TSIS PG. 87 #2 (Use Your Own Essay)

no, in my own essay, I did not incorporate the opinions of anyone else on the subject matter, since I was not really debating anything. I was only to show how the Tipping point was intertwined with landscape amnesia and creeping normalcy and then provide examples. I did use Diamond and Gladwell's examples within my paper since that was the main point of writing the paper in the first place. Also, I do feel that by adding their quotes it strengthened the point that I was trying to make as to how their concepts were all related. Lastly, I did not use any of the templates in my writing from the TSIS book.

From Inquiry PG. 208 # 1 (drafting introductions)

Diamond’s concept of ‘creeping normalcy’ and Landscape Amnesia both tie into Gladwell’s theory of a tipping point. Diamond’s theory of ‘creeping normalcy’ is when something slowly becomes normal in a region over time, due to slow change. While his landscape amnesia theory is about when an area that is inhabited by or frequently visited by people changes slowly over time and the changes that have occurred go unnoticed by the frequent visitors or locals of that region. Lastly, Gladwell’s ideal of a tipping the reasoning behind the start of a phenomenon, or a trend. Gladwell uses the example that trends spread like viruses and the rise of the trend is to be considered the tipping point; the time in which the fad or phenomenon became popular or even dominating. Gladwell’s example that are used in the excerpt about possibilities on why some societies make the disastrous decisions that they do even though they may be potentially hurting themselves and making it harder to live in the long run, tie into Diamond’s main points that are stressed throughout his article titled “Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference.”

• To what extent did the strategy compel you to want to read further?
• To what extent is my thesis clear?
• How effectively do I draw a distinction between what I say and what I believe others assume to be true and own approach?
• Is there another way that I might have made my introduction more compelling?

TSIS: Pg. 72-73 #2

My responce to Gladwell's exceprt:

1. How Many perspectives do you engage in?
I used one other perspective which was Gladwell's.

2. What other perspectives might you include?
I do not believe that I could use any other perspectives since I was writing an essay in which I was responding and using examples of Gladwells.

3. How might you distinguish your ideas from the other views you summarize?
A person could simply use first person, quotations, a summary, an introduction of the person they are summarizing before hand, use their name..

4. Do you use clear phrases?
I believe that I do.

5. What options are available to you to clarify who is saying what?
I could use the name of the individual who's idea i am summarizing or quoting, if it is myself, I could use 'I'.

6. Which if these options are best suited for this particular text?
I believe that within my own writing either of the options I expressed above would be appropriate.

Gladwell's essay:

1. How Many perspectives do you engage in?
Gladwell uses about 10-15 perspectives other than his own within his writing.

2. What other perspectives might you include?
I believe that he could have used the perspective of those people against his idea of a tipping point and used some examples from those people, because his whole excerpt is about how the tipping point is true and a bunch of examples that back up his theory, but I'm sure that somewhere there are people who feel differently from him.

3. How might you distinguish your ideas from the other views you summarize?
A person could simply use first person, quotations, a summary, an introduction of the person they are summarizing before hand, use their name..

4. Do you use clear phrases?
Yes, I think that Gladwell expresses who's perspective he is using quite clearly.

5. What options are available to you to clarify who is saying what?
He could use the name of the individual who's idea he is summarizing or quoting, he could also use 'I' when referring to his own idea.

6. Which if these options are best suited for this particular text?
I believe that he could use in h is writing a variety of first person and of summarizing other people and just including the name of person who's idea it was originally either before or after the text. Since the text is very scholarly, he should try to stray away from too many quotations, but he should still use a variety of them, because other wise the readers will get bored and uninterested with reading the same words over and over.

TSIS pg. 62 #2

In Malcolm Gladwell's excerpt which explains the concept of a 'Tipping Point" from the book The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference. In this excerpt it is explained to the reader what a tipping point is and some examples are expressed whether it from the Hush Puppy craze or the crime rate in New York, he came up with a way to realate it all as a tipping point. A tipping point Gladwell describes as a point in an epidemic whre things can all of a sudden have a dramatic rise. In other words it is the climax of a trend. I can agree with Gladwell's theory on a tipping for his exaples and how they do fit in and can be considered a tipping point, excpt for one of them. I do not see the resemblence the New York Crime rate dropping has as a tipping point, since a tipping point primarily has someone who sets it off, as with his example of teen smoking, although you can understand what the tipping point is there, if you look deep into it. His hush puppy example fits in well with the tipping point idea because as he mentions, in his excerpt, the kids in the New York were wearing them and a fashion designer or someone of importance noticed them and wanted them to be in their fashion. After that fiasco, the Hush Puppies became a fad again, and now there are people still wearing them, or atleast there were in 1995. But I have seen Hush Puppies being sold in stores still. However, with the New York crime rate going down I do not agree with the tipping point, because he states at the end of his talk on the crime rate that "...the changes in the drug trade, the population, and the economy are all long term trends, happening all over the country." So, if the drug trade, population and economical changes are occurring all over the country, then what makes the one on New York a tipping point, why is it considered a trend started by one person? I doubt that one person had the power to enforce a big number of individuals to stop drug trafficing in New Your City or to stop killing eachother, and people do not just wake up and decide that, maybe something major happened in all of those drug abusers and killers lives that made them decide they wanted a change, but that I think is unquestionably odd. Another example that he gives us is about teen smoking. He says that more teens are smoking now and that the government has tried to make smoking campaigns that tell of the dangers of cigerettes, but the teens don't care. Then, price of ciggarettes were raised to try and help prohibit teen smoking so that they couldn't afford them, but none of that worked so it must deeper than what the governament is getting at. He states that "Smokers aren't even smokers becuase they understimate the risks of smoking." which he backs with evidence froma harvard study where the students surveyed believed that they were cutting off nine years of their life by smoking while in actuality it was only six. Most of these teens do it, they saw an older person do it and it made that person seem cool or sophisticated, so they wanted to do it, to be like that, in which there is your tipping point.
In conclusion, I do agree with Gladweel on his theory of a tipping point, and that one person can be the reason why a trend or epidemic is started throughout a community or country, but some of his arguments as to show what a tipping point is i do not agree with.

Pg. 156 #2; Responce to Diamond Essay; Using Quotations.

In Diamond's excerpt "Why Do Some Societies Make Disastrous Decisions" Diamond introduces his audience to many possible ways that societies may have collapsed due to mistakes, misconceptions, horrible decisions, and ignorance. I agree with Diamond's responce that societies may have never thought the problem to exist until after the problem was already present or had occurred. I agree with this statement because I can see it happening around me, being in the midst of global warming. Many people did not care or believe that in the long run such poor use and abuse of the Earth and enviroment would cause such a massive change in the enviroment to occur. "Diamond explains Global Warming and humanities failure to perceive the dilemma as so in the quotation, " Perhaps the commonest circumstance under which societies fail to perceive a problem is when it takes the form of a slow trend concealed by wide up and down fluctuations." Diamond refers to this as the term "Creeping normalcy." Where he explains that events take place slowly over time and people living in the environment where it is happening grow used to the changes and adapt, without taking notice of the major changes most of the time. Those who have lived in the environment for a long time would be able to see the difference and possibly even somewhere doesn't visit the area all that often but knows what it looked like, say, 20 years ago. Due to what I have been able to witness through at least the last three or four years, I agree with Diamonds theory of "Creeping Normalcy", because most things that happen not within the environment but anywhere within human existence becomes normal to us at some point and then we just tend to brush it off and change something and continue on with our lives.