(no subject)

I've seen several people mentioning LJ small world syndrome lately, and I've been having my own weird experiences with it.

Shortly after we went to the Pirate Festival, I was reading friendsfriends, and saw User W, who mentioned being at Pirate Festival with User X, who I know and had seen there. So I checked him out, figuring he was friends with the social group User X is associated with, but our actual friend-in-common was a random person in Alabama I'd found through a parenting community and added because we share a rare interest, which User W shared as well (12 users share it, including the three of us).

Yesterday, User Y linked to a poll that User Z posted. I filled out the poll and left a comment. She responded back asking if we knew eachother, because my name seemed familiar, and we had friends in common. I looked, and we're connected through 4 separate paths.

So just for fun, I went to http://www.livejournal.com/random.bml, plugged the resulting username (a Russian) into LJ_connect, and discovered that I'm 5 hops from him... through two distinctly separate paths.

So amusing.

(Random addition several months later... User X's wife A is dating User Y's boyfriend B, and A, B, X and Y seem to all be getting along quite well. Brain go splodey now.)

(no subject)

THE grandfather of a baby taken into care immediately after he was born is accusing social services of discriminating against his daughter because she has a form of autism... Their argument was that because she has Asperger’s Syndrome, she is at risk of getting post-natal depression, and that there would therefore be the likelihood of her neglecting the baby.

So a baby was taken from someone because she *might* develop a common, preventable, treatable problem that is unlikely to result in a dangerous level of neglect?

I expect you could find a risk factor for postpartum depression of some sort or another in at least 75% of new moms.

(ETA: I consider the Asperger's issue almost a distraction. If the baby had been taken from her for having Asperger's Syndrome, that would be quite bad enough. But to take the baby because the Asperger's puts her at higher risk of developing PPD puts everyone with a PPD risk factor at risk.)