Word: contagions
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...tons of greenhouse emissions. In addition to making a real difference in pollution levels, however, over 6,000 additional bikes on the road would also change the way Bostonians think about the environment. As car commutes fall out of fashion, so will other energy-wasting activities, similar to the contagion of sustainability on the Harvard campus. To this end, Boston would do well to take an even closer look at its transportation system for further ways to diminish its carbon footprint...
...terms psychologists toss around to describe these feelings include survivor's guilt (why him and not me?), survivor's envy (thinking you might be better off gone too) and emotional contagion (the tendency to pick up your laid-off colleagues' feelings of gloom and desperation). These feelings are with us in every recession, but as layoffs spread to more industries, people in all walks of life are increasingly experiencing them. (Read "Feeling Our Way Out of the Recession...
...have Silicon Valley without first digging up the silicon, and even the smartest building starts out as a hole in the ground. So the news that Caterpillar is laying off 5,000 workers--bringing its total of recent layoffs to 20,000--only confirms that the economic contagion is spreading, from the executive floors of high finance to the bedrock world of tractors and dump trucks...
...turn out to be Hizballah's Boston Tea Party, and led to Israel's first defeat in the field of battle when Israel withdrew from Lebanon in 2000. For us, though, Nabatiyah should be a crucial lesson in how a small act of defiance can turn into a viral contagion. (See the top 10 awkward moments...
...just in sterile study settings that the contagion of happiness is spreading. Christakis and Fowler noticed that people who are smiling on their Facebook pages tend to cluster together, forming an online social circle like a delirious flock of cyberbirds. And while some of this joy can certainly be traced to the copycat effect--if your friends post smiling pictures, you might feel like a grouch if you don't too--Christakis and Fowler are analyzing the clusters to see if something more infectious might be at work...