degrees_of_separation epitome of incomprehensibility Someone said, somewhere, that everyone in the world is connected by six degrees of separation. Or, in the version I learned as a kid, that six handshakes is enough to connect the world. And sometimes this can be amusing or at least mildly interesting. For example, I've calculated I'm three degrees away from Ezra Pound, the subject of my MA thesis: 1) I took a music class from a composer 2) who had, when she was younger, worked for another composer, R. Murray Schafer 3) who'd become friends with Ezra Pound in his (Pound's) old age and collected his writings on music into a book. I could bypass the music prof and say that I've sung a song by Schafer in a choir (the surreal Epitaph for Moonlight with its squiggly doodly score), except that the "degrees of separation" thing should involve physical contact or at least some degree of interaction. Otherwise I could claim I'm best buddies with Dr. Seuss because I performed a play in grade 2 adapted from The Lorax. (I was a Truffula Tree that died. Dramatically.) I'm also three degrees away, through Ontario friends, from both Deadmaus and Justin Bieber. I'll stay three degrees away from Bieber. I'm sure he won't mind. But it becomes sad and sort of frightening when this newfound awareness of connections - the awareness that comes through the Internet or simply through growing up and talking to more people - means you're connected to people who have terrible things happen to them. There are more people you know who have cancer, or who've been hurt in accidents, or been victims of abuse (not that the metaphysical great-granddaughter of Ezra Pound hasn't broken a friendship by getting drunk for the second time in her life and hitting someone in the face, but that's another story, and not nearly as amusing as it might sound to a stranger - given that the victim felt it necessary to cut off all contact, and the perpetrator suffered from panic attacks for almost a year afterwards - but so_it_goes? So_it_goes when your epitome of nothing is a violent competitive asshole. Forgive me. I think I've learned my lesson, and I'll be more careful in the next set of parentheticals and/or margins where Real_Life happens.) And, to return to something I touched on earlier, I wonder what counts as contact. Suppose someone to whom I lent $5 to on a peer-to-peer microfinance site, which hypothetically may be Zidisha - better than Kiva, because the interest rates are NOT what Ezra Pound would call "usury," though when Pound talked about usury he mostly blamed the Jews, because, you know, he was also an asshole, wrongly convicted or not... Breathe, breathe. Let me start that paragraph again. Suppose someone lends $5 to finance a loan to someone in Nairobi. Suppose the microfinance platform she uses includes a comment capability. Suppose the woman in Nairobi comments on Sept. 23, 2013 that she's okay, but worried about the recent mall shooting and hostage situation downtown from where she lives. That will make it seem more real to e_o_i than just a paragraph in the local paper. For further research: 1) Ezra Pound. He really did have a fascinating life. His letters, while not as poetically filthy as some of Joyce's, have their own source of fascination - his abbreviations are proto-Twitter, and his rants remind me of a certain (hypothetical, of course) contrarian American blatherskite. 2) www.zidisha.org - "because helping entrepreneurs around the world is more important than reading books upside down." There's no French word for entrepreneur, of course, so don't misunderestimate me. (I miss you, George W. Bush, and I wonder how far away you are from James Joyce.) 130923 ... past my supervisor likes to say on occasion that this city only has three degrees of separation. everyone knows enough others to known practically everyone else. i think, though, there's a class aspect at play. who counts as "everyone" and who doesn't? all well meaning aside, i think the degrees work best the more degrees one has. that's the nature of the profession. 130924 ... e_o_i I always think of PhDs as a little acidic, but that's the stream_of_consciousness talking. I mean, they could be pH neutral for all I know. We don't know what the value of D is yet. But I would try, if I had a good idea for a project that required more school. Right now, my main writing project involves research into critical theory (it's blather-inspired; see critics & dictionary_of_hating_things) but not more school. And it won't be a parody of one particular theory guide, but a general non-serious take on various critics and terms. (That means I'm adding Giorgio Agamben, who didn't make it into Penguin's 2000 D of CT. Anyway, I've been lazy, but I should update the link above by the end of the week.) 131001 what's it to you? who go blather from