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I don't like the idea of a "random" act of kindness. I much prefer "deliberate" acts of kindness.

In findings sure to gladden the heart of anyone who’s ever wondered whether tiny acts of kindness have larger consequences, researchers have shown that generosity is contagious.

Goodness spurs goodness, they found: A single act can influence dozens more.

In a game where selfishness made more sense than cooperation, acts of giving were “tripled over the course of the experiment by other subjects who are directly or indirectly influenced to contribute more,” wrote political scientist James Fowler of the University of California, San Diego, and medical sociologist Nicholas Christakis of Harvard University.

Their findings, published March 8 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, are the latest in a series of studies the pair have conducted on the spread of behaviors through social networks.

In other papers, they’ve described the spread of obesity, loneliness, happiness and smoking. But there was no way to know whether those apparent behavioral contagions were actually just correlations. People who are overweight, for example, might simply tend to befriend other overweight people, or live in an area where high-fat, low-nutrient diets are the norm.

The latest research was designed to identify cause-and-effect links. In it, Fowler and Christakis analyze the results of a so-called public-goods game, in which people were divided into groups of four, given 20 credits each, and asked to secretly decide what to keep for themselves and what to contribute to a common fund. That fund would be multiplied by two-fifths, then divided equally among the group. The best payoff would come if everyone gave all their money — but without knowing what others were doing, it always made sense to keep one’s money and skim from the generosity of others.

Only at the end of each game did players find out what the rest of their group had done. The game was run again and again, each time mixing group members and keeping their identities anonymous, so that decisions were never personal.

When one person gave, others in their group tended to be generous during the next two rounds of play. Recipients of their largess became more generous in turn, and so on down the chain. When a punishment round was added — players could spend their own money to reduce the rewards of selfish players — generosity lasted even longer.

“It is often supposed that individuals in experiments like the one described here selfishly seek to maximize their own payoffs,” wrote Fowler and Christakis. “The equilibrium prediction is to contribute nothing and to pay nothing to punish noncontributors, but the subjects did not follow this pattern.”

According to the the researchers, the explanation lies not in calculations of odds and rewards, but in simple behavioral mimicry: Monkey see, monkey do, human style. When people are irrationally generous, others follow suit.

The network described by Fowler and Christakis doesn’t necessarily replicate natural group dynamics, but suggests a general model for how behaviors spread. They suggest that researchers of altruism and cultural evolution study how different group configurations promote or limit the spread of behaviors.

However, the findings aren’t just a feel-good story. Selfish behavior spreads easily, too.

Images: 1) Heath Brandon/Flickr.
2) James Fowler.

See Also:

• Loneliness May Be Contagious
• Altruism’s Bloody Roots
• Termite Altruism Might Have Roots in War
• The Buddy System: How Medical Data Revealed Secret to Health and Happiness
• Bacteria Sacrifice Selves for Greater Good

Citation: “Cooperative behavior cascades in human social networks.” By James H. Fowler and Nicholas A. Christakis. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 107 No. 10, March 9, 2010.

Brandon Keim’s Twitter stream and reportorial outtakes; Wired Science on Twitter. Brandon is currently working on a book about ecological tipping points.

I don't like the idea of a "random" act of kindness. I much prefer "deliberate" acts of kindness.

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My brother's Cockatiel sang the Legend of Zelda theme.

I watched every single video in this guy's YouTube channel of his cockatiel singing themes from various video games, and can't figure out if it's a miracle or a hoax. I have never kept a cockatiel as a pet, but have kept other exotic birds, and I have a hard time buying that it's not faked. But either way, I enjoyed.

Cockatiel sings Theme of Chocobo (Final Fantasy)
(blackwhite810, thanks Joe Sabia)

My brother's Cockatiel sang the Legend of Zelda theme.

In celebration of its third bloggaversary, the excellent Super Punch has asked a collection of talented web-artists to create a Super Punch Tarot -- a webby deck inspired by the eclectic and wonderful. Shown here, Queen of Hearts by Stéphane Massa-Bidal and Six of Cups by Jerrod Maruyama. Kawaii Jabba and Slave Leia.

Introducing the Super Punch Tarot Previously:

• Tarot deck with periodic table of elements
• Playmobil Tarot!
• Peanuts Tarot Deck
• Fifties housewives' tarot deck (predict casseroles, aprons, A ...
• Hello Kitty tarot
• Modern traffic-sign Tarot deck
• Concentration Camp Card Deck from Dachau, 1945

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You have got to be kidding me.

In an update to yesterday's global crash of the PlayStation Network that left many PS3 owners unable to use their systems, Sony has confirmed that the problem only affects that non-slim, or "fat," PS3 units and has asked users to hold off on booting up until the problem is resolved.

"We believe we have identified that this problem is being caused by a bug in the clock functionality incorporated in the system," reads a statement on the PlayStation blog. "We hope to resolve this problem within the next 24 hours. In the meantime, if you have a model other than the new slim PS3, we advise that you do not use your PS3 system, as doing so may result in errors in some functionality, such as recording obtained trophies, and not being able to restore certain data."

So until there's a resolution, it's time to dust off the PS2 and play some GTA: San Andreas.

You have got to be kidding me.

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This is awesome. Considering that one of my favorite places to camp is literally along a spring-fed stream.

A human-portable hydroelectric generator that weighs about 30 pounds and generates 500 watts of power may soon be a new option for off-grid power.

Developed by Mailbu’s Bourne Energy, the Backpack Power Plant can create clean, quiet power from any stream deeper than four feet.

The company showed off its more rugged, militarized version of the Backpack Power Plant at the Cleantech Forum in San Francisco last week. Bourne Energy CEO, Chris Catlin, estimates the system will cost $3,000 after it goes into production.

“The BPP-2, which operates silently with no heat or exhaust emissions, is 40 percent less visible during operation and can also be bottom mounted to be totally invisible,” the company maintains.

Off-grid solar cells are also quiet, but they don’t make much power relative to the mini-turbine. For example, one commercially available foldable solar panel measures about 12 square feet and produces 62 watts of peak power. You’d need 60 square feet of panels to get the same peak power as the BPP-2 and the panels would only generate electricity while the sun was shining.

To install the civilian BPP, you would dig two trenches on opposite sides of a river and insert a lightweight anchor. Then, you’d run a synthetic rope between the anchors and the BPP. Catlin said they’d designed the system to work like the high-tension mooring systems that hold up floating oil rigs.

The militarized version of the BPP has been designed to work with a variety of flow rates. The civilian version was designed to function best in streams moving at 2.3 meters (7.5 feet) per second.

The civilian market for a $3,000 mini hydro system might not be huge in the industrialized world, but Catlin hopes the plant will find willing customers in developing nations and the military.

“This can bring a cheap, highly portable energy technology to remote areas and remote villages,” Catlin told Wired.com.

Bourne is currently looking for $4 million in venture capital to take the BPP from prototype to production.

See Also:

• Nation’s First ‘Underwater Wind Turbine’ Installed in Old Man River
• Tapping the Vortex for Green Energy
• 5 Huge Green-Tech Projects in the Developing World

WiSci 2.0: Alexis Madrigal’s Twitter, Tumblr, and green tech history research site; Wired Science on Twitter and Facebook.

This is awesome. Considering that one of my favorite places to camp is literally along a spring-fed stream.

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Wow. Just Wow. So I'm reading Satanic Panic: The Creation of a Contemporary Legend, by Jeffrey S. Victor. Excellent stuff. And I come across this paragraph:
In order to avoid vague notions of what constitutes a "rumor-panic," in my research I defined a "rumor-panic" as a collective stress reaction in response to a belief in stories about immediately threatening circumstances. A rumor-panic in a community can be identified by the existence of widely occurring fear-provoked behavior. Examples of fear-provoked behavior include: 1) protective behavior, such as the widespread buying of guns or preventing children from being in public places; 2) aggressive behavior, such as group attacks on people perceived to be sources of threat, or the destruction of property; and 3) agitated information-seeking at community meetings for "news" about the threat and intensified surveillance of the community by police and vigilante groups of citizens.

So, yes or no discussion question: Does the Tea Party "movement" constitute a rumor-panic?

It certainly appears to be "a collective stress reaction in response to a belief in stories about immediately threatening circumstances." What about those other criteria?

Widespread buying of guns? Check. And homeschooling could be another form of the protective behavior of keeping children sheltered.

Agitated information-seeking at community meetings? Oh, big check on that one. (Remember when the words "Town Hall" still had connotations of democracy and citizenship?)

That just leaves "2) aggressive behavior," which certainly exists, but hasn't yet risen/fallen to the point of "group attacks on people perceived to be sources of threat." (We'll set apart the Texas suicide pilot as -- I hope -- an anomaly.)

Overall, though, I'd have to say the Tea Party movement bears a striking resemblance to the classic rumor-panic and witchhunt. It's driven by rumors to become fearful and driven by fear to believe rumors -- really outlandish, unbelievable, weirdly nightmarish rumors at that.

Welcome to Salem, 21st-century style. Tune in to Fox News for the latest spectral evidence. ...

Wow. Just Wow.

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Mmmm... Walking in the rain, I see all these short, straight grey lines around me of falling water. Later, I fold up my umbrella, and the lines have become round dots on the fabric or irregular splotches with rounded edges, on their way to becoming tiny parts of the air invisible to me as the umbrella dries in the corner.

Water doesn't get bent out of shape about what shape it's in. Mmmm...

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To appreciate this, I guess I would need to be a Brazilian? We've learned from your lively feedback that you love themes on orkut. To brighten things up, we added 40 colors to the new orkut; now, we're creating a brand new layout design and new set of themes! Ready to try out the new look? Just click the "themes" link beside the color palette on orkut:



You'll find your very own themes gallery here. Click on any theme to preview it, and then choose the one you like best. Whatever your mood or favorite flavor, we think you'll find a theme to match.



And if you crave someone else's theme when you're visiting their profile, just grab it for yourself with the "get this theme" link that appears on the top of the page:



Still not enough themes for you? Just browse the activity updates from your friends, click "preview" and then visit the gallery page to preview that theme. Your friends will also be able to see what cool themes you adopt. And remember: You can change your theme as often as you change your mood.



We hope you'll enjoy the new orkut themes. Or you can still use simple background colors instead -- by selecting a color from the color palette. And if you prefer browsing orkut pages without themes, just use the "Browse with no themes" option from the themes gallery.

Your excellent feedback spurred us to bring back themes. So continue telling us what you think at orkut's help forum or official community. And keep checking your themes gallery for new themes coming up from time to time. Watch for locally flavored themes as we go forward!

Posted by Janani Rajagopal, software engineer


To appreciate this, I guess I would need to be a Brazilian?

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This is brilliant. Google should buy it and build it into docs. Mekki and a friend ran with an idea I tweeted last October: "Who's got a web-based service that will take a huge pastebomb (300K of text) and smarten all quotes, turn -- into em-dash, etc?" They created something called Cleantext. I just pasted in the entire text of my next short story collection (written as plain ASCII in a text editor) and out came something that was beautifully formatted and ready to be pasted into a layout program for further massaging. I'm delighted by this -- how useful!

Cleantext (Thanks, Mekki!)

Previously:

• Boing Boing: Giant graffiti typography
• Tattoo typography - Boing Boing
• Boing Boing: Clever t-shirt typography spells "hate" - "love" in ...
• Giant graffiti typography - Boing Boing
• Boing Boing: Calendar of pinups made with typography
• Pulp Fiction as typography - Boing Boing
• Sweater with built-in typography joke - Boing Boing
• Boing Boing: Online typography art piece

This is brilliant. Google should buy it and build it into docs.

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Epic indeed.

Miss K sez, "This young woman made the best of a 10 hour stopover during Snowpocalypse '09 by filming herself mugging around the empty airport."

This is an epic use of downtime. I stand in awe, and am ashamed to say that I would probably have just gotten on my laptop near an electrical outlet and blogged and answered email for ten hours.

Pittsburgh International Airport after hours

Previously:

• Gentleman arrested by fashion police at LA airport for wearing his ...
• David Byrne: I was BoingBoing-blocked at Denver airport. - Boing Boing
• Boing Boing: TSA: "no butt plugs" airport screening graphic
• Boing Boing: Charming travel short animation made from airport ...
• Baby put through airport x-ray - Boing Boing
• Airport officials seize dangerous Shakespeare research - Boing Boing
• National Guardsmen on airport duty - Boing Boing
• Airport feds rip off travellers - Boing Boing

Epic indeed.

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Powerpoint = Death. Some of the Docs that come through my office are often as many as 230 slides!

Judging by the film quality and clothing, this video with comedian Don McMillan was probably filmed at least a decade ago. Having spent all last week watching Power Point-enhanced (or, in some cases "enhanced") presentations, I can tell you that every, single, point (ha!) he makes is still relevant today.

Seriously. Scientists, I love you. But please get better Power Point skills.

(Thanks, Corinna Wu!)

Powerpoint = Death. Some of the Docs that come through my office are often as many as 230 slides!

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Whats interesting about this is that shop more at Walmart, but even more at "EVEN THEN SOME MORE DISCOUNTED" stores.

Is it a good sign or a bad one for the American economy if Walmart's sales are down nationwide? Does it mean that the affluent are back on their feet and no longer forced to shop downscale, or that none of us has any money at all?

If you live in the real world, you probably guessed "the second one." You are correct.

Eduardo Castro-Wright, vice chairman of Wal-Mart stores, said during the call that the same-store sales decline was fueled by a "slight drop in [customer] traffic to Wal-Mart stores in the fourth quarter" as well as a decline in the total value of purchases that customers were making at Wal-Mart.

Grocery and consumer electronics were impacted the most by price deflation while sales of health and wellness, and pharmacy products were strong, said Castro-Wright.

Wal-Mart said it expects same-store sales to be flat to "plus or minus 1%" in its first quarter

.

So, people are buying fewer TVs and frozen chicken fingers at Walmart, but still buying ibuprofen and shampoo. However, as Walmart goes, so goes the nation (a scary thought.) If all consumer spending is down, not just Walmart, that is a bad sign for the rest of the economy.

Do you shop at Walmart more or less than you did a year ago?(surveys)

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/wal-marts-core-customer-is-still-hurting-2010-02-18?reflink=MW_news_stmp
http://money.cnn.com/2010/02/17/news/companies/walmart_results/

Whats interesting about this is that shop more at Walmart, but even more at "EVEN THEN SOME MORE DISCOUNTED" stores.

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Gaiman writes a Dr. Who? Really? Science fiction and fantasy author Neil Gaiman has confirmed he will be writing an episode of Doctor Who for Matt Smith's second series as The Doctor.

Gaiman broke the news in a special message sent to SFX Weekender as part of his acceptance speech for winning Best Comic at the SFX Awards.
Over the years SFX, and its readers and their votes in the polls, have always been very kind to me. I thought I’d return the favour with what used to be called, in journalistic circles when I was a boy, a scoop.
As anyone who’s read my blog knows, I’m a big fan of a certain long-running British SF TV series. One that started watching -- from behind the sofa -- when I was three. And while I know it’s cruel to make you wait for things, in about 14 months from now, which is to say, NOT in the upcoming season but early in the one after that, it’s quite possible that I might have written an episode. And if I had, it would originally have been called “The House of Nothing”. But it definitely isn’t called that any more.Gaiman's works include The Sandman graphic novel series, Stardust, American Gods, Coraline, and The Graveyard Book. He has won a Hugo Award and the 2009 Newbery Medal. His involvement in Doctor Who has been rumoured for a while.
http://gallifreynewsbase.blogspot.com Gaiman writes a Dr. Who? Really?

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Nice work.

Copyrighthater says,

Here is a video documenting every violent act in the 2010 superbowl ads. i dunno what's dumber: the marketers for being this pathetic, or the consumers for giving marketers the impression we're this pathetic. My money's on BOTH.

Nice work.

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Wow. Mark Twain was a douche. The wonderful "Letters of Note" blog has this gem of a letter, written in 1905 by Mark Twain to a fraudulent medicine salesman. Nov. 20. 1905

J. H. Todd 
1212 Webster St.
San Francisco, Cal.

Dear Sir,

Your letter is an insoluble puzzle to me. The handwriting is good and exhibits considerable character, and there are even traces of intelligence in what you say, yet the letter and the accompanying advertisements profess to be the work of the same hand. The person who wrote the advertisements is without doubt the most ignorant person now alive on the planet; also without doubt he is an idiot, an idiot of the 33rd degree, and scion of an ancestral procession of idiots stretching back to the Missing Link. It puzzles me to make out how the same hand could have constructed your letter and your advertisements. Puzzles fret me, puzzles annoy me, puzzles exasperate me; and always, for a moment, they arouse in me an unkind state of mind toward the person who has puzzled me. A few moments from now my resentment will have faded and passed and I shall probably even be praying for you; but while there is yet time I hasten to wish that you may take a dose of your own poison by mistake, and enter swiftly into the damnation which you and all other patent medicine assassins have so remorselessly earned and do so richly deserve.

Adieu, adieu, adieu!

Mark Twain

It looks like 1212 Webster St is now a parking lot with a car wash.

You're an idiot of the 33rd degree

Wow. Mark Twain was a douche.

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Are we to take from this that Ubuntu cares more about revenue than good search results? I mean, isn't that what "Defaults to Yahoo" means, basically? Someone submit that to the Urban Dictionary.

Ubuntu is switching the default search from Google to Yahoo!

Those of you testing out the development version of Ubuntu Lucid should notice a change in Firefox very soon. The default search provider for new installations of Ubuntu Lucid (10.04) and upgrades will be Yahoo! and not Google. Canonical have struck a revenue sharing deal with Yahoo! which generates income for the company. This revenue should help pay the wages of Ubuntu Developers employed by Canonical, and support the infrastructure required to develop and build the distribution.

So when using the search box in the top right corner of Firefox on Ubuntu, you’ll be taken to a Yahoo! results page rather than the old default Google one. If you are upgrading to Ubuntu 10.04 and you had Google as your search provider (the previous default) then this will change to Yahoo!. You can of course change the search provider, this is merely the default for Lucid. Doing so will mean your search revenue won’t go via Yahoo! to Canonical. That’s your choice, clearly.

In addition, the browser ’start page’ – that is the page you see initially when you open the browser – will reflect whatever the default search provider is. So in the top right, if you choose ‘Google’ you’ll get the Google start page, and conversely if you choose ‘Yahoo!’ you’ll get the Yahoo! start page when you first open the browser. Again, you can change the start page to be blank or use some other search provider. These are just the new defaults.

It’s possible that additional search vendors may be added to the list – Bing anyone? – but it seems that for Lucid there will be at least the two mentioned above. Users who already run Ubuntu and are upgrading to Lucid, but don’t use Google won’t notice a difference, but they’re welcome to manually switch to the new Yahoo! search provider if they want to financially support the Ubuntu project that way.

No doubt this will cause some consternation within the Ubuntu community, as many find changes to “their” browser to be tantamount to breaking and entering their home. Indeed when these things were previously messed with there were a few heated complaints and reports of broken-ness.

Hopefully the dialog on this change will remain civil and, well.. lucid.

Are we to take from this that Ubuntu cares more about revenue than good search results? I mean, isn't that what "Defaults to Yahoo" means, basically? Someone submit that to the Urban Dictionary.

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I love, love, love this series. I hope the conversion to TV goes well, but I can't imagine it will. I hope I am wrong.

Image Comics tossed a press release our way announcing that pilot for The Walking Dead will air on AMC this March. Written and directed by Frank Darabont, the show will supposedly be quite faithful to the comics.

“THE WALKING DEAD’s road to the small screen has been a long one, but so far it’s looking like the best of all worlds,” creator and writer Robert Kirkman said in the press release. “Given AMC’s track record with shows like Madmen and Breaking Bad, combined with Frank Darabont writing and directing, I couldn’t possibly be more excited for this to come together. Having the pilot greenlit is a huge leap forward to this becoming a reality.”

As played out as zombies are at the moment, we’re looking forward to this one. You?

I love, love, love this series. I hope the conversion to TV goes well, but I can't imagine it will. I hope I am wrong.

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I think I can... I think I can... I think I can...

It's no surprise that self confidence plays an important role in our performance, but findings published by the American Psychological Association suggest all it takes to boost your smarts is believing that you can be smarter.

Photo by Adam UXB Smith.

Despite a lot of evidence to the contrary, many people believe that intelligence is fixed, and, moreover, that some racial and social groups are inherently smarter than others. Merely evoking these stereotypes about the intellectual inferiority of these groups (such as women and Blacks) is enough to harm the academic [performance] of members of these groups. Social psychologist Claude Steele and his collaborators (2002) have called this phenomenon "stereotype threat."

Yet social psychologists Aronson, Fried, and Good (2001) have developed a possible antidote to stereotype threat. They taught African American and European American college students to think of intelligence as changeable, rather than fixed - a lesson that many psychological studies suggests is true. Students in a control group did not receive this message. Those students who learned about IQ's malleability improved their grades more than did students who did not receive this message, and also saw academics as more important than did students in the control group.

Racial, gender, and social stereotypes aside, it's a good bit of information to keep in mind next time you run into a stumbling block in your work, studies, or hobbies. Your smarts aren't set in stone, and simply believing that can significantly improve your ability to learn.

Believing You Can Get Smarter Makes You Smarter [APA]

I think I can... I think I can... I think I can...

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Beautiful.

pixn8tr posted a photo:

Beautiful.