Re: [Nolug] Ron's sig

--- Ron Johnson <ron.l.johnson@cox.net> wrote:
> On Tue, 2003-07-15 at 19:48, Michael Flora wrote:
> > --- Ron Johnson <ron.l.johnson@cox.net> wrote:
> > > On Tue, 2003-07-15 at 19:03, Dave Prentice
> wrote:
> > > > OK, Ron, I'll bite: How are you 4 degrees from
> > > Vlad Putin?
> > >
> > > I've met Norm Manetta (former Congressman,
> employee
> > > of Lockheed-
> > > Martin [where he was ~5 levels above me] and
> > > Transportation Secretary).
> > > NM knows W, and W knows Putin.
> > >
> > Wow!
> >
> > I met Dr. Georg von Spakovsky when I worked at
> > Marshall Space Flight Center. He was a member of
> the
> > von Braun team and had met Adolf Hitler. So, by
> this
> > reasoning, I'm 2 degrees from the Bad Boy himself.
>
> Have we met before? That would be a *great*
> .signature!
>
I have been to a few (maybe 1/2 dozen) NOLUG meetings
but I don't think we've met.

This reminds me of an old, OLD song (out of the 1920's
I think), "I Danced with a Man Who'd Danced with a
Girl who'd Danced with the Prince of Wales".

The idea of 6 degrees of separation comes from an
experiment done in the 1960's, IIRC. A scientist
recruited several people as "targets". He then
recruited some other people who were total strangers
to the targets, and asked them to get a message to the
targets NOT by mailing the message directly to them
but by giving it to an acquaintance whom they thought
MIGHT have some knowledge of the targets. The same
instructions applied to the acquaintances. Turned out
that for messages that actually reached the targets,
an average of six steps were required. This does have
some relevance to computer networks and email
forwarding, according to a recent article in Science
News.

Regards,
M.R.F.

"As you struggle to save humanity be sure to avoid
electrodes in your path" -- Robotron 2084

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month!
http://sbc.yahoo.com
___________________
Nolug mailing list
nolug@nolug.org
Received on 07/16/03