First off, did you know that more than just Paul Revere rode that fateful night. I didn't (my dad can quote the whole poem if you ask him). Apparently, we remember Paul Revere in particular because he knew everyone and people trusted what he had to say. The other riders were not as connected as good ol' Paul was. A while back my husband read "The Tipping Point" by Malcolm Gladwell. After reading it he told me that I was a Connector - apparently this is a person who seems to know everyone. Paul Revere was also a connector. Who knew?
Anyway, I was thinking about this recently - people used to say that instead of 6 degrees of separation I have about 3. Actually, I am one degree away from Kevin Bacon (one of my cousins babysat for him once). I'm also one degree away from Chelsea Clinton because my brother was friends with her in college. I have yet to figure out how to leverage my connection ability. Currently, it's just fun to connect with others and celebrate life with a wide variety of people.
If you are interested Malcolm Gladwell has a "connector" quiz on his website. It's pretty fun. I didn't do as well as I expected to. Part of my problem was that I kept on thinking of authors I read, not people I know. It really wasn't fair either because I know a lot of Liu's and Lin's from my old job. I would have hit the jackpot if Kim was on the list (I think I had 8 students with the last name Kim at one point). If it was Jacobson instead of Jacobs I would also have a longer list. Anyway, take a gander at the list and let us know how you do. I did it pretty quickly and I scored in the low 30's.
1 comment:
I came up with 33. I was told in college that I knew everyone. A fun quiz, thanks for sharing.
Ski
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