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Weekend


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October 22, 2004

Strange But True!

  • A weekly column of incidental information, off-the-wall observations and other random facts about the world.
    • By BILL SONES and RICH SONES, Ph.D.
    Special to the Journal

    Q.  What do jokes, gossip, chain letters, AIDS and the flu have in common?

    A.  All can spread like the plague, says Bart K. Holland in "What Are the Chances?  Voodoo Deaths, Office Gossip & Other Adventures in Probability."  And disease is a fitting metaphor here, for the same math that governs the spread of germs steers the dissemination of the others.


     
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