My Erdős–Bacon Number

Mayim Bialik’s Erdos-Bacon number is 7.  Dr. Bialik was the central character in the 1990's sitcom Blossom and now plays Dr. Amy Farrah Fowler on my now-favorite television comedy, The Big Bang Theory.  In between, she earned a doctorate in neuroscience from UCLA.  Wikipedia

Mayim Bialik’s Erdos-Bacon number is 7.  Mine is non-existent.  Apparently, so is Kevin Bacon’s (the ‘Bacon’ of the Erdős-Bacon number) as he has presumably not authored a mathematical paper linking back to Erdős.  Too funny - Kevin Bacon can’t even play the game of which he is one half.

If we stretched a bit, I could have a Bacon number of 2, as I faithfully watched and was a fan of Bacon’s wife Kyra Sedgwick in The Closer.  And maybe I can finagle a math credit somehow for some of my grade school algebraic machinations.

A stretch, I know.

But aren’t scientists cute?  They’ve actually tried to make what is clearly a “I know somebody famous” exercise into a scholarly pursuit, labeling it an effort to measure the “small world phenomena in academia and entertainment” Wikipedia: Erdos-Bacon number The point of the exercise is to track your own degrees of separation from a mathematician and a movie star and add the two together to arrive at your own number.

In other words, I know somebody famous!  And I know them closer/better/with more bragging rights than you!

Like I said, it’s very cute.

Hey, I once saw John Larroquette in an airport in Toronto.

Better yet, I once chased Jimmy Fallon in his limo as he departed from an SNL taping.  You had to be there – let’s just say that a mom will do a lot for a beloved step-daughter, even at 2 a.m in NYC.  So – Jimmy Fallon and Kevin Bacon appeared in the same article in Deadline Hollywood

And I actually have been in a film (about peacemaking) and I’m pretty sure Kevin Bacon is a fan of world peace.  I know, I know, I really don’t get the concept, do I?

But that’s my story and I’m sticking to it: I have Bacon score of 2 and an Erdos score of 2 trillion (it takes awhile to get from my grade school self to Dr. Erdős), giving me an Erdős-Bacon score of 2 trillion and 2.

Top that!

Ann Coulter: Just a Thought

"I'm a Christian first and a mean-spirited, bigoted conservative second, and don't you ever forget it."   –Ann Coulter

Whatever I am politically, I am not a conservative.  Consequently, I am no fan of Ann Coulter.  And her recent Tweet using a pejorative word to describe the President which is hurtful to others – it was on the playground and it is now -- is not one I appreciate.

That said, I have to admit that I both laughed out loud and admired the spirit of the quote above, cited by Wikipedia's bio.  I have had to wonder whether the same is true of me or not.  Am I a Christian first and all the other things that might describe me second?

The judging me wants to say that if you’re truly a Christian first, you don’t get to be bigoted and mean-spirited at all, let alone second.  But the humor-appreciating woman me wants to say hat’s off for a really good self-lampoon that just might point to a larger truth: there are many ‘mes’ in each and all of us.  To observe that about ones’ self can be a canard – offered up to deceive others with one’s apparent true civility, all other evidence to the contrary.  Or it can actually be a candid moment of self revealing.  In Ms. Coulter’s case, maybe it’s both.  Maybe it’s neither.

But before I go off on a rant at someone else’s behavior, I might do well to stop and take stock of my own and ask what list might be reeled off about my own second-place characteristics and found wanting.

Just a thought.

Scotland -- Day Six (On meals and common language)

Tea . . . dinner . . . supper . . .

Meanings vary depending on where you are. . . and who you are . . . or when you’re saying it.  Context matters, as the terms and their usage vary even with the same person from time to time.

Me at (I think) tea (lunch or dinner)
at Rozelle House.  Quite tasty.

When Liz wants to ask me what I’d like to eat for the evening main meal, she may ask me what I want for dinner, but she’ll usually ask what I want for tea; although if I don’t know it, she may be asking me what I want for lunch (dinner) or mid-afternoon snack (tea) or if I want to go out to a nice place for (high) tea and have a light supper (late-night snack) later.  

“Supper”* is defined as a light evening meal or late-night dinner (the only thing everyone agrees on the world over, as far as I can tell, is that if there are both a dinner and a supper, supper comes after).

“Dinner”* is defined as the main meal of the day, regardless of the time when it is served, or else as a formal evening meal.  In the southern United States, however, if you’re invited to dinner, you’re being invited to lunch, but it will definitely be the main (and perhaps only, depending on your stamina) meal of your day, as in “Pastor, will you join us for dinner after church?”, to which I, at least, almost always say, “Yes, thank you very much.”  (If you’ve ever wondered why pastors tend to be a chubby lot, here’s your answer – the kindness and talent of the culinary offerer kill us softly, to borrow from Roberta Flack.)

“Tea”* means a light late morning or mid-afternoon meal or snack or the main evening meal, at least in the United Kingdom.  In the US, tea persists in meaning something we drink, warm or (shockingly) cold.

This evening, when everyone in the family comes home and we gather round the table, it will, I suspect, be a combination of tea, dinner and supper – but whatever we variously call the moment, bread will be broken and community will happen.

Bon appetit!


_____________
*According to Wikipedia, who else?  But when it comes to tea, the matter is made even more cloudy by Wikipedia’s mode of distinguishing between words, persons or ideas who have a number of different meanings or contexts: the disambiguation entry.  Thus the main entry for “tea” will be found simply under “tea” (as in the loose leaves that grow around the world to supply the beverage-thirsting masses of humans with the various flavors we so appreciate), while the concept of tea as a meal will be found under “tea (disambiguation)”.  Really?  Disambiguation?  I should apparently know that “disambiguation” (meaning to make un- or not ambiguous) in Wiki-speak means “everything else”, as in “Any other meaning or context you’re looking for may be found in our disambiguation category.”  Like the UK and the US, Wikipedia and I are separated by our common language.  See Everything You Know About English is Wrong for a humorous discussion of the various persons to whom the "common language" reference has been (at least according to the author) misattributed.