To the RSA last night to see Nicholas Christakis talk about his amazing work on how much our lives are shaped by our social networks. One of his most striking findings - the results of years of painstaking research - is that obesity spreads via social contagion. If your friend's friend becomes obese, that makes you more likely to become obese. Similar effects have been found with smoking, and levels of happiness (there's a great exposition of Christakis's work here). As an aside, Christakis remarked that when his study on obesity was released, the US newspapers tended to report it as, "Getting fat? Blame your friends." The UK press, by contrast, went for: "Are your friends getting fat? It may be your fault." This says much about our respective national psyches.
For more on social networks, read this extraordinary report on America's successful hunt and capture of Saddam in the wake of the Battle of Baghdad. Amidst all the disaster, it's a success story that has been forgotten about; as the author of the piece Chris Wilson notes, it was by no means inevitable that Saddam would be captured. A cadre of smart officers, some schooled in sociology (!) used social network theory to track him down.
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