Scale free

Since Christmas my free reading time has been spent on a back-log of New Scientists and Steven Pinker's book on the history of violence, "The Better Angels of Our Nature".  

So far I've found one nice tidbit (from New Scientist) and once nice tangential idea (from Pinker).

Tidbit - Integrated information theory.  Uses network analysis tools to calculate measures of consciousness.  It takes a top down approach to the micro-macro divide problem.  It also specifies that groups of people can not function as a collective conscious.

Tangent - Investigate whether school organization follow a scale free pattern (i.e. power law).  If the fit is pretty good, investigate negative discrepancies to see if non-obvious actors are consider and consider themselves part of the group.  Investigate positive discrepancies to see if actors tend to freeload or weakly consider themselves part of the group.