6 degree update: on hiatus

Wow, it took me a while to finish it, but here it is.

I followed the 6 degrees of separation as far as I could and this is where it got me. I know that I'm in touch with artists as far as New York (and possibly even farther, if I didn't limit myself to personally speaking with them), a soon-to-be lawyer who sounds like she'll make a great addition to the justice system, PhD students who are studying things I didn't even think to examine, and an aspiring filmmaker.

I also learned that everyone--I mean everyone--has a story to tell.

While I love these one-on-one conversations, life has become very, very busy once again. I'll take this project up again, I'm sure, but for now, it'll be on hiatus. I've been shuttling back and forth from city to city and it's hard to get a good interview schedule squeezed in.

Goodbye--for now.

Photo credit: Evan Leeson

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Degree 6.1b Doctoral student Hinda Mandell

Scandals. They're juicy and they sell papers--lots of them. And they're also a topic of interest for second year doctoral student, Hinda Mandell.

"I see scandals are representative of a national culture," says Hinda, a reporter for 5 years herself. "I'm trying to understand scandal as a social concept." When one thinks about it, it's true. Taking a simple look at the newspaper headlines and radio talk show topics, one can see just want sticks in a nation's consciousness.

"You can learn a lot by looking at scandal," she says. Her best example? The prevalence of sex scandals in America. The most recent one on the list? Tiger Woods, of course. "America has very puritan roots," says Hinda, "that's not true of other countries." In the former Soviet bloc, she points out that government corruption, mafia and financial woes that rule the day.

Next time you look at the papers, try to see it as something more than just words on fiber.

Photo credit: Chris Blakely

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