Halfway down the Danube

FWIW, I have a Rohrabacher Number of 2, which implies that I have a disturbingly low Mullah Omar Number (probably 4, possibly as low as 3.)

John Wilkins (_Evolving Thoughts_ on ScienceBlogs) has a Darwin Number of 2, with the links defined as live personal physical contact.

First, as a gay man, I am genetically programmed to respond to the kittens thread, particularly along the axis of Pink Bows.

Also, while I have a passing fascination with nuclear physics, I'm lamentably limited in my actual ability to discuss it.

Oh, and while I have no idea what my Rohrabacher number is, my Mullah Omar number is one, as is my King Abdullah. Oh, and my OBL is two.

Ah, well.

"The U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York is attempting to extradite Sacirbey to Bosnia and Herzegovina in accordance with a 1902 treaty between the United States and the Kingdom of Serbia."

You know, that treaty would have been negotiated by Teddy Roosevelt's Secretary of State, John Hay. Who started his career as an unhappy young would-be poet in 1850s Illinois, until Abraham Lincoln picked him up and made him his secretary.

On the Serbian side, it would have been one of the last acts of King Alexander Obrenovic, before they stabbed him, shot him, and threw him naked off a balcony.

I'd be interested to see the text.

Carlos, you remember Mira from Belgrade? She works for Booz Allen Hamilton in Virginia now... anyway, I bet she knows Sacirbey. Be interesting to ask her.

-- Rohrbacher one. He spent a lot of time complaining about the plot against his girlfriend. (IANMTU.)

Of course, Abramoff one -> all sorts of interesting twos.

Doug M.

Carlos asked:

Okay, who here among us hasn't done this?

Which? The Aegis stuff is easy. Only yesterday I wrote a two page paper describing Australia's four foreign source income attribution regimes and set out What Has To Be Done, especially from the viewpoint of the longsuffering investors, and their accountants. Of course, income tax isn't really rocket science.

But rock-star? During the 1970s I wrote and performed two pieces for Radio 7THE's New Dimensions in Christian Music. Does this count? Is Beatrix a groupie? I think not.

I have a Jonas Savimbi number of three, and a romantic Natalie Merchant number of three. I picture the mode of this group as a bunch of forty-something men in Fairfax County who write Astroturf for the pesticide industry and have recently discovered unexpected spiritual resonances in the movie American Beauty.

I will be meeting GHWB and Sandra Day O'Connor in about three weeks (National Constitution Center board meeting), so I guess that will give me all sorts of interesting numbers. I've also met Scalia, and my college roommate clerked for Thomas.

There's also my Ed Rendell story and my James Carville story, but enough said about that.

I have a Teddy Kennedy number of 1, and Cardinal Law number of 1. Got them at the same time. I'm more proud of my Solzhenitsyn number of 2, and my Lenin/Dzerzhinsky/Zinoviev/Bukharin/Stalin #3.

I get to meet plenty of U.S. Senators and congress-critters in my day job. Also, I was confirmed into the One True Church by His Eminence Cardinal Krol, so I guess that probably gives me a JPII number of 2. My wife grew up in certain circles in LA so my celebrity number is 2 or at most 3 for zillions of people in the IMDB.
I wonder what my Hitler number is? Some of my more elderly law school professors may have met Owen Roberts, who was dean at Penn Law after being the Nurenberg prosecutor, so that might give me a Goering number of 3...

It just occurred to me that I also have a Dan Rather number of 1 and a Mike Wallace number of 1, so that puts a lot of interesting people in my 2-sphere. I also have a Gene Roddenberry and an OJ Simpson number of 2 (in each case, the first step is to my wife). I was also once within ten feet of Diana P. of W., but there was no personal-level interaction so that doesn't count.

Luke, when on Earth did you meet Mullah Omar?

I have an Edward Teller number of 1. Oppenheimer of 2. Bill Gates of 2 (nearly a 1). Bill Richardson of 1. Bill Clinton of 2 (nearly a 1).

oh frak it. Any US politician is about a 2 away when you're in this industry. Comes with the cost, I suppose.

"I want my...I want my...I want my H. P. Ccccccc!"

Anyways, Carlos, I am going to see about splicing in something like spigot into CCSM. What might that allow me to do, Carlos?

O:)

I don't suppose a Peter Jackson number of 2 is very impressive for a New Zealander. But I do have an Edward Teller number of 2 as well, if you go by personal interaction rather than co-writing papers.

Hypothesis (based entirely upon HDTD comments, no googling): Will Baird spent some portion of his career at Livermore. Fits all of the data (Teller #, Richardson #, familiarity with high-Z nuclear physics) rather neatly.

I'm disappointed that no one has yet tried to figure how John Wilkins, who IIRC is in his mid-forties, has managed to get a Darwin Number of 2 - again, the links are physical contacts (handshakes, if you like) with living persons (i.e. we don't count touching the same rock that Darwin touched. And it's Charles Robert Darwin we're talking about, not one of his descendents.)

Doug, the extradition treaty is 32 Stat. 1890.

"The United States of America and His Majesty the King of Servia, being desirous to confirm their friendly relations and to promote the cause of Justice, have resolved to conclude a treaty for the extradition of fugitives from justice between the United States of America and the Kingdom of Servia, and have appointed for that purpose the following plenipotentiaries:

"The President of the United States of America, Charles S. Francis, Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to his Majesty the King of Servia.

"His Majesty the King of Servia, M. Michel V. Vouïtch, President of His Council of Ministers, Minister for Foreign Affairs, Senator, Grand Officer of the Order of Milosh the Great, Grand Cross of the Order of Takovo, Officer of the Order of the White Eagle etc. etc., who, after having communicated to each other their respective full powers, found in good and due form, have agreed upon and concluded the following articles..."

Charles Spencer Francis, editor of the Troy (N.Y.) Times, was appointed by McKinley to be Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to Greece, Roumania [sic] and Servia [sic]. Cornell grad -- set a scull record! Diplomatic/newspaper family: his father, who founded the paper, was appointed Minister to Greece by Grant, then served in Portugal and Austria-Hungary.

You'd probably know more about Vouïtch / Vuic.

I'll send you the PDF of the statute in my next lucid period.

Robert, I should recuse myself, but I think your use of "persons" here is a little... expansive.

Bill Gates number of 1.
Paul Keating number of 1 giving me a Suharto number of 2.
A John Clark number of 1 giving me a two for most Australian actors. And, uh, Mel Gibson.
And a Gough Whitlam number of two in so many, many ways.

Carlos,

Where'd I met Mullah Omar? Where wouldn't I, more like! There's this little gay bar in Abu Zhabi, where the singing boys are no older than nine, trussed up in nothing but diaphanous silks and gold paint...

Actually, my next door neighbor met him at a wedding in Waziristan before 9/11. His housemate, apparently, has a Castro number of 3 or so.

Luke, I think that means you have a Mullah Omar number of 2. Still disturbingly low.

I'm picturing that wedding party: big plates of pilaf, some happy fire, a big screen TV playing Khuda Gawah dubbed in Pushtu, and three guys on a divan talking earnestly about the World Cup. All the attendees got a coffee set, except for the guy who got drunk in the bathroom, who was flogged after the reception.

(Eighteen replies to a post on Skunk Baxter and no replies to a post on kittens. I think I've made my point.)

My Saddam Hussein number is 3, which is interesting, but still nowhere near as Luke's numbers, but still interesting. And my Donald Rumsfeld number is 2, which makes for quite a few other interesting 3's...

It may be possible to overstate the significance of number 2s.

F'rex I suspect, but cannot prove, that most married men in Arkansas have a Bill Clinton number of two.

Andrew R wrote:

My Saddam Hussein number is 3, which is interesting, but still nowhere near as Luke's numbers, but still interesting. And my Donald Rumsfeld number is 2

Andrew, if your Rumsfeld number is 2 then it goes without saying that your Saddam number is 3. Of course if you reach that 3 by different hand-shake paths then it becomes more interesting.

My Hussein 3 comes from the handshake we all know and love. Nothing more interesting.

Blah. What reason would there be to feel pride of having _any_ kind of a Solzhenitsyn number?

For the record, my Adolf Hitler number is #2. Yes, seriously; if someone is interested, I'll gladly shed further light on the story.

I also have a Heinrich Himmler number of #3, _independently_ of my Hitler number. As above, should you desire to know how, I'd be more than happy to tell you.

Incidentally, my Lech Wałęsa and John Paul II numbers are also #2. But those were easy to come up with.

Cheers,
Jalonen

Jussi, fess up. I'm interested in the story. Hell, I'm willing to try to finagle a trip to Helsinki just to hear it.

Which might happen, since I'm about to acquire Swedish in-laws. The non-Swedish in-laws don't like the older generation of them, however. Sweden appears to be the sort of country that induces new immigrants to become more (whatever) than the (whatevers), which does not enamor them to those who remained in the old country.

Actually, thinking about it, the younger generation of Swedish in-laws seems to be becoming British at a rather alarming rate. Hmmm. Feel free to comment, in addition to explaining why I am now only four degrees of separation from Heinrich Himmler and thus five from ... Sweet Mary.

Waitsecond ... I'm only two degrees of separation from You Know Who? Mother of Christ. I gotta tell my father.

I'd tell my grandparents, but they've passed, and were anyway sufficiently horrified that I use expressions like "Sweet Mary" and "Mother of Christ" so naturally.

Just clarifying, because I know you know that I know that Sweden is most definitely not Finland. But it is close, and considering the relationship with the Swedish in-laws, not a bad getaway option.

Hypothesis (based entirely upon HDTD comments, no googling): Will Baird spent some portion of his career at Livermore. Fits all of the data (Teller #, Richardson #, familiarity with high-Z nuclear physics) rather neatly.

Sooooo close, but no cigar. I will not (with blink tag) work for that unholy place. Actually, at least for the time being, I cannot, upon reflection, work there currently. So, erm, try again. No! Googling! ;)

I actually have a Rumsfeld # of 2, upon reflection too and a Shrubbish and Darth Cheney of 2. Ick. I actually think I have a Yanukovich # of 2. ew. I have a Putin of 3 then and possibly 2. I have a Seymour Cray of 2 (and only missed him in person cuz of his untimely death) and a Danny Hillis of 1. I have a Chu of 1, Smoot of 1, Anastasio of 1 (I think, if not, then a 2), Miller of 2, an Einstein of 2, Chen of 2, and I think I already said it but I will again, an Oppenheimer of 2. Oh, and I have a Wen Ho Lee of 1.

That ought to be a dead giveaway, but we'll see.

Thinking more about my H*r number (I guess I shouldn't use the name too often lest Google searches start to attract the Wrong Sort of Person to this location), I wonder whether the most promising plan of attack, so to speak, is to go through Speer, or through Leni Riefenstahl, or perhaps Charles Lindbergh.

Delightful how we've derailed the original topic with this party game. I'm rather smug to know, now, that my 2-sphere includes Elvis, Ayatollah Khomeini, Jean Bertrand Aristide, Dzokhar Dudayev (through Vytautas Landsbergis) and Billy Carter (my dad ran into him in a bar in Atlanta)... and Kevin Bacon.

http://www.vad1.com/photo/ultimate-photo-shoot/group.html
is potentially helpful for links to or from Castro.

Ah... H*r once personally met Herbert Hoover. Hoover then lived until 1964. Probably much easier than I thought, then.

Dennis, what original topic?

I think most of us here have a Skunk Baxter number of 3 or better. We should just incorporate as a think-tank and be done with it.

Better yet, we should have a mega-massive TINC of the Usual Gang Hereabouts, the probable effect of which would apparently decrease the mean separation numbers between arbitrarily selected humans-born-after-1890-or-so by a full factor or so. It'd be even more effective than putting a receiving line of John Paul II, Paul Erdős and Rod Steiger at the security gate at O'Hare Airport and having them shake hands with everyone who comes through.

I won't be able to attend for a bit as yet and I think Doug might have issues, alas.

I happen to agree with Carlos: we should do a think tank. Need some underwriting though first. ;)

Dennis, that would be one macabre welcoming committee, although Erdős did count himself among the living dead after he turned sixty.

B/C my Solzhenitsyn number is through Lev Kopelev and most of the Trial of the Four characters - ie most of the samizdat intelligencia. Maxim Litvinov's grandson was my physics teacher in High school.

Noel, the explanation is really quite simple. The Führer paid his famous visit to Finland on C. G. E. Mannerheim's birthday on June 4th, 1942. Well, one of my more distant relatives, a young military musician, happened to be playing in the marching band on the airfield.

Of course, Hitler just _had to_ shake hands with everybody, because he was so thrilled to be visiting this country.

As for the independent Himmler number, the outfit _Finnisches Freiwilligen-Bataillon der Waffen-SS_ should explain it. Recently I've been doing a research on one Finnish jäger colonel whose son served in the said volunteer unit and studied in the Waffen-SS junker school at Bad Tölz. The son was killed in action in 1944, and the colonel himself died in 1974, but I've come to know the surviving family members, so there you go.

For those who've forgotten, the attribute "jäger" in Finnish military ranks means that the person served in the _Königlich-Preußisch Jägerbataillon Nr. 27_, a Finnish volunteer unit in the Imperial German Army. Incidentally, this means that I also have a personal Kaiser Wilhelm II number of #4.

Oh yeah, I also happened to meet William Richard Mead, a ninetysomething years old British professor, in a conference back in the last summer. If I understood correctly, I got a personal Queen Victoria number of #3 from that meeting.

Cheers,
Jalonen

I am pleased that my guess for your numbers was pretty close to accurate, Jussi (I figured it'd had something to do with the 1939-45 unpleasantness and your country's co-beligerent status w/ Germany).

Oh hey, I just realized that I have a Jane Goodall # of 1! Forgot about that.

Update: my GHWB (and Barbara) # is now 1.

There's a very large sculpture between the buildings of the George Bush library in College Station-- it seems to suggest that wild horses were directly responsible for the fall of the Berlin Wall (no really).