Clive Thompson makes a rather strange critique of the idea of “social contagion” in a long article published in The New York Times Magazine last Sunday.  “Is Happiness Catching?” is a look at the the work of Nicholas Christaki and James Fowler on social networks within the venerable Framingham Heart Study that has been running [...]

It’s not often that somebody dying makes me feel young. But the death of Walter Cronkite has inspired me with an overwhelming feeling of youthfulness. You see, I really know next to nothing about Walter Cronkite.  He means nothing at all to me. Hearing that he’s dead was like a looking at a well-painted apartment [...]