Tag: Malcolm Gladwell

Nerd

Today, I noticed this on the back of a Golden Grahams box.

Grammatically speaking, it should read, “Remember the ‘80s” instead of, “Remember the 80’s”. See the difference? Well, the apostrophe goes before the numeral eight, because we are dropping the 19 from the front of the whole number (1980), and the number is referencing ten years as a subject, not something that is possessed by the number 80 (like a hamburger).

Well, anyway, I remembered how Malcolm Gladwell talked about how companies – I think he even said cereal boxes – bank on the crazy people who actually call the numbers on the ‘Questions or concerns?’ section of the box, because they are going to be the ones who truly notice things. And so, I turned the box around to see if there was a number to call for questions and comments…

Indeed, there was. And I called it.

After sitting on hold for a minute or two, I was connected to a representative who kindly accepted my grammatical information and then read it back to me correctly before forwarding to whatever team deals with the boxes and the words on them. He even asked for the cereal box barcode, so that he could include that in his report. It was awesome. And then we thanked one another and then parted ways happily and it was a ridiculous and awesome event.

Post-a-day 2022

Will it ever end? I hope not

Well, well… lookie there: Malcolm Gladwell’s work is relevant yet again. 😛

Working on my second paper of three for finals, I discovered that the main character I’m following with the paper, the one who tackles a whole new way of living life despite societal standards and expectations, and aims at individualism and self-expression – by the way, this was a super huge deal at the time, if someone were to behave as she did – had lost her mother when she was just a small child…

Hmm… this suddenly called up all of Malcolm Gladwell’s reporting on social agreeableness in individuals and the commonality that around 30% (I believe it was) of top people in their field lost a parent during childhood…. this main character was suddenly yet another example of the amazing people Malcolm Gladwell analyzed in his book David and Goliath, which I just finished reading the other day.

(If you haven’t read it, read it, and what I’ve just said will make much more sense.)

Isn’t that awesome??

I keep telling people that Malcolm Gladwell’s books are genius-ly awesome and totally relevant in our lives today, so it only naturally follows that his work continue to be absurdly relevant in my own life. 😛

Post-a-day 2018

The planets align…(?)

I went to see my friend’s theatre production of “The Diary of Anne Frank” this morning.

Tonight, on the way home, I selected my leisure audiobook (instead of my current school one, for which I must pay attention and make bookmarks in it as I listen to it), because I needed a break from making my brain work extra while driving.

It was the final section of Malcolm Gladwell’s David and Goliath.

The topic – something of which I had no idea until I heard it tonight – was the Holocaust.

Talk about that as coincidence – twice has this book popped up at exactly the right moment of coincidence.

First it was with the actual story of David and Goliath lining up with my Bible reading (which has been going on for years, by the way, and I only just happened to be at that part right as I re-began Malcolm Gladwell’s book [I had switched from the Kindle edition, which had fallen flat due to my schedule, to an audiobook, which had only just become available through the public library]), and now with this play!

Awesome, isn’t it?

And, just for fun, let’s throw in the title of this writing, one which I determined to connect as best I could manage to these coincidences… and which I hadn’t considered as connecting to anything else when I came up with it.

Tonight, as I munched on my dinner and snuggled next to an air heater, I watched the rest of the first episode of “The Magic School Bus”…, which involves the phone-caller at the end complaining about how the map had shown the planets all nicely lined up, and how that was totally not the case almost ever.

That’s a fun coincidence, too, though not quite the same as the other two.

Also, just a fun fact, that episode talked about the nine planets of our solar system, and how ‘Pluto actually will still be inside Neptune’s orbit until 1999.’

!!!!! 1999 !!!!! That’s totally the past

(Obviously, I knew that I was watching an old show, since I had actually seen it when I was a child, but I was surprised at just how old it turned out to be.)

But, it turns out that the show started in 1994, and so 1999 was a little while into the future back then… so was that awful declaration that I ignore about Pluto…

P.S. Talk about diversity: Take a look at that class of Miss Frizzle’s!

Post-a-day 2018

Biblical coincidence?

I’ve been reading from the Bible every night, in my effort to read the whole thing (Being raised Catholic, my family fit in well with the stereotype that Catholics really don’t read the Bible, but merely rely on hearing almost all of it through Mass attendance over the three-year plan the Catholic Church follows).

I’ve been in the part where Saul becomes King of the Israelites, and just last night hit the part where the Israelites seem like they’re about to have this big showdown with the Philistines… little did I recall that this upcoming showdown is actually where the story of David and Goliath takes place.

But I still haven’t read that part yet, so how have I come by this tiny enlightenment?

Checking my e-mail this morning, I found a digital audiobook from the library to be just this morning checked out to me (it had been on hold for quite some time, really [possibly months]).

And what book was this?

None other than David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell (if you don’t know his books, read them ASAP, or listen to the audiobooks, which are read by the author himself, ASAP)…., in the beginning of which, Malcolm Gladwell discusses the lead-in for the David and Goliath story, which, as I am listening, I suddenly recall, I have just been reading!

And so, with this fabulous Malcolm Gladwell approach to the story, I set myself with delight to the task of continuing on in my reading of the Bible.

I mean, what kind of perfect coincidence is that, anyway???

Today

Things about today:

  1. I finished another Malcolm Gladwell book, Outliers, and, naturally, feel like a total genius, totally inspired (as is the usual with his books).
  2. I cried multiple times and about various things, and I was okay with that.
  3. Someone told me that a someone is coming for me, sometime soon, within the next few years, and that that someone will love and respect and appreciate and value the beauty of a human being that I am and will show it in a way that I actually get to experience my immense value and beauty in the world.
  4. I want to believe him, and not other people, who say that perhaps I’ll never have a someone like that in my life (not in a negative way, but just a ‘there isn’t somebody for everybody, and you might be one of those everybodys with no somebody’ way).
  5. I was reminded that I desperately love languages, as well as teaching.
  6. I remembered, too, that I want to do more in my daily than just teach school classes.
  7. I wrote out all of this, before meditating/praying/playing music, and then going to sleep.

Post-a-day 2018