Akkam’s Razor

• How your friends’ friends can affect your mood - life - 30 December 2008 - New Scientist - Indeed, it is becoming clear that a whole range of phenomena are transmitted through networks of friends in ways that are not entirely understood: happiness and depression, obesity, drinking and smoking habits, ill-health, the inclination to turn out and vote in elections, a taste for certain music or food, a preference for online privacy, even the tendency to attempt or think about suicide. They ripple through networks "like pebbles thrown into a pond", says Nicholas Christakis, a medical sociologist at Harvard Medical School in Boston, who has pioneered much of the new work.

Yesterday, the NY Times covered Google Flutrends, a tool that checks the frequency of searches for keywords related to influenza, and then maps them over time for both attention and geography. Pretty cool, and eerily accurate as compared to official governmental results.

You can actually approximate the same thing with any other concept as well (previously, regarding economics news). Step-by-step instructions are after the link…

• Reflecting on the Mirror - Marketing & Strategy Innovation Blog - It seems that seeing one’s image causes one to think about one’s behavior and ultimately behave in a more socially desirable way. According to Cialdini, other actions can have a similar effect. Asking people their names can have a similar effect, and one experiment showed that a picture of eyes dramatically reduced “theft” in a break area where employees were supposed to drop money in a jar when they were supposed to pay for coffee or tea.

I haven’t seen this PBS documentary, but I’ve been thinking about how an urbanized city can make best use of it’s strengths to capitalize on the fuel crunch.

In Philadelphia for instance, we have more life, art, culture, infrastructure, convenience, shorter distances to employment, public transportation, ample higher education institutions, organized healthcare, easy access to fresh water ice-free ports, railheads, airports, a highway corridor for the east coast…all benefits that are extremely competitive in a world where fue costs continue escalating.

I wonder if the regions policy makers are aware of the tremendous opportunity this presents? Bring in more shipping, revitalize the rail infrastructure, encourage the revitalization of neighborhoods, increase the new housing stock, attract new employers to relocate (along with their employees families), reintroduce light manufacturing…

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Tags: Consumer Behavior · Economics · OpEd · Philadelphia

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