[ the oc part ii ]

I don't think school shootings are becoming a regular thing, but they are happening way too often. I think that, like you said, we should definitely be looking at where these recent shooters came from, what they did and what influenced them, because you can't simply look at someone and, based on a stereotype, say "He's going to be a school shooter." Gladwell's rules, to an extent, seem to apply here. The Power of Context, though, not so much. If a shooter had an impulse or "just snapped" because of something within the school context, by the time they formulated a plan they would have cooled down and abandoned aforementioned plan. They more likely develop and build up a plan very gradually, culminating with the shooting itself. So in that respect, it doesn't really apply, but the Northern Illinois shooter did seem to me to be a Bernie Goetz kind of guy.

[ reading reflection and response part ii ]

The Stanford prison experiment seems like something that just wouldn't happen today. It's so obviously unethical. If you tell someone "Hey, we want to prove that prisons are nasty places, go pretend to be a prison guard," of course they're going to be nasty themselves. Though indirectly, the guards' sadistic and abusive tendencies were encouraged and reinforced by their assigners. The strangest part is that, after the experiment was over, a few experiments were apparently conducted emulating this one despite the obviously disastrous results of the original.
The lying and cheating thing seemed fairly obvious to me: everyone cheats to a certain degree on certain things. It's in human nature. I suppose the extent of it is a lot broader than I'd imagined though, like who cheats on what on a certain test changing simply because of the situation the test was given in. The Good Samaritan experiment I found a little more surprising. It's only natural to conclude that the student studying the Good Samaritan would stop and help the person...though I suppose this shouldn't be surprising, as the story seems to demonstrate that an otherwise "worthy, pious man," as Gladwell calls him, might not stop and help someone in need.

[ reading reflection and response part i ]

So, after the light and interesting chapter three this one seemed particularly dry and dense. I, to be honest, felt like I was re-reading the first chapter. It was essentially the same story, only with Baltimore and syphilis replaced with New York and violent crimes. It was the same time period (nineties) same setting (highly populated urban area) and (I think this is what topped off the feeling of déjà vu for me) in both scenarios, the "push" that caused the epidemic to tip was crack cocaine. In Baltimore, the slums were being demolished and the outpouring of highly sexually active people, plus some crack to impair the people's judgement some more, "tipped" the syphilis outbreak. In New York, reduction in crack use was considered one of the major factors causing the drop in violent crimes. Just thought that was sort of interesting.
Anyway, I think the Broken Windows theory was pretty intriguing. I never really thought of it this way but the idea that by fixing up a facility you are deterring criminal activity around that facility seems so simple and obvious after reading the chapter. I like it.

[ the oc part i ]

Hmm. I really wouldn't change much about this class at all. I like the way it's working currently. I might up the number of comments like Miriam said though, because we could get into some more interesting discussions. Also, I've warmed up to Gladwell's writing a bit, but I think I would still sort of dread reading another book by him: Blink looks fairly good, but maybe next quarter, instead of reading that, we could look up books we think might be interesting, discuss them, and decide on another book to read? It'd be nice to see all the different books people come up with. (Non-fiction only?) Perhaps you should also throw in an occasional "what kind of blogs do you read" assignment like the one we did for the first week, I enjoyed that one. That's all I can think of at the moment.

[ the oc part ii ]

I recently found this optical illusion and thought it was pretty interesting. Depending on which way you see the silhouette spinning, you're apparently using a different side of your brain. I actually saw it both ways but mostly saw it clockwise. Looks like there's a gallery of other illusions at the bottom of the page too.

[ the oc part i ]

So, I've already established this: I like robots. I've also established: I don't care much for "real" robots. I also by extension don't care for nanobots. I like my robots VISIBLE, please. They are capable of some pretty amazing things though, and according to one expert, they could be as intelligent as us by 2029. He predicts that we'll all have nanobots inside us to perform different functions: they'll ward off sicknesses, boost our intelligence and generally improve our lives...but it just screams grey goo to me.

[ research and linking part ii ]

The School of the Future is an alternative school in New York. In addition to being a high school, it also accomodates kids grades six through eight. It appears to be more focused on maths and sciences than English and social studies, so it's not really my type of school, but it looks interesting. The students are taught by the same teachers for two years each, with the exceptions of sixth grade, and sometimes eleventh and twelfth grade.

[ research and linking part i ]

The Nova Project is an alternative school in Seattle. It's small, but not quite as small as Linworth (280 kids). It's a liberal arts-centric school where the students pick one staff member to be their advisor on various topics, kind of like interim or walkabout advisors, but more general. I think it's pretty notable because, according to the About page, it was created by students as well as teachers.

[ reading reflection and response ]

I was actually pleasantly surprised to find myself agreeing with Gladwell quite a lot in this chapter. I never really would have thought to call something "too clever," but with Sesame Street it really seems to apply. Celebrities, pop culture references, subtle wordplay...none of these are understood by toddlers and all of these are parts of Sesame Street. Though these all make the show enjoyable to watch for parents, there's no point in getting parents to watch educational shows with their kids if they can't explain the show to those kids. Blue's Clues, though hopelessly dull for parents, seems to be a better show for its target audience of preschoolers.

[ reading reflection and response part ii ]

Malcolm in this chapter was flapping his lips even more than the last chapter. He clearly cares far more about hearing himself spout meaningless descriptions and nonsense than he does about making any kind of point. His "point" here was worn down to flatness before he even tapped the first key on his keyboard. Do we care who he thinks looks like a cowboy? Do we care why the Mercury Mystique, which is, according to Wikipedia, a mediocre and overpriced car nicknamed the "Mercury Mistake," is supposedly a good car, or why said car should be bought on the twenty-fifth of the month? Padding at levels this excessive makes things unbearable dull...which Gladwell's writing is in the first place, so the idea is doubly bad here.

[ reading reflection and response part i ]

So, after cleaning as much of my brain off of the floor as I could, I decided to use what remained to take the name test advised by Malcolm in chapter two. It has to be one of the most foolish things ever. Knowing someone's name does NOT make you a "connector." You could bump into someone, exchange names, and never see each other again, and if every single one of the names on the list you knew were memories of such experiences, says Gladwell, you're still a connector. Stupid. He makes no distinction. Another thing that he apparently makes no distinction in is name choices, as these are some of the oddest, most uncommon names, excluding my own, that I've ever seen. As such, these are presumably derived from his OWN memories (as given away by his pompous, none-too-subtle inclusion of the name Gladwell), so who's to say he has any idea of how to connect with people, let alone write about doing so?

[ research and linking part ii ]

The I Hate Bush Fan Club is a political blog with similar views to those of the blog I posted earlier, but presented in a decidedly more biting fashion. A few videos are interspersed her and there. I haven't delved very far into the post history, but the posts themselves seem somewhat infrequent, with only a few each month.

[ research and linking part i ]

YOUTHinkLeft is, as its fairly clever name implies, a youth-oriented and youth-run political blog. Liberal teens and young adults from all across America write their commentaries there. Its two main focuses seem to be the flagrant offenses of the Bush administartion and, more importantly, the election that will soon end the administration.

[ the oc part ii ]

It's no secret: Doctor Who's immense popularity in the UK is partly because of the (unintentionally loveable) Daleks. Us being Americans, some of you are probably thinking "Dal-who?" (Or, for that matter, "Doctor Who who?") They were introduced in the second serial of the show and generated lots of public interest for it, much of which came from their unusual and fairly amusing appearance: they reside in robotic casings that look, honestly, like salt or pepper shakers. They have no heads, just a single protruding, swivelling eyestalk. Also, their arms (I am not making this up) resemble toilet plungers. And to top it off? The Daleks' design was based on ballerinas! The resulting "skirted" design, while giving them a graceful gliding motion, also makes them pretty immobile. They are sometimes incapacitated simply by placing an article of clothing over them. So naturally, while ostensibly the most supremely evil race in the Doctor Who universe, they're pretty funny. Perhaps the most hilarious part about them is that despite all this, they almost universally terrify small children. Maybe this is because of the music...

[ the oc part i ]

In my opinion, Target and the blog are both at fault. Because Target's problems are more blatant, I'll start with the blog: for starters, it's run by a middle-aged woman. This just screams "overbearing, overprotective mother." If it's that relevant to teenagers, I'd certainly like to see some teenagers blogging about it. I do respect the apparently quite large amount of work she does environmentally, but just about everything else she posts looks uninteresting and, I'm sorry, insipid. She generally seemed condescending to the teens she tries to "protect" from the media, thus being disconnected from what they actually feel THEY need protection from. In addition, she might not even have a teenager herself; listen to this quote from a post of hers:

Yesterday my 12-year old got into BigThink after bball out of the blue, rambling on with a gal pal about “where space ends, new beginnings into other worlds, black holes, how do we feel things, how do we speak, where did languages start, what if none of it’s real and this is all in our minds”…Whoa.

Any normal twelve-year-old would contemplate such things. If she thinks that's something really special she really needs to get in touch with reality. And onto the subject at hand: whether or not she has a teenager. A twelve-year-old girl, no matter what explanations this woman would probably try to come up with, is not a teenager. She is a tween, and while tweens desperately want to be, they are not teens in any sense. Perhaps this woman has other, older sons or daughters, but we'll never know, as her profile helpfully repeats the same thing three times in a row. Also, "bball."
Anyway, Target. Their obvious problem is that they are too blind to realise that most of their customers probably "cooperate with nontraditional media outlets" for most of their "media," as they so pretentiously describe blogging. If they continue to do things like this, they'll lose customers, fast.

[ reading reflection and response ]

I recently finished the required reading for The Tipping Point. It was a useful tool for identifying trends. Unfortunately, it would also serve as a useful tool for putting oneself to sleep: Gladwell presents a lot of interesting points in the most fiercely boring, brain-atrophy-inducing way possible. The speed-reading technique I learned in BUM was useful here. I did, though, enjoy the book, brain atrophy aside. ("Hey, um, is that your brain trickling out of your ears there?" "What, this? I think so, never mind that; hey, try this book, it's great!" Repeat ad infinitum, and we'll have a Gladwell-esque zombie epidemic on our hands...) I liked a lot of the ideas Gladwell put forth, but I though the one on "stickiness" was a little narrow and weaker than the rest. Like, for example: a syphilis outbreak is NOT going to occur just because someone makes up a catchy phrase that promotes contracting it. On an unrelated note, we actually discussed Kitty Genovese in law class last semester. The bystanders' indifference was the result of the so-called "bystander effect," which Gladwell mentions, but not in name. According to the Wiki article on the bystander effect, this particular case of it is so famous that some call it the "Genovese effect."

[ the oc part i ]

I was very surprised after reading this article...though I suppose I shouldn't have been. Over and over, I have seen proof that the world is run by incompetants and there's nothing we can do to stop them from continuing to do so, as they are in the majority, and the majority controls everything. It's pathetic how little people actually get done when doing their jobs. I don't care how much "creating new jobs" bolsters the economy, because if everyone working those new jobs is inept, half-asleep, and possibly drug-addicted, then it's certainly not helping anyone on the receiving end of their shoddy work. As for the situation in question, it's pathetic; handwashing takes ten seconds at the most, and the majority of medical facilities provide convenient stations where workers can do so...that is, unless said facilities were designed by yet more incompetants.

[ the oc part ii ]

Should I care that Heath Ledger is dead? Frankly, I felt very little emotion when I heard about his death. I try to distance myself from the activities of celebrities because I think sticking your nose in every little thing they do is both foolish and an invasion of privacy. Well, in the case of Heath Ledger, the latter doesn't really apply, because dead people lack any semblance of privacy anyway. "Hey, Bob is being buried today, come and see his remains!" There's really no equivalent of this for a living person. Though I think my lack of reaction to Heath Ledger's death is partially because I also had very little knowledge of him, I still don't think the media should get itself into a frenzy just because someone died. Celebrities are people too. Just think of it this way: are the obituaries on the front page of the newspaper?