Interconnected.

Have you ever stopped to think about how deeply our lives are intertwined with others' lives?  These days especially where it is easy to maintain some sort of friendship across the country or the world.  Facebook and email makes it so you can send a note on a whim to a person you are thinking about.

via. 

I have heard some people quote studies on how many people you can  be connected to at any given time, like this one (120-130 friends, with a retort here).  This particular article claims that you can have reciprocal relationships with 1500 acquaintances at once, though only 150 is the size of the average social group.

Of course, sublevels exist even within that select circle. At the top of your social pyramid are the five people closest to you, most of them probably relatives. They are nestled inside the top 15, with whom you generally have weekly interchanges. Then come the top 50, with whom you keep up every month or so. Finally, there are all the others with whom you correspond in any meaningful sense. All the relationships require tending, although relatives retain their place in the hierarchy more tenaciously than nonrelatives do.

Then there was the note about how relationships fade.

I suspect that Facebook's one great contribution has been to slow down that rate of relationship decay by allowing us to keep in touch with friends over long distances. How long it will prevent relationships from fading altogether remains to be seen—social networking sites haven't been around long enough for us to tell yet. My guess, however, is that they will slow the rate of decay only temporarily and won't prevent relationships from dying eventually. What makes relationships really work, it seems, is "doing stuff" together. Catching up over the phone helps to keep the acquaintance ticking, but if at some point we don't get together—and sooner rather than later—then the relationship will fade, Facebook or no Facebook.

Have a read through the article and see what you think.  So for my analysis, here are the measurables that I have available.  Now, first of all, I am not much of a socialite in the online world.  I don't update my facebook status, like or plus things, tweet, or any number of other terms.  Maybe just a bit of a sentimentalist who wants to reach out to people I knew a decade ago and just say "Hi" once to let them know I was thinking of them.

Here's what I have:
301 Phone numbers for  265 Contacts
128 LinkedIn Connections
398 Facebook Friends
710 Gmail Contacts with 114 "Other" Contacts (Granted, 198 contacts are affiliated with my current ward)
125 this year's Christmas List
129 Google Plus Contacts in Circles

Of the 20 People most frequently emailed from my gmail account, I go to church will all 20, and I live in the same house as one of them.

I started thinking about this last week when I was flipping through my contacts list on my cell phone and found people I haven't called in years... but have still not deleted them.  It was interesting to see who was in there that I NEVER call.  And yet, some of them, I just haven't deleted because I like having the phone numbers on hand.  Just to remember.  Is that weird?

For example,

• A birth mother who we were corresponding with 3 years ago.  
• Our bishop from 6 years ago.  
• My Elder's Quorum presidency from 7 years ago.  
• My freshman roommate 13 years ago.
• Our next-door neighbors from 6 years ago.  
• My neurosurgeon from 7 years ago.
• A friend from growing up who I have never called.
• That couple we met on the cruise to the Bahamas that said "Come visit us anytime!"
• A favorite mission companion.
• My grandpa who passed away 3 years ago.
• A genius friend from graduate school.
• The phone number to my college research lab.

It costs me nothing to keep these numbers in my phone, so for now, they'll probably stay.  Is there anyone in your phone list that you never call?

Why do we laugh?

Our recent Friday Family Movie Nights have entailed watching about 30 minutes of Mary Poppins before bed.  It's great fun, and reminds me of the days when Ian was 2 years old and could sing along with the soundtrack on the cassette in the car.  He says he doesn't remember most of them, but if we keep watching the movie over and over again, his memory will be jogged and he'll be able to sing along with, "It's grand to be an Englishman in 1910, King Edward's on the throne it's the age of men!..."  and "We're merely soldiers in petticoats, shoulder to shoulder for women's votes.  Though we adore men individually, we agree that as a group their rather stupid..."

A song that I always enjoy?  "I Love to Laugh."  See below.

Have you ever wondered why we laugh?  I can think a few reasons.

• That was funny!  When I hear a joke, and it's pretty funny, I'll laugh.
• Nervous laughter.  As in, "I hope that's not true!"
• Embarrassed laughter. I'm in pain, beacuse I tripped up the stairs!
• You are out of context!  (Young kid wearing grown-up's clothes, etc.)

Here are a couple specific examples that I have noted this week:

• This week I was listening to a lawyer give a presentation where he chuckled to himself at the end of every sentence.  Not sure if he thought he was saying something funny or if he was incredulous that everyone else in the world had a dimmer intellect than him.
•  Today I was at business meetings where the presenter complained to tech support that the screen wasn’t working, and the tech support recommended that he push the "on" button, which of course worked, bringing laughter throughout the room.
• A different presenter once had the opportunity to record intro music playing the bass guitar for the Bill Cosby Show.  He person reading the "fun fact" in the introduction said bass like the fish and the room erupted in laughter.  I didn't laugh because I know it was at the poor reader's expense.

I recently read an article in Scientific American, written by William B. Keith, giving some of the basics for laughter.

1. The first requirement is the “play frame,” which puts a real-life event in a nonserious context and allows for an atypical psychological reaction.
2. Another crucial characteristic is incongruity, which can be seen in the improbable or inconsistent relation between the “punch line” and the “body” of a joke or experience.

This seems to be epitomized by slapstick comedy and America's Funniest Home Videos.  We know that everyone is going to be alright, because it's a comedy, right?

Here's another take on it, from MSNBC.  By Robert Provine, Ph.D

Contrary to folk wisdom, most laughter is not about humor; it is about relationships between people...We found that most laughter does not follow jokes. People laugh after a variety of statements such as “Hey John, where ya been?” “Here comes Mary,” “How did you do on the test?” and “Do you have a rubber band?”. These certainly aren’t jokes.

Curiously, laughter seldom interrupts the sentence structure of speech. It punctuates speech. We only laugh during pauses when we would cough or breathe.

lol. 

What about you?  Overactive funny bone?

Fun with casters

Today is *almost* one of those throw-back posts where I reminisce about the awesome 80s.  Only I'm going to hone in on one specific part of that time period.

Did you ever have a Sit'n'skate?  Cause I did, and it was amazing.

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 Some people these days market it as the "Flying Turtle" by Wham-O.  The gist was that you sat on it, and as you moved the handles left and right, the toy started to move.  The more you oscillate the handles, the faster you go.  Very simple.  Yet very strange method of gaining momentum.  

I was trying to think through the mechanics of the motion, and found a few physics enthusiasts who like to write out models for things.  Well, this is the caster wheel principle, wherein the turning axis is in front of the wheel contact axis, causing a stability case where the wheel "wants" to follow the axis.  Think of a stroller or shopping cart.  The wheels will right themselves if they are pointed in the wrong direction.  Well, for this device, it is easier for the wheels to move forward when you turn the handles than for them to slide side-ways, which is the only other alternative given the torsion. Casters are taken advantage of in robotic systems, where casters give additional motion capability.

Also, there are new products on the market these days that take advantage of this mode of propulsion.  For example, there are these twisty skateboards called Ripstiks.  I saw a neighbor kid riding one a couple of years ago, and thought, "How can he be riding on two wheels?!"

A Ripstik. via.

Now a Plasma Carwhich is basically a sit'n'skate with a different posture.  The website says those wheels in front are just for stability, and don't really touch the ground.  So it's the same thing.  Caster wheels behind the axis of rotation.

 

Available at Amazon.com  You should watch the videos of the kids riding them there.  Pretty cool!

Have you ever thought back to a toy that you had as a kid that was so cool, and seen elements of it reinvented again and again?