Tipping Point Questions

Bernie Goetez is a successful business man who got on a bus one day and sat in the back where 4 black teenagers were causing trouble. Suddenly, he shot all of them, killing three and paralyzing another. Bernie feels no guilt for what he has done and he sees it as getting some of those kids off the streets. I'm not so sure how I feel about this situation. Murder is wrong, I know that much. He is a criminal, not a hero, but the kids were trying to take money from him. He could have turned them into the police, or done something a little less well, dramatic. Murdering 3 kids and severely ruining another's was not the answer.

I believe that prisons are meant to take a criminal out of society so that they can't harm others any longer and learn from their mistakes. Prisons shouldn't be a luxury place to be, but to the people who truly "learn their lesson" by spending time in jail will realize that no amount of fine living or good food will give them their freedom, they can't just leave jail to spend time with their kids or to run to the grocery store. They are stuck in a building full of thieves, murders, and child molesters. The people who complain about the quality of living in jail are the criminals who plan to be in and out of there for life and don't care about learning what's right and what's wrong.

English Confrence

I went to the session about creative writing. Three students read each of their short stories, they liked to call it "flash fiction". The first story was about a divorced family the next, a dead wife and baby, and the last was about a young girl trying to find her sexual identity. I enjoyed all three stories, and the writer's were very passionate about their work! I like the idea of a short story, it's not too much to read and there is no limit to your imagination. Overall, it was fun!

Chapter 2

In chapter 2 Gladwell talks about the three types of people who keep epidemics alive: Connectors, Mavens, and Salesmen. The most interesting thing about this chapter was the idea of "connectors" and how they keep things moving throughout our world. They serve as people who keep connections and relationships alive, especially the relationships that have not been connected for awhile. Gladwell uses the quote "It would be a mistake, however, to think Connectors are the only people who matter in a social epidemic" (page 59)

Comparison Facebook and Tipping Point

I read A LOT of facebook profiles. To compare this to Malcolm Gladwell is hard to do! They are both similar because he is expressing his opinion and people do that on their Facebook pages. They are totally opposite because Facebook doesn't necessarily tell a complete story. You can get parts of a person's life by looking at their page but often the whole story doesn't come out. In Gladwell's book, he uses facts and statistics to prove the points he is making, and the entire "story" he is trying to tell is within the pages of his book. Sometimes, with Facebook you need to look at other peoples pages to get the whole story, and even then, you don't know what is going on in other people's lives!

Introduction and Chapter One

The author Malcolm Gladwell talks about the idea of an epidemic and how it takes more then a few people to cause this to happen. He explains the idea of an epidemic spreading using Hush Puppies. A few people started wearing these shoes, others in their community saw them, and soon it spread all over the country. He also talks about an outbreak with Syphilis in the city of Baltimore and how it was much more then the spread of a disease. It included drugs, and the slow deterioration of health services in the less fortunate parts of the city. At one point, people who should have only had this disease for a week had it for weeks on end, spreading it throughout the city. He concludes his chapter by reviewing the three rules of the Tipping Point, and gives a small clue as to what will happen in the next chapter.