« La familia. | Main | Home again, home again. »
January 26, 2005
No home training.
I attended a talk by Malcolm Gladwell, who's touting his new book, "Blink." I turned my dad onto "The Tipping Point" when my love and I visited for Thanksgiving, so he was very excited to learn the author was coming to his town.
I took a seat in the third row before the lecture hall filled up, as Dad has some juice with the venue where the lecture took place. As I looked around at the folks taking seats, they didn't strike me as the sort who'd be very interested in hearing someone talk about the power of instinctive and intuitive decision-making. As it turned out, I was half-right. The woman next to me actually took out her knitting when Gladwell took the podium.
I don't think I've been that close to a complete jackass since a vendor in Cancun exhorted me to pose for a photo with his sombrero-wearing burro. I'm thinking the donkey had better manners.
This crowd was rubbing me the wrong way. Two mouth-breathers to my left chatted in stage whispers, speculating about who the author was and what he might speak about. After he was introduced, a few pointy heads behind me made cracks about the author's hair, which is styled in a large, loose 'fro.
In his talk, Gladwell referenced his hair when he talked about how people form snap judgements based on appearance. He'd once been hassled by undercover NYPD who thought he looked like a rape suspect. The only resemblance was the bushy hair, but it took him 30 minutes to convey this fact, as he recounted. And so, my question was:
"I haven't yet finished the book (sheepish smile), but I'm wondering about how the concept of thin-slicing applies to law enforcement, specifically when it comes to profiling suspects."
At least the meeskite next to me put down her knitting.
Posted by Your Protagonist at January 26, 2005 02:24 AM