Tidbits

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7920434.stm

“The average number is about 150, says leading anthropologist Robin Dunbar.”

“They usually consist of an inner circle of five “core” people and an additional layer of 10, he says. That makes 15 people – some will probably be family members – who are your central group and then outside that, there’s another 35 in the next circle and another 100 on the outside. And that’s one person’s social world.”

“There’s a limit to how many close friends like this you can have and it’s probably between six and 12, he says.”

The “sidebar” information says the average number of close friends a person has is around 5, which make sense. Having a large circle of acquaintances is pretty easy.

I have a circle that extends out to nearly 3 thousand acquaintances – people I recognize well enough to attach a name to them, and I do things with them once a year or so. We have at least one common interest, and attend one annual event together – a convention, a volunteer project, or something similar. If I include former students, that ups the numbers a lot. If I include people whose names I don’t remember, but whom I see regularly at those events, that number goes up quite a bit more. If I count the number of people who include me in their circle whom I’ve never met face to face and whose real names I don’t know – well, I think that’s a pretty astronomical number of people.

If I count the number of people I consider a close friend, people upon whom I depend and who depend on me – that number is a shrinking number as I age and they die off. I haven’t made new close friends as my old ones die, so I’m now down to only 2 such friends and they live half a continent away. I should get off my lazy duff and admit that I have a number of people among my circle of acquaintances who could easily become close friends if I simply made the effort.

Starbuck’s Breakfast Sandwiches – can we say – “eeeww!”? I don’t like to eat mass produced foods to begin with and I especially do not like to eat frozen and reheated eggs particularly when they are being passed off as “fresh”, so I continue to avoid Starbuck’s. I’m not boycotting them the way I’m boycotting McDonald’s, but I find their coffee tastes awful, their pastries stale, and now their “fresh” breakfast sandwiches are really frozen, mass produced manufactured food. Nope, I’ll continue to have my coffee and pastries and sandwiches at places I know truly do make them fresh from scratch.

“Although the eggs and cheese are mixed in huge vats, poured into tins, baked, frozen and shipped to distribution centers to be assembled, they wanted them to look freshly made to appeal to people who do not like fast-food outlets.” – http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/03/business/03sbux.html?_r=1

And in the food allergy hype, with the peanut free zones and food manufacturers (what a horrible thought – food manufactured instead of grown and prepared) over-zealously labeling their products so people with legitimate allergies either forgo their product altogether (can we say “lost sales”?) or fatefully risk eating it because the other option is to go hungry. I find it appalling that restaurants often have no idea what is actually in the food they serve, probably because it’s all frozen and reheated instead of prepared on site. Still, the risk of dying from a food allergy is so small that people without allergies or with mild allergies shouldn’t have to be subjected to “peanut-free zones.” Just 18 people a year die from food allergies – all food allergies, not just peanut allergies.

When you think of how many people die of bee stings in comparison, it makes you wonder why there aren’t flower-free zones for children with bee allergies. Why are parents of children who are seriously allergic to bee stings more relaxed about their children’s allergies, which are far harder to avoid, than parents whose children have food allergies? And I’d be more worried about my child dying of malnutrition than a food allergy. I’ll risk some allergy reactions just to make sure my child is nourished. Death by malnutrition is much more fearsome than death by food allergy. And it’s not like peanuts are in everything the way soy is, or wheat.

Number of deaths per year from:
“Food allergies 18
Lightning strikes 48
Stings (hornets, wasps or bees) 82
Malnutrition 3,003
Accidental drowning 3,976
Accidental poisoning 23,618
Flu and pneumonia 63,001”