So sayth Google. I know about this via Google introduces Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon search function in the Inquirer: Just type “Bacon number” followed by an actor’s name and you’ll find out what degree of separation they have from Kevin Bacon.
I still think we need something like this for law professors, only it would be a Lemley number, based on how many co-authors away you are from Mark A. Lemley.
“I still think we need something like this for law professors, only it would be a” Marx “number, based on how many co-authors away you are from” Karl Marx.
Ooh! We have reached the Marxist/Communist corollary of Godwin’s Law (not sure if such a thing actually exists, but if not, I just invented it). The longer you talk about politics with people who disagree with you the higher the probability of a comparison involving communists or Karl Marx.
Well done Jewish Marksman! Well done. Do you often refer to Pres. Obama as a Marxist as well?
There was no political discussion, just a jab at law professors.
“Do you often refer to Pres. Obama as a Marxist as well?”
Nowadays Obama is constantly quoting Adam Smith and Milton Friedman, so it would be ridiculous to call him a Marxist. Obama is a free market capitalist through and through.
But since you bring it up, the degrees of separation for him from Obama to Marx is a very low number, by his own words in Dreams From My Father:
“To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully…[t]he Marxist Professors … we were resisting bourgeois society’s stifling constraints…”
I wish I could point you to a free copy of the book somewhere online so you can verify the passage, but Obama being the capitalist big he is, charges for his book.
I think you are the victim of a misunderstanding: a ‘Bacon number’ is about appearing in movies with other people. The ‘Erdos number‘ on which it is modeled, is about co-authoring papers. I think of a Lemley number like an Erdos number.
Thus, since I wrote a paper with Lemley, my Lemley number is one. My Erdos number seems to be five.
You seem to think a “Marx number” comes from *mentioning Marx’s name* in paper. That seems sort of silly. He’s not Voldermort. If we calculate Marx numbers like Erdos numbers, Engles would have a Marx number of one. I don’t know if either Marx or Engles had other co-authors besides each other, but if not, that would be the end of it — no one else would have a Marx number at all. (I’m assuming neither Marx nor Engels ever acted in a movie.)