January 4, 2012

White Dog and The White Dog Army
Wonderful World Wednesday
White Dog and the rest of us know fully well just how small the world really is. Our blog family extends around the globe. White Dog's friend and favorite musician, Take Abe, lives in Japan. Our home is filled with mementos from exotic locales Steve and I and friends have visited.

The WDA understands that helping tsunami victims in Japan or reaching out to earthquake victims in Peru is not that far a stretch. And that in these amazing technological times we are truly "one world."

In the "settlement days" even before my time, the trip from New Mexico to California took months and was fraught with dangers; yesterday a friend called to ask if she could come by next weekend to just "hang out and ski for 3 days." Her worst fear? A long line at security before she boards a plane that will get her to us in under an hour and a half.

There are no such thing as strangers any more or far away places and The WDA believes a global perspective requires us to no longer think in terms of "us" and "them," but rather of just an "all of us." To validate their plea for worldwide compassion and peaceful interaction, they ask you to consider this new study:

 

Everyone On Earth Is 4.74 Degrees Apart

By Kathryn Hawkins

According to a new Facebook study, just 4.74 degrees separate any person from another.

It’s long been said that everyone on Earth is six degrees of separation or fewer from one another. But according to a new study, we’re even closer than we thought: Researchers at Facebook and the University of Milan have found that the magic number is just 4.74.

The researchers tracked the connections of the 721 million Facebook members (more than a tenth of the world’s population) to determine how many links it would take to get from one person to a randomly selected other person. Worldwide, the average number of links was 4.74, while in the United States, it took just 4.37 connections to tie one person to another.

“When considering even the most distant Facebook user in the Siberian tundra or the Peruvian rain forest,” the company wrote on its blog, “a friend of your friend probably knows a friend of their friend.”

So if you’re ever feeling a little alienated from society at large, take comfort in the knowledge that you can reach anyone in the world within a few connections. Though it’s got 7 billion people, the world is smaller than you think.

White Dog and the White Dog Army think if we are all just 4.74 degrees apart that we all should consider more wagging and less barking; more sharing and less snarling; more belly rubs and fewer bellyaches. It IS a small world, after all. Think about it!