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Legion. An amalgamated journal.
  • About Legion
    "I do not know whether mine is a profession, or a trade, or what not. It is not yet learned, and in every instance has been practised before being studied .... It is not one but legion." —Henry David Thoreau, to the Secretary of the Harvard College Class of 1837, in response to an inquiry on his employment.

    At Legion, we reserve the right to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, and criticise after dinner, just as we have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic. Legion is an organ of the Matinicus Syndicate, of which more here.
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Ratios

Facebook recently introduced a count immediately below the profile picture showing the total number of friends in all networks that a user has. This has the interesting inadvertent effect of allowing a calculation of how “college-centric” someone is by dividing their total friends at their school by their gross total. For example, my friend horizon is 71% from Harvard; Mel’s is 60%. My intuition says this proportion would be higher at insulated Harvard than elsewhere, and a few non-scientific samplings back this up: a random click through four friends at UNH, Keene, Plymouth, and UMass bring back ‘college-centric’ ratios of 25%, 32%, 47%, and 52%, respectively.

—Garrett Dash Nelson

March 18th, 2008 at 9:09 pm

But perhaps you disagree

2 responses so far

  • [ # ] mrs. c — Mar 18, 2008 at 10:17 pm

    42%… does this make me a populist?

  • [ # ] Maryellen McGowan — Mar 18, 2008 at 11:06 pm

    Also potentially important to point out is that generations of Facebook users younger than the Dash and I (that’s you, Mrs. C) might have had Facebook in high school, or might now have more friends in high school networks than we do because in our early days of friend-ing mania, friend-ing high-schoolers (and like, people’s Moms) was not possible.