{"id":7371,"date":"2012-05-16T23:11:42","date_gmt":"2012-05-16T13:11:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=7371"},"modified":"2014-05-13T21:33:14","modified_gmt":"2014-05-13T11:33:14","slug":"blink-by-malcolm-gladwell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=7371","title":{"rendered":"Blink by Malcolm Gladwell"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Although he’s been a pretty well established author for some time, I only discovered Malcolm Gladwell for myself about a year ago, when I read What The Dog Saw<\/em><\/a>, an eclectic collection of his articles from the New Yorker<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Blink<\/em> was an earlier book of his, published in 2005 and carries the full title Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking<\/em>.\u00a0 It’s a pretty dreadful title.\u00a0 Personally, it evokes memories of Curb Your Enthusiasm<\/em> Season 7 when Jason Alexander authors the book Acting Without Acting<\/em>.<\/p>\n

In Blink<\/em>, Gladwell explores what the human brain is capable of determining in the blink of an eye.\u00a0 As it turns out, quite a lot.\u00a0 He begins with the story of an American museum that procures a valuable ancient Greek statue.\u00a0 They have carefully checked the statue before buying it from the owner using a variety of techniques including carbon dating the material and checking the history of ownership.\u00a0 And yet despite all their checks and safeguards, an arts expert viewed the statue for a split second and immediately determined it was fake.\u00a0 How did they do it?\u00a0 And what other information are experts in their field able to determine intuitively?\u00a0 How does an expert tennis instructor predict when a player will double fault?\u00a0 How does a police officer know when a perp is reaching for their gun?<\/p>\n

As Gladwell is able to do in his own inimitable style, he weaves together a tapestry of tales, each exploring the thinking behind subject matter experts in a range of disciplines – marriage counsellors, tennis instructors, Coca Cola marketers, police officers etc. – and explores what they are able to determine in a split second decision.\u00a0 Gladwell has a knack for making anyone feel like an armchair expert on the topics he discusses.\u00a0 His work is consistently informative and thought provoking.\u00a0 His research into this book uncovers interesting people (a marriage counsellor who, in 15 minutes, can predict whether a couple will stay married with 85% accuracy) and explores interesting concepts (why did New Coke fail?\u00a0 Do you need to be a certain height to be a CEO?)<\/p>\n

As it turns out, Gladwell isn’t purporting to claim that everyone becomes an expert in their field and can make accurate split-second decisions.\u00a0 He devotes a chunk of his book to the death of Amadou Diallo, the unfortunate victim of overzealous police officers who shot him 40 times before realising he wasn’t armed<\/em>.\u00a0 An interesting discovery that Gladwell reports on is that police officers are less inclined to shoot hastily when they work alone.\u00a0 Working with a partner makes them more protective (overprotective?) and likely to shoot a suspect pre-emptively.<\/p>\n

I find Gladwell’s work to be endlessly appealling and I can power through his books pretty quickly.\u00a0 Blink<\/em> is no exception.\u00a0 It’s a breezy holiday read and gives you plenty of weird and wonderful concepts for your brain to digest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Although he’s been a pretty well established author for some time, I only discovered Malcolm Gladwell for myself about a year ago, when I read What The Dog Saw, an eclectic collection of his articles from the New Yorker. Blink was an earlier book of his, published in 2005 and carries the full title Blink: …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":7372,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,230],"tags":[798],"class_list":["post-7371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","category-book-club","tag-malcolm-gladwell"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7371"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7371\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14941,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7371\/revisions\/14941"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}