Bestselling author, Malcolm Gladwell on the subject of "Career Success"

Malcolm Gladwell the famous author of the bestselling books such as outliers, blink and tipping point.
In this interview, dated 2009, Malcolm talks about the book Outliers and the most important factors that people such as Bill Gates, Michael Jordan and The Beatles became successful in their career.

Sticky Paper and Carjacking

Thanks god sometimes you can find useful content on Facebook; besides all the phony pictures and obscure notes being posted on your timeline every second.

Since the whole world’s economy has been gone down the drain many problems and challenges has arisen in many countries. It was just recently that I heard that one of my relatives who lives in a good and safe part of his hometown got stopped by a stranger and became the subject of robbery. As my relative was walking from school to his house a stranger man asks him for direction, shortly after receiving direction to his destination he pulls out a big knife and place it on him asking to hand over his cell phone and wallet. Thus, he loses his cell phone, wallet and brand new Ipad that he had but recently. Based on the location and time of day of this occurrence this news indicates how measurable this economy has made some people’s lives, which they have to take such a risk to make ends meet.

Of course this was not shared on Facebook and I heard it from my brother. But just few hours ago as I was surfing on my Facebook a friend of mine shared a declaration of safety from police to the public, which caught my attention. It did not declare which police department had released it but the content was subject to raise awareness of public about a new way of carjacking.

The subject matter is the new way of carjacking that I think it is brilliant, and involves almost the lowest risk for the carjacker and the lowest intention to harm anyone.

How do they do it!!

            These smart carjackers wait around where your car is parked, usually in parking lots, and then place a small receipt paper on the rear window of your car. Therefore, you will get into your car without noticing the paper on the rear window. By the time you get into your car, start the engine, shift to reverse gear and ready to back up you notice something is stuck to your rear window. This is when the opportunity comes for the carjackers. As you noticed the sticker, you stop, put the car in park while the engine is running, open the door and go all the way behind the car to take off the paper, it is then that the carjacker get into your car and drives away.

I might have to correct myself here, this might not be the type of robbery with the lowest risk of injury, the carjacker might drive over the person, if he needs to, while the vehicle owner is behind the car trying to take the paper off the window.

Now this can be even more dangerous for ladies who usually place their purse on the passenger seat first thing they sit in the car. The carjacker not only will take the car, but also will have a purse with credit cards, ID cards, cash and probably a home key chain.

In conclusion of this declaration from police, they suggested if in any case you encountered a similar situation with a paper sticking to your rear window keep the doors locked and just drive away until you get to a safe spot and then remove the paper.

Freedom After The Tragedy

Siamak Pourzand is an Iranian artist, journalist and thinker who put his bright way of thinking and reforming ideas on paper for 30 years, writing several cultural commentary articles and critical articles about the leadership of the Islamic government of Iran. For past decades Siamak Pourzand had been under house arrest by the government of Iran, and his human rights were taken away from him. He was banned from many simple rights such as traveling, and most importantly visiting his wife and daughters who sought freedom and had moved to Canada for the same political reasons as their father. The reason for his several arrests and finally a long term house arrest according to the Government of Iran is Siamak Pourzand's articles, which were critical of policies of the Iranian government and informed the public of some news--for example, the chain murder that was made by the intelligence agency of Iran in 1998--that was not mentioned in any other source.

For many long days and years he did not see his family.  In the year 2005, his younger daughter Azadeh, whose name in Farsi translates to a person who demands freedom, could not tolerate the gap between herself and her father and took a high risk and flew to Iran to see him.



The picture below shows the first encounter of Siamak Pourzand's daughter, Azadeh, with her dad after many years of living far from each other.  Their arms, wrapped around each other tightly, symbolize the love between father and daughter, a love, which could not be severed; no matter how long and how far apart they lived from each others.  



On April 29, 2011 Siamak Pourzand found his own way to freedom by jumping out window of the sixth floor of his apartment, the same window he had used to linger outside and contemplate his ideas about reform and his writing. Even though his body fell from a great height, his soul rose to the highest level a human soul can, to continue living eternally free.

Brain shackle

 After reading the "Reality TV" article by Salman Rushdie I decided to start a blog and post my respond toward his statements.

In essay “Reality TV,” Salman Rushdie analyzes TV shows and their negative effects on younger generation. As a young member of western society I am strongly agree with Salman Rushdie’s statements.

            In this century TV has a huge role in most people home and for some it is consider as a member of a family with out their sense of awareness. As a result any TV program has to have valuable information for viewers and entertaining at the same time. However, these days most of the TV shows contains no valuable message and they are only entertaining. Simple questions can justify this statement about most of the TV shows after watching them, “ What did I learn from this program? What was the purpose of this program being on TV for millions of people?”

            In addition to Rushdie’s statements, not only TV shows can have negative effects but also TV advertisements are meant to brain wash the viewers. In my opinion parents have to invest some time and teach their children what programs to watch and how much to watch TV. Big corporations or government is supporting many of TV shows, and their duty is to be as entertaining as possible in order to grow and control citizens, as they want. Media is a very important weapon for each government to navigate its own citizen and in addition to that many rich people take this advantage to invest their money in some TV shows to make more money. Moreover, media is controlled by businessmen who just think about making more money not educating people.

 “What is gradually being reinvented is the gladiatorial combat. The TV set is the colosseum and the contestants are both gladiators and lions; their job is to eat one another until only one remains alive.” The focus of all this type of businessmen is to find out what show is better to create, invest money and put on TV to addict people to it. The next step is when most people are addicted to this drug (TV shows) and they demand more, businessmen are pumping more money to produce and feed citizens more and more.

 After a long period of time next generation will be different and will be more used to invaluable TV shows, without being aware of how they are investing their time just to be entertained by hours of watching TV.  Those people consciousness will be shut off of what is going on around them, neither in their country nor in the rest of the world.  This will be how the capability of knowledge will decrease in our mind and many problems rise up after that, such as bad effect on the culture in our society.

            Culture is a very precious and invisible fact in our lives that shapes our lifestyle and our mind. In study of history we can find huge differences between the days before the existence of TV and after it. Many improvements and good effects as wells as advantages most governments took against normal people. On the other hand, by studying statistic we will find the effectiveness of certain TV shows on our lives and how we react to those messages from the shows. The way a person dresses up, talks, behaves and most importantly his/her views to the world around him/her can be affected by poor TV shows.

            “In the world outside TV, our numbed senses already require increasing doses of titillation. You have to blow up a building full of people or machine-gun a whole royal family to get our attention.” As Rushdies described his statement; this will be our weak and toxic brain after it is fed up with those poor TV shows and invaluable news from media. Our sense of humanity and caring about one another will be dead. Problem will rise up. Value standards will fall, such as respect to parents and elders. Coolness of invaluable knowledge and poor mindset will rise up among youngsters. Our consciousness about people who are suffering around us are lowered instead of higher them in order to help one another. By growing up in a society that shackles our brains to not go to far, we, citizens will be selfish machines, whom are programmed to consume and to stay entertained.

            In conclusion I hope and try hard every day to drag myself and people around me away from this spoiled life style and increase the capability of my knowledge to survive and prepare a better future for next generation.

Sina

10/10/2010