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Dec 17, 2002

"Off by an inch in the beginning, off by ten thousand miles at the end." --Master Hua

Malcolm Gladwell, in 'The Tipping Point', notes that ideas and behavior and messages and products sometimes behave just like outbreaks of infectious disease. Just as a single sick person can start an epidemic, so too can a few fare-beaters and graffiti artists fuel a subway crime wave. They are social epidemics. The moment they take off, when they reach their critical mass, is the tipping point, "that one dramatic moment in an epidemic when everything can change all at once."