Herd - the hidden truth about who we are

MMR revisited

Source: NIH

Very bad news today re the re-emergence of previously suppressed serious childhood diseases like measles in the UK - thanks to the middle-class mums who choose to ignore scientific evidence and listen instead to anecdote and speculation.

MMR is by any measure an extremely safe vaccine, not the toxin blamed by the discredited Andrew Wakefiled and the rumour mill.

This is a case when we're all in it together - "herd immunity"

 

How long should a ghostbike be allowed to hang around?

We've long collected examples of cellotaphs and ghostbikes - those popular floral tributes to the fallen that populate so many streets here in the UK and in the US.

I think they're particularly interesting social and cultural phenomena because they are examples of public-created art and monumental social artefacts (rather than stuff created by and for the great and the good for private consumption).

Today reveals an interesting problem: how long should a ghostbike be allowed to hang about?

Should it be a temporary monument? Should it be a permanent feature? Should they even be regulated? I've got my views but what do you think?

 

I copy, you copy, he/she/it copies

Source: flickr

Nice piece today in the Standard (prompted by the British Council "The English Effect" exhibition) elaborates on one of the questions we explored last summer in the run up to my School of Life Sermon: how English thrives through copying words from other tongues

Normally most of us would imagine there's some unique quality (its flexible grammar, maybe) that enables something to spread but maybe in this case is more it's ability to copy copy copy that works.

 

The Dunciad

Thanks very much to Andy Nairn who posted this kind tribute on Campaign's blog

"Dunce" as in John Dun Scotus (not Pope's satirical piece see above)

 

Crowd, swarm, flock

pic c/o Lukas Felzmann/Wired.com

Nice piece in Wired this month (HT Gareth K) that looks at self-organising crowd behaviour.

Not sure it adds anything to the stuff we've previously pointed at e.g. here, here, here, here, here, here and of course here

And of course it provides a good challenge to Behavioural Economics, forcing us to think about behaviour change above the level of the individual (which is where BE stops)

That said, this stuff is always - as G would say - awesome (literally)