According to the NYTimes, http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/22/four-degrees-of-separation/ "Using data on the links among 721 million Facebook users, a team of scientists discovered that the average number of acquaintances separating any two people in the _United States_ was *** 4.37, *** and that the number separating any two people *** in the _world_ was 4.74. *** As John Markoff and Somini Sengupta report in todayÂs New York Times, the findings highlight the growing power of the emerging science of social networks: "The original Âsix degrees finding, published in 1967 by the psychologist Stanley Milgram, was drawn from 296 volunteers who were asked to send a message by postcard, through friends and then friends of friends, to a specific person in a Boston suburb. "The new research used a slightly bigger cohort: 721 million Facebook users, more than *** one-tenth *** of the worldÂs population. The findings were posted on FacebookÂs site Monday night. " ... -------- Here's the new twist from yesterday: http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2013/07/nsa-admits-it-analyzes-more-... "Chris Inglis, the [NSA] agency's deputy director, was one of several government representativesÂincluding from the FBI and the office of the Director of National IntelligenceÂtestifying before the House Judiciary Committee this morning.... But Inglis' statement was new. Analysts look *** "two or three hops" *** from terror suspects when evaluating terror activity, Inglis revealed. Previously, the limit of how surveillance was extended had been described as *** two *** hops. This meant that if the NSA were following a phone metadata or web trail from a terror suspect, it could also look at the calls from the people that suspect has spoken withÂone hop. And then, the calls that second person had also spoken withÂtwo hops. Terror suspect to person two to person three. Two hops. And now: *** A third hop. *** " ... "For a sense of scale, researchers at the University of Milan found in 2011 that everyone on the Internet was, on average, 4.74 steps away from anyone else. The NSA explores relationships up to *** three *** of those steps." "Inglis' admission didn't register among the members of Congress present, ..." --- This reminds me of a possibly apocryphal story about a debate in Congress over whether Reagan's 'Star Wars' program would work. When one of the scientists testified that some number would have to be something like 10^20 for the system to work, and the best they'd been able to achieve by that date was 10^10, one of the Congressmen remarked "then we're halfway there!"