with sound. Not loneliness, for that requires knowledge of others. But still, faintly, so tenuous that if it were any less it wouldn't exist at all: awareness." Robert Sawyer starts off this book by trying to give the reader a sense of an awareness of being. This intro attracted me to read this book because it made sense. Sawyer describes darkness, silence, and loneliness by contrasting them from an opposite identity. By using this literary device, he can draw in his readers, such as me. This book particularly stood out because of this introduction. Every other fiction book, that I have read, starts off by setting up a background for the main character/characters. This introdution does that because it makes you think of how much awareness Caitlin Decter, the main character who is blind, could possibly have by defining awareness in a unique way.

The Glass Castle

Rex Walls would ocassionaly go over his daughter's college work. When her dad wanted to see her course schedule, Jeannete expected to drop out of college because of tuition costs. Out of all the parts in this memoir, I was particularly touched by this part because of her father's reaction. He worked out to gather money he had been saving for years on the streets. Jeannette needed one thousand dollars. Rex Walls was able to get that money for her. He was able to provide for his daughter when she needed him. This goes against what I have read about Rex's character throughout the book. Somewhere in the his time in New York, Rex undergoes a change that makes him care for his children more. Because of this, he saves his earnings with his wife, instead of spending it on days at the bar. At the end of the memoir, I feel that Rex Walls became a completely different man than he was at the beginning of the book. He would always tell his children how he would do something amazing for them, like build the Glass Castle, but here, Rex does something Jeannette can appreciate him for.

The Glass Castle

Once in New York, Lori helped Jeannette get enrolled in an internship at The Phoenix, a weekly newspaper that was just a tad rundown. Jeannette had the experience of working on her school newspaper, The Maroon Wave. Her experience at her highschool newsgroup gave her an understanding of what the world was really like because the only insight she ever got about the world was biased ideas from her mother and father. The internship soon became a full-time reporter job and Jeannette had to to keep up with the news. She descibes this as the happiest time of her life because of the constant flow of her 90 hours of work a week. Because of her amazing experience at The Phoenix, when she was asked if she ever thought about going to college by the manager, she responded by comparing herself to the college graduates had the same job as her. First time I read this, I thought that after everything she has been though, she would strive to rise in whatever she was doing. The second time I read this, I realized that Jeannette was self-supporting and had finally gotten to a stable state in her life. With this sense of security, she feels safe and content with her life, but she does strive for more as she applies for college. Jeannette seems like the type of person who doesn't know when to give up, and that is what makes her succeed in what she does.

The Glass Castle

After years of never feeling quite normal, the trio of the Walls siblings, Brian, Lori, and Jeanette, decide to start a fund to leave Welch and just leave Welch. It all started with Jeannette. She saw that people got stuck in Welch but always had a belief that eventually things would get tough enough that her parents would decide to move again. As the siblings lived in Welch, they felt outcasted from the other kids. This was because of their image as a family and other children could not sympathize with how the Walls' children lived their life. Maureen is the only child of the Walls that recieved sympathy from other parents because she was a charming child. The other siblings had a rough life and when Jeannette thought that she had her dad on her side, he wasn't there and that hurt her a lot. Lori is the first to join Jennette's escape fund and they work together to raise money to fill this escape plan to go to the creative energy of New York. Brian was told later and he decided to pitch in and do handy jobs, such as lawnmowing, chop wood, or cut hillside weeds. They raised money for a year and then, when they had accumulated so much, their dad made the money dissappear. Even through this event, they trudged on, collected money, and were lucky that Mrs. Sanders had toddlers that needed babysitting in a different city and would pay for the travel expenses of lori and for the babysitting. Because of this Lori was able to leave Welch and make her way to New York with 237.20 dollars as a budget in New York. Lori making it to New York was proof that there is a way out of Welch and Jeannette and Brian followed.

The Glass Castle

The children of "The Glass Castle", Lori, Brian, and Jeannette, each have their own personalities. Lori starts off as the quiet introvert. She reads books and keeps to herself and doesn't like to go on adventures with the others. Further in the book, it is revealed that Lori had sight problems and never could really see as well as the other kids. This caused her to withdraw from the others. Brian was also a bit quiet, although he likes to explore. He would enjoy going around with Jeannette and discover new things. Jeannette was an extravert. She would always explore to find new things to do. These kids all had a hard life living with their parents. They had to stick together to get through these hardships. Once, as a child, Jeannette would get beat up everyday at school. One day, Brian came out to help her. Together, they stood up to the school bullies. Sticking together is one of their only ways to survive. They realize that only together can they survive through life with their parents. Their parents are free-roaming, always looking for something else. Because of this, the kids have to move alot, but when they finally get stuck in the town of Welch, they feel miserable. Because of this, they slowly leave to Ney York as they are in high school. By going to New York together, they hope to leave their pasts back in Welch. New York works out for them. They stick together, make life bearable, and succeed their pursuits. The memory of 3 small children coming from such a colorful background is amazing.

The Glass Castle

When I was first reading this book, I keep asking myself "What is the Glass Castle?", and why is it important. The Glass Castle, I find out, is a dream. It is a dream by Rex Walls, the father, to build a house made of glass in the desert for the family. This house is completely made out of glass and be able to sustain a modern family with solar cells and a water purification system. To fund this, he plans to get rish by inventing and using the "Prospector", a device intended to efficiently gather gold. Only problem is the family has no money. Therefore they drift from place to place; constantly having to run from debts and find jobs. This can't be the most ideal lives for 3 children to have to experience, but they can live through it. Jeanette had a childhood that I never experienced. The main reason is that she retained an amazing amount of detail about her childhood. I can hardly remember my own.

The Glass Castle

"The Glass Castle", by Jeannette Walls, is a memoir of Jeannette's childhood. She lived with her brother, Brian, her sister, Lori, and their parents. From the beginnning of the book to page 18, Jeannette meets fire. She happened to burn herself while boiling hot dogs at the age of 3. Children are normally in school by age 4, and I read about a girl of 3 who is let to boil hot dogs by herself. First thought is obviously that the girl has some pretty bad parents. However these parents, I soon realized are extremely naturalistics, in respect to their methods of living. They don't really trust hostpitals but understand the situation of the injury and have Jeanette sent to one. Most people gain a fear at a very young age. They experience an event in their life that traumatizes them forever. After reading the first few pages of this book, that is what I expected. Jeanette, however, is not even bothered by this event. Instead she becomes fascinated with it. This effect is interesting in that she begins to not fear fire but acknowledge it in a hateful sort of way. She would stare at the fire and then stomp it out and curse it. Strange activities for a child that hasn't even started school yet. In these first pages, Jeanette strikes me as a child who is continually thinking for herself.