What the Dog Saw and Million-Dollar Murray - Admission/Application Essay Example

Summary of Part 2 of "What the dog saw Summary for “Open Secrets” The story of open secrets exposes the mystery behind the fall of Enron, a onetime giant oil company under the leadership of Jeffrey Skilling. The article commences with the explanation of a case pitting the “United States of America versus Jeffrey K. Skilling”, where Skilling is prosecuted for fraud (Gladwell 55). The case exposes the need of closer examination of the difference between a puzzle and a mystery. The prosecution of the case was conducted in the form of a puzzle as opposed to approaching it as a mystery. It was not a simple case of fraud where a person pieces one piece of information with another building up a strong case. A puzzle is solved through the unearthing of different clues that were hidden, which was not the case with Enron. Enron had provided all the required information to its stakeholders albeit, in a manner that was not discernable to ordinary stakeholders. The first evidence of lack of a cover-up of information was through the interaction of Jonathan Weil (a reporter) with the company’s representative who had to fly to the meeting (Gladwell 56). The second element distinguishing the case as a mystery as opposed to being a puzzle was the lack of direct revelation of hidden facts to the different reporters covering the issue. All had just general opinions of the likelihood of fraud being committed by the company. Enron had engaged in fictitious SPEs to secure financing and this acted as a proper cover up for the illicit undertakings the company was engaged in prior to its bankruptcy. The management made public all the documents running to three million pages. This contributed to the complication of the case as a mystery and neither a summary suggested by Steven Schwartz could work, as it would be approximately one hundred and twenty thousand pages. The power committee on the other hand, chose critical transactions and reduced to two hundred pages that were overly complicated for stakeholders to discern (Gladwell 57). These winds up the conclusion that the case of Enron was a mystery hard to solve owing to the information provided. 2. Summary for “Million-Dollar Murray” Homelessness accrues hidden costs on the health sector as well as government agencies in terms of medical bills and accommodation of the homeless, and not just the homeless, but also the hardened group of homeless people. The example of Murray Barr serves best in explaining the social cost of perennial homeless people as an estimation of his medical costs run to approximately a hundred thousand dollars in a duration of six months since getting out of prison. The lack of attention to the hardened homeless persons was costly and costs using the Murray case are estimated at a million dollars. The one million dollar loss for inaction is sample of the costs incurred by the society (Gladwell 61). Dennis Culhane, a graduate, helped in unraveling the impact of homelessness on the society in actual costs. Dennis cites that many people fall homeless in their lifetime, but most incidents last for only a day or two, but approximately ten percent of the homeless persons being defined as chronically homeless. The cases of homeless exhibit a hardcore scenario where it would be extremely difficult to solve and would require time and plenty of money. This raises question on measures to be taken to handle the homeless as in Murray’s case it would have served better if he was placed under full care with an apartment incurring less cost to the society. Such is the case of Denver, plagued with huge numbers of homeless persons that worsens on winter periods. The city has made strides through initiation of homes to cater for the group of homeless with elements identifiable with the Murray case (Gladwell 63). 3. Summary for “The Picture Problem” Pictures have been used in the explanation of different scenarios and are seen as being objective and telling nothing but the truth. This is however too far from the truth as pictures form part of a mystery in discerning different elements and angles under examination. This case was demonstrated during the Gulf War where the United States Air Force set out to counter missile attacks on Israel from Iraq. The Air Force purpose was to destabilize the Scud launchers and aimed to complete the task using a targeting pod and a four million six hundred thousand dollars state of the art “LANTIM.” The success of the mission was reported at the Air Force base with commanders of the mission pleased. However, a review of the mission exposed the reality of zero Scud kills resulting from the use of the imaging device (Gladwell 67). The four million dollar camera was attributed for the success, but the actual result revealed that the camera was part of the reason for the failure. Pictures are useful items in explaining different scenarios, but are reliant on human actions. The person taking the picture must have an accurate and precise location of the objected being captured. Additionally, the interpretation of different pictures is reliant on humans and this call for technical interpretive ability. This case is amplified through mammography and x-rays that require high expertise in interpretation. Mammography and x-ray pictures are worthless if they lack professional interpretation (Gladwell 69). The interpretation of a picture could have positive or devastating impacts depending on the qualifications of the person examining it, and hence it is advisable that people with relevant experience and professional expertise interpret pictures regardless of the level of technology engaged. 4. Summary for “Something Borrowed” Words written by a person are claimed to be the property of the person similar to an original composition and use of such words could be linked to plagiarism faulting the borrowing of a person’s words without prior permission. This pushed Dorothy Lewis, a psychiatrist, to sue Byron Laver, a British Playwright for the infringement of copyrights using her life story and experiences in the play “Frozen.” The play had borrowed a large number of words from Dorothy’s book as well as the article’s author profile of Dorothy in a magazine edited in 1997. The profile was titled damaged, and gave an insight into Dorothy’s life, and some words from the story were used in the play. The article’s author had no problem with the words being used as it was a chance for exposure for her works, but Dorothy was highly troubled (Gladwell 76). The play used the alleged words from the two sources without adulteration and this can be perceived as respecting the integrity of the sources of information without distorting information to avoid plagiarism. It recognizes the originality and accuracy of the previous works and pays homage indirectly to the author of the borrowed words. This brings to the fore the treatment of plagiarism as an offense or respect to original works. The article cites the example of music where rights are given to specific uses that do not rely on an original composition in entirety, but rather borrows some aspects as agreed upon through obtaining recording rights. In the literature world, plagiarism is a subject of hot debate with consensus on the lack of ethical observance in copying someone else’s work. Lavery was disturbed about the whole scenario and explained that she did not copy all the parts with the intention of malice, but rather picked only parts that were borrowed from other works and actual scientific concepts. Plagiarism is a topic that needs reconsideration as it maligns the person and character of the accused (Gladwell 75). 5. Summary for “Connecting the Dots” Connecting the dots is written on the need for intelligence services to work on instincts and signals of planned misdoings before actual crises are recorded. It gives the example of Israel that was faced with threats of attack from Egypt and Syria in the early 1970s. The final attack came after a series of botched up threats including nineteen likely instances recorded between January and October of 1973 when the attacks were launched on Israel. Israel had intelligence on the grouping of Syrian and Egyptian forces along the Suez Canal, but made an error in judgment by discarding the imminent attack. The scenario of connecting the dots before attacks by intelligence forces came under increased scrutiny following allegations leveled against the CIA and FBI for failing to act on different clues regardless of their numbers (Gladwell 79). The information was at their disposal and was easy to connect the dots, but the agencies failed in their core mandate to American citizens in protecting them from global attacks. Similar patterns were recorded before a 1994 attack on the “World Trade Centre.” This was established by the arrest of Sayyid Nosair who had in his possession maps of landmarks targeted for attacks of which the WTC was one of the targets. The case of connecting the dots is evident in the bomb attack planned and executed in Nairobi Kenya on the American Embassy. The intelligence services had sufficient information as early as 1997 warning of possible attacks on the embassy (Gladwell 80). Connecting the dots to small clues should be the major objective of intelligence services and no single clue should be overlooked as it could lead to averting of huge crises. 6. Summary for “The Art of Failure” Human beings at times tend to falter under pressure. The best of the best in a particular sport or activity find their prowess outdone by circumstances that eliminate comfort or added advantage. Drivers drown and pilots crash. The glare of competition brings with it tension that cannot be named making the occurrence of error and misjudgment at such times inevitable. When such things as basketball players failing to find the basket, golfers missing the pin, or tennis players hitting low, happen, the terminology applied is that people have panicked, which in sports is colloquially referred to as ‘choking’. The extent of the meaning of these words alludes to one thing, failure. To panic or to choke is regarded to be just as bad as quitting (Gladwell 84). It is prudent to examine or consider whether all forms of failure are equal. Consideration of forms of failure gives a picture of how we perceive ourselves. We are living in a success-obsessed age where great lessons emanate from ways in which talented people have overcome obstacles and challenges. Adverse scenarios should be used in deriving lessons from the many ways in which people of amazing talent sometimes succumb to failure. Choking, as vague as it may sound, refers to a specific kind of failure. From psychological tests involving motor skills, there is explicit/conscious learning and implicit/unconscious learning. Under stress conditions as Novotna was in, the flow she had was lost due to choking or takeover of the explicit system. Panic is a psychological reaction without giving an event much thought. Panic is stress, which narrows one’s perception and wipes out short-term memory of a solution to a problem especially for a novice leading to failure. These forms of failure depart from each other in terms of thinking and instinct (Gladwell 86). Choking entails too much thinking and instinct loss, while panic involves too little thinking and reversion to instinct. 7. Summary for “Blowup” This technological age presents a certain ritual to disaster that entails scrutinizing pieces of evidence in the remains of metal or debris after an explosion in a plant or even a plane crash. The processes, which follow include forming boards/commissions of inquiry to probe, interview, as well as draw sober conclusions. The ritual is all about reassurance whose basis is that the lessons derived from one accident will help in prevention of another. This is confirmed when nuclear reactors continue operating and planes continue to ply the airways. The incidence that saw these rituals extremely dramatized was in the case of the space shuttle dubbed ‘the Challenger’ that blew up on January 28, 1986 over southern Florida (Gladwell 89). Recovery ships arrived at the scene as soon as the last debris fell into the ocean and were stationed there for three months recovering and experimenting on the largest debris collection in the history of maritime salvage operations. Several chunks of charred metal found by the recovery team in mid-April confirmed what had been suspected all along that the explosion was a result of a faulty seal in the shuttle’s rocket boosters, which let a stream of flame escape igniting an external fuel tank. This resulted in reprimanding and chastisement of NASA engineers who had to return to the drawing board and emerge with a new shuttle after 32 months alluding to the accident as a learning opportunity. This ritual is a cycle in disasters that happen on American soil and the stereotype is that we are able to avoid future accidents from the conclusions drawn in a particular incident (Gladwell 90). Scholars known as revisionists argue that high technology accidents may lack clear causes and may inherently be placed in the technology’s complexity created by man. This dismisses the disaster rituals as unfounded and stereotypical. Works cited Gladwell, Malcolm. What the dog saw and other adventures. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2009. Print. Read More