Contagiousness

I just started reading Malcolm Gladwell's book The Tipping Point. Now, I know I'm years behind some of you in this, but I love what I've read so far. I'll try to post more thought when I finish, but right now I want to share something from the book about thinking of the world in epidemic terms and contagiousness.

Have you ever thought about yawning, for instance? Yawning is a surprisingly powerful act. Just by reading the two yawns in the previous two sentences--and the two additional yawns in this sentence--a good number of you will probably yawn within the next few minutes. Even as I'm writing this I've yawned twice. If you're reading this in a public place, and you've just yawned, chances are that a good proportion of everyone who saw you yawn is now yawning too, and a good proportion of the people watching the people who watched you yawn are now yawning as well, and on and on, in a ever-widening, yawning circle.

So how many times have you yawned?

I have to admit, I caught the yawning virus.