Sydney

Sydney

Summary- In the introduction (which we also read in class), Malcolm Gladwell introduces what he defines as a tipping point. A tipping point is essentially the moment when a situation skyrockets. Some examples he uses are syphilis in Boston and the spread of Hush Puppies shoes, as well as yawning. He goes on in chapters one and two to define what makes something contagious and what makes something an epidemic. As he divides this information into three categories: one being the Law of Few, the Stickiness Factor, and the Power of Context. The Law of Few was discussed deeper in chapter two, and essentially it can depend on the few out of so many that make the difference. One of my favorite parts was when he brought up why Paul Revere made it big while someone who was doing the same exact thing as him did not. He also brought up why 38 people watched a girl in New York be attacked and neither of them called the police. It was mainly because of where they lived, being in the city put a harder shell around their hearts and they each expected someone else to call the cops. Gladwell also separated people into three groups: the mavens, the salespeople, and the connectors. We all know a connector, they're like the mayor. They know everybody. My sister, my best friend, and myself, are all connectors. Mavens just spread news along, the classic gossiper. Salespeople care so much about selling their product that they tell their client anything. This seems to be the three types of people that spread news the best. The six degrees of separation was also presented, which was FANTASTIC. It was incredible to read that we are all linked to different people through only 6 people, and mainly end up being liked through one person in the end. CONNECTION- (haha, port Isobel) I think we can all say that we know a jingle to a commercial, whether it be Robert B. Payne or Frosted Flakes. Either way, companies have a way to get us to remember them. If I had to order heating and air conditioning, I would call Robert B. Payne, because that's the only company I know. Same with Empire Today for carpets. As for the three different parts of people, as I was reading, I was slowly thinking to myself "hey, that's just like so-and-so". My friend Zell qualifies as a maven. He knows everything about absolutely nothing and helps me with anything. My sister, as I said above, is just like a connector. She knows everyone. A salesperson was harder to think of, but my brother is definitely someone who is persuasive. Some lawyer commercials advertise themselves as salespeople, saying that they really do care about your case when all they want is your business.
 * May 3, 2010**

Summary- Chapter three goes into depth about the stickiness factor, and brings in ideas about how a simple change in the way something is presented can make it stick into your mind. One example that I thought was very interesting (and definitely relates to the essential question, wink wink) was the example of tetanus shots among college students. I had assumed when reading this, that all the people who read the book about tetanus with graphic pictures and descriptions would be scared into going and getting the shot immediately, while the group that read the least graphic book took a bit longer. It astounded me when only 3 percent out of both groups combined only went for a tetanus shot. I figured people just didn't care about their health. Well, when he redid the experiment, 28 percent went for the shot. The only thing he did differently was add a map and times to where and when the tetanus shots were being given. This shows that one small change can impact a society GREATLY. I also found it really interesting that as market size grows and television advertisement grows more and more popular, companies are finding it harder to find something that really sticks into peoples heads. It reminds me of in school, when you're taking a test and you only can remember 7 vocab words at once.The crime rate section kind of lost me. I suppose that I couldn't understand because I couldn't relate. The part about graffiti really caught my attention though. It seemed to me like kinder-gardeners have the same thought process of being told no 3 times. On the train, the boys only wanted 5 dollars and Goatz just shot them! It was crazy! RESEARCH: here's a video from Lester Wunderman-- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRG0Wmhrfsk http://www.city-journal.org/html/5_4_on_sesame_street.html -- article on sesame street education
 * May 5, 2010**

Summary- Chapters 5 and 6 were kind of boring to me. The subjects were simply not about something i particularly enjoyed. Chapter 5, I don't even remember. Talk about crime rates is incredibly boring to me. I remember the talk of Ya-Ya and that was very interesting because I read it, and i think that this was definitely a huge Tipping point for the book, and the article definitely did it. Plus, being defined as a group discussion group book nailed a lot of people. Chapter 6 spoke about the country of airwalk, a shoe company that is quickly following up popularity behind Nike and Adidas. The style shoe that skateboarders wear is popular around non-skateboarders too, which brings up the tipping point that people like shoes that not many people wear. This also happened in previous examples of Hush Puppies. These were also shoes that weren't in style and people decided to wear them because nobody else was wearing them. Then, rumors started to fly which greatly deteriorated the airwalk company. DISCUSSION: 1. What rumors have you heard that change your opinion on companies? - marquee movie theater rumor--> used the same broom for the floor to clean the popcorn maker - airwalk commercial was kind of...can send the wrong idea for the company. the commercial shows bed springs moving up and down, which could be suggestive... - Chinese companies are rumored to eat cats, thus some people don't eat there. 2. What do you think was the REAL tipping point for Ya-ya? - what? the book said that the tipping point was when she had a reading she had 700 people in the audience...but what promoted people to have that tipping point? - old ladies with very close nit reading groups read and spread the word-- but that seems more gradual. so how is it sudden? it seemed like all of a sudden there were 700 people to listen to her read and she was on the best sellers list - ad in new york papers, advertising the web. 3. How did these chapters relate to the essential question for you? - 150 rule-- not necessarily 151 would crash the system, but much more over that would be too much to handle. and that single digit could cause a crash - airwalk rumor spread slowly, but the decision of judgment in the peoples minds was practically instantaneous. While the rumor took a while it didn't take much to say that airwalk was a bad company and change their minds. Also, when the rumor hit a big source, like the internet, it spread like wildfire. 4. Do we know a person who can find a Average Joe? - no, but its kind of interesting to speculate the average Joe scenario in a coffee shop with blue hair. If average Joe is in a coffee shop with blue hair on everyone but him, then they become the norm,and becomes different. 5. How does group size effect something? - seeing a movie with only 5 people in the theater isnt as thrilling as seeing it with a full theater. The people around you screaming motivate you to scream. Its contagious, like a yawn or moods.
 * May 12, 2010**

Summarizer- Chapter 7 was entirely based upon smoking and suicide. It was very interesting to read about how suicide (which seems common in the US) is even more common in small countries where life seems so much simpler, and suicide would be less common. In Micronesia, the chapter starts with a story of a boy who had an argument with his father and killed himself over it. This was a powerful hook that instantly grabbed the readers attention and made them want to keep reading. While it seems sort of prima donna to kill yourself over that, and even the suicides that we hear about in the US are usually about something more depressing. In the next section, Gladwell looked at smoking in teens. One of his more interesting lines that he wrote was "Smoking was never cool, Smokers are cool". This line spoke a lot about how teens don't smoke because they think that smoking is cool. Most teens know that smoking isn't cool and that it's horrible for them and that they're taking years off their life expectancy for it. However, teens smoke because the people that they know smoke are cool people. Its like a package deal. This was very interesting and quite true. Also true, teens don't smoke because their parents smoke, teens smoke because its just something that teens do. Teens smoke because adults say NOT to smoke. Coming from a teenage perspective, Malcolm hit the nail on the head. Gladwell also spoke about what makes smoking stick, and concluded that while it isn't an addiction to nicotine itself, it's an addiction to the buzz that some people feel afterward. Some people smoke and feel gross, and the probably won't ever smoke again. Some people, however, get a buzz off the cigarette and that leads them to keep going back for more. What these smokers-to-be have in common are also depression symptoms. Psychologically, depression is feeling sad or down-in-the-dumps more often than not. Scientifically, depression is the lack of certain chemicals in your brain. While Prozac or Zoloft can help supplement those chemicals, they're also incredibly expensive and some people are averse to admit that they take anti-depressants. Smoking is a cheaper and more common way to supplement those depression symptoms. This chapter, and these two sections, are trying to FIND a tipping point to stop it. They don't have a tipping point to change society yet (essential question). This chapter is about trying to find out how to stop teen smoking and to stop suicide in Micronesia. However, in relation to the previous chapters, they speak about tipping point symptoms, such as the law of few and the stickiness factor. The law of few is represented in the fact that most people who smoke remember someone from their childhood who smoked; that someone was almost always inspiring to that person in one way or another. The Stickiness, as previously discussed, relates to being cool and having the buzz. The importance of a single event, in this case, is the young man in the beginning, who killed himself over a fight with his dad. Or the man who killed himself over love-sickness. These men were the match, that sprung other kids to believe that killing yourself is what you do when you're upset. When one "cool" teen smokes, i bet you others will start smoking to look cooler as well. That is the single event, that is the match that lights the fire. PASSAGE MASTER: --This passage was really interesting because EVERYONE knows that smoking is stupid. but not everyone knows that smokers are stupid too. like i said above, it's just a package deal -- WOW, this is what i meant by prima-donna. Someone shouldn't even have gotten themselves into the situation of two girlfriends, non the less killed themselves over it. I guess it was just kind of melodramatic, and it caught my attention because Gladwell continued on to say that after he started the trend, many other people committed suicide as well for similar circumstances, following his lead. -- Most teens don't like to hear that they are just like their parents. They'd rather hear that they are more like their friends or a celebrity they look up to. Later studies showed that adopted teens are less like their adopted-parents who raised them than they are from any random person off the street. Its the surroundings that count too. -- most teens do stuff because their parents say not to. I've done it. Gladwell states that "why smoking isn't stupid" ads are effective is because they're affective on adults, who have more thinking capacity to know that what they're doing is stupid. Teens don't generally think that far ahead.
 * May 14, 2010**
 * Essential Question**:
 * Page 232/233**- "over the past decade, the anti-smoking movement has railed against the tobacco companies for making smoking cool and has spent untold millions of dollars of public money trying to convince teenagers that smoking isn't cool. But that's not the point. Smoking was never cool. //Smokers// are cool."
 * Page 226-**"unable to make up his mind between them, he hanged himself his romantic despair. at his funeral, his two lovers, learning the existence of the other for the first time, fainted on his grave"
 * Page 239/240**- "well-designed studies of twins-- particularly twins separated at birth and reared apart-- geneticists have shown that most of the character traits that make us who we are- friendliness, extroversion, nervousness, openness, and so on-- are about half determined by our genes and half determined by our environment"
 * Page 243**- "This is adult propaganda; these are adult arguments. It is because adults don't approve of smoking- because there is something dangerous and disputable about it- that teenagers want to do it"

Summarizer- Chapter eight was a summary of all the topics that Tipping Point spoke of. In this chapter, Gladwell tells one last story of a woman who wanted to spread awareness for diabetes and breast cancer. She did so in a low key way, and faced difficulties. In the end, she changed everything: her message, her place, her messengers...everything. The only thing that was constant was her budget and what she was trying to tell people. Using this story, Gladwell finds similarities in the other stories. One of these similarities is that everything was done low-key. The first mission of the Tipping Point was to let people realize that in order to start epidemics, you have to start small. Sadler didn't go straight to the National Cancer Foundation or St. Jude's for millions of dollars. She had a few sponsors and worked in Hair Salons. Blues Clues was only a half hour, but they ran the show 5 times before releasing a new one. The railroads of New York were covered in graffiti. Take away Graffiti, you take away half the crime of New York. Gladwell also mentions that humans look for the simplest and most inexpensive way to get out of a situation, like Band-Aids. Everyone uses Band-Aids and everyone loves them. They're a fast way to get out of a situation you would have had to stop. The second point he brings up that Tipping Point is making is that the world does not coexist with our intuition. People who find tipping points have to stretch their intuition, they have to test it. Sesame Street would have gone down the tubes if the producers hadn't tested the adult part to find that they needed something key to bring the kids attention back (thus they created Big Bird). The fact that adopted teenagers are less like their adopted parents (who raised them and taught them everything) than they are to any random person on the street proves that our intuition relies not only on genetics or the surroundings we've had our whole lives, but the surroundings that we are in during a split second. The man on the subway would never have shot anyone if he hadn't had his surroundings intrigue him to do so. This chapter hits the essential question head-on. One great example is when Sadler changed her location from church to beauty salons. This is an example of how a single event can change the outcome because it shows all points of the book. Sadler got poor reactions when she held her seminars after church because the women were tired and hungry, and probably had obligations to their children to tend to. However, by changing the location to a beauty salon, she found people that work there. The people who are working in beauty salons are salesmen, mavens, and connectors. Everybody goes to beauty salons, they have a relationship with their beautician, and they listen to what they say. Beauticians are connectors, they know everybody. They know people well, too, because they have to pay attention to know what they want done. People trust their beauticians, and often times spend a lot of time in the store, to wash, dry, cut, or braid hair. This significant move made Sadley's message spread so much faster, it was incredible. CONNECTOR- This book is intense. I can relate almost everything to my life. As far as this last chapter, I've had the same hair-cutter since I was five and her son and I are practically best friends. This makes me understand why when I go to the hair-cutter, I trust her opinion as to what I should do with my hair. If I want a cut that seems too dramatic, she tells me. I can see how Sadler's message was spread so quickly.
 * May 19, 2010**
 * Essential Question**: