From Pictory: such sweet sorrow, recalling past friends and lovers who we’ve long since lost contact with:
We lived across the hallway from one another in the same brownstone apartment building, in the same small Canadian town. I thought she was brilliant. She smoked, and her nearly black hair was cut in a bob like [...]
Just about everyone is the one who got away
Posted by John Lampard on Monday, 22 February, 2010 to the photography subset
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If loneliness is infectious shouldn’t we produce a vaccine?
Posted by John Lampard on Thursday, 3 December, 2009 to the comment subset
Loneliness seems to have a domino effect, people deserted by a lonely friend then go on to sever some of their relationships.
“On the periphery, people have fewer friends, yet their loneliness leads them to losing the few ties they have left,” said University of Chicago psychologist John Cacioppo, the study’s lead author. Before lonely [...]
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If the supply of friends is finite how do others have more than me?
Posted by John Lampard on Wednesday, 4 November, 2009 to the comment subset
A mathematical dissection of why it is our friends apparently have more friends than we do…
List all of your friends. Then ask each of your friends how many friends they have. No matter who you are, whether you are a man or a woman, where you live, how many (or few) friends you have, and [...]
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A true friend would know I barrack for Cambridge not Oxford
Posted by John Lampard on Monday, 24 August, 2009 to the comment subset
It seems you can never know anyone well enough. When quizzed many people seemed surprised to learn even long time friends had preferences and values far removed from what they envisaged them to be… not that its anything to worry about, friends are still friends.
“It’s not clear that you would need to know everything [...]
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A friend is as close the TV remote
Posted by John Lampard on Monday, 3 August, 2009 to the comment subset
People seem to take a surprising degree of solace in watching TV, which acts as a substitute or “imaginary” friend of sorts when the chips are down…
A common experience following a threat to interpersonal relationships, such as a fight, or social rejection, is lowered self-esteem and negative mood. However, the researchers found [...]
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Girls prefer best friends, boys would rather hang in a gang
Posted by John Lampard on Tuesday, 21 July, 2009 to the comment subset
A somewhat scientific explanation as to the differences in the way teenage boys and girls socialise.
The results suggest that as girls progress from early puberty to late adolescence, certain regions of their brains become more active when they face a potential social interaction. Specifically, when an older girl anticipates meeting someone new – someone she [...]
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The only high school reunion I’ll go to is the one held in hell
Posted by John Lampard on Monday, 20 July, 2009 to the comment subset
25 years is a long time to hold onto something that only lasted five or six years… shouldn’t there be a statute of limitations, of say ten years, on high school reunions?
Now it’s twenty five years since I got out of that miserable fucking hell-hole. And people from my high school class are suddenly getting [...]
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What’s a non disclosure or two between friends?
Posted by John Lampard on Friday, 3 July, 2009 to the comment subset
Given that a secret is no fun unless it is shared, I’m not sure that the concept of Friend Disclosure Agreements, designed to protect ideas, will actually work… unless possibly a profit-sharing arrangement can also be reached.
This is a “warm blanket” agreement with which, by requesting your agreement to it, I am helping myself sleep [...]
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Friendships, another casualty of the recession?
Posted by John Lampard on Wednesday, 24 June, 2009 to the comment subset
The economic downturn has been taking its toll on friendships, in instances where one friend is working and cashed up, while the other is unemployed and struggling to keep their head above water.
Even small, nuanced class differences can be hard to negotiate. Do you feel your throat constrict when you suggest a meal with a [...]
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Joe Blogs is no longer affiliated with this social network
Posted by John Lampard on Tuesday, 9 June, 2009 to the comment subset
While our IRL social networks tend to say about the same size throughout our lives, about half the number of friends who are a part of it change approximately every seven years.
The results showed that personal network sizes remained stable, but that many members of the network were new. About 30 percent of discussion partners [...]
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