Old but Not Frail: A Matter of Heart and Head   NY Times

As one grows older, their physical appearance begins to change, regardless if they are fit or not.  Most people distaste this inevitable change in life.  Research done shows that there are many that’s hearts are pumping better than the youth of this country.  According to the article attached, Witold Bialokur can run over 6 miles, under 45 minutes, which is impressive.  What makes this astonishing is that Mr. Bialokur is 71, outdoing many Americans today.

Mary Wittenberg, age 44, is the president of the New York Road Runners, the organization in which many marathons have been organized and sponsored.  She tells that she is most inspired running when running with Mr. Bialokur, and can barely keep up. Scientists say that this idea of age being a bad thing basically has a sort of placebo effect on people, in terms of making people believe what they think.  Studies show that people who truly believe age as a bad thing and believe they will grow slow, tend to lean toward that aspect as their future physique.  People who continue to work out or at least stay healthy can far surpass these misleading notions.

Relating to our topic in networks, this notion of people believing others and following based on the decisions of others, due to misleading notions can lead to this reject cascade, where people decide to not work out and believe the notion that with age comes weakness.  Others though believe that age is not as bad as society has made it out to be and continue to stay health and workout, making this accept cascade.  These cascades are not exactly as accurate or simple as the one’s presented in class, but do represent society and present a realistic situation.  These cascades are not simple in the sense since the actual data is not presented through the article, and the actual cascades can not really be measured numerically and observed piece by piece, considering it spans a large number of people.  The only way it was determined that these were cascades, were due to the end results of a positive and negative value, accepting age as a good thing or bad thing, thus affecting one’s physique; through this we can assume that the beginning inquiries of this study lead to the beginning of two cascades, as in two people agreed and others followed.