The Perpetual BetaMatteo Balzani’s weblog

The pope, Micheal Jackson and a 9-year-old kid are on a plane. Suddenly the plane has problem at one engine and starts plummeting.
The pope realizes  that there are only 2 parachutes, so he says to Micheal:
“Hey come on, let’s take one each and jump!”
“And what about the kid?”
“Fuck the kid!”
“Oh, do you think we have enough time?”

For catholic fundamentalists and Micheal’s fans: it’s not my falut, Andrey told me the joke!

At the beginning I was doubtful. The title was not promising and it felt almost as “new age”.

Considering though that it came as a gift (the EMEA retail general manager gave it as a gift to everybody in retail to celebrate San Jordi) I decided to read it.

I have to say that “Blink”, Malcolm Gladwell’s last book (he is also the author of “The Tipping Point”) made me change my mind after only few pages.

The apparent “lightness” of the subtitle is in reality supported by a scientific approach and by very pragmatic examples.

Moreover some statements (always supported by scientific experiments and/or researches) are tryly startling.

It does not say, of course, that taking decisions without thinking is better than take them after a careful evaluation. It says that in particular circumstances our brain works in ways that are not rationally clear to us and sometimes it (the brain) tells us to do something that we are unable to explain on a rational level, but very often it’s right.

There’s a chapter that particularly stroke me (”The Kenna’s dilemma”): it talks about the initial judgment that an artist receives first by the insiders and then by the big audience.
It brings to my min a lot of episodes that happened on the Net: from the enthusiasm of the blogosphere for some political candidates to the celebration of some internet startups.

Unexpectedly I’ve found a lot of marketing in this book and I recommend it to everyone is working in marketing and/or advertising.

Clearly in this case my blink was wrong :)

I have to confess that I didn’t expect to have parking problems in Amsterdam. “Everybody rides a bike” I was told.
And in fact I have problems to park my bicycle!

It takes to me 5 minutes to go to the station by bike and 8-10 minutes to find a place to park. And it’s not that you don’t have space, because just in front of the station there’s a 3-stories parking lot only for bicycles…

Don’t get me wrong, it looks like I’m complaining but I love it! :)