The weird power of first impressions.

Byline: Lisa Kaaki

I have only recently been able to read Malcolm Gladwell's, much talked about best seller, "Blink: The power of Thinking Without Thinking," a book about the kind of thinking which occurs in a blink of an eye, hence the title.

The author, a British-born Canadian journalist and pop-sociologist, acknowledges that although "Blink" is about intuition, he does not like that word and never mentions it in the book: "Intuition strikes me as a concept we use to describe emotional reactions, gut feelings, thoughts and impressions that don't seem entirely rational. But I think that what goes on in that first two seconds is perfectly rational."

This book, largely based on academic work, is easy to read because Gladwell has the knack of popularizing unknown works in a clear and interesting manner.

In his …