The Six Degrees of Separation Game.

[judiu]

Afternoon update:

Vladimir Putin and high tea

Robert Burns and poppyseeds

Taj al Din al Hilali and meat

Bishop Tutu and Eskimo Pie Ice Creams

Andy Roddick and chicharrones

Andy Hardy and chitlins

The temps down here have dropped 15 degrees since sunrise! Hope everyone is staying warm out there!

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Pompano Beach, checkin' in; I'm lovin' it! (The game AND the weather!)

[Chef from Clarens]

Piet Retief was a leader of the Voortrekkers who set off on the Great Trek eastwards from the British colony at the Cape after a series of reforms that angered many Boers

One of the foodstuffs taken along was boerewors, a mixed meat sausage containing speck or sheeps tail fat or tallow and hung and dried to last on the trek

Just a point of clarity: boerewors is the raw undried sausage you mention, Droewors or dry sausage is the one you mention that was taken on the trek but the real foodstuff I was looking for was BILTONG, slabs of meat usually cut from the topside, thick flank etc into pieces about 45 cm by 10 cm by 3 cm thick, soaked in a brine solution with peppercorns and corriander seeds and salt then hung up to dry in a breezy spot. Until you have eaten thin slices of wet fatty biltong while drinking beer and watching the Springboks beat the All Blacks or the Wallabies you just aint lived. {I know, I know, it doesn't happen very often but when it does.......heaven}

[insomniac]

My husb. used to fly to SA all the time and when the kids were small our cupboards were groaning with biltong from every animal imaginable (seriously, if you opened one of the cupboards it hailed biltong)

I did take it for snacks for my daughter when she was playing rugby (unfortunately in Hong Kong and for the FRENCH ) anyway she has sacrificed her nose to the game broken twice and I did get to meet that hottie Thomas Castagnaide

I believe I owe a game

Archimedes and foul mesdames

Edited January 26, 2007 by insomniac (log)

[insomniac]

Andy Roddick is a young, successful American tennis player who has appeared at Wimbledon for several years

now Wimbledon is a strange time of the year for the British who become temporarily injected with unusually large levels of optimism resulting in the mistaken belief that their Tim Henman can actually win a tennis cup

Symptoms of Henmania include: getting confused and saying Hen Tinman or Tin Hatman, shouting come on Tim at totally inappropriate times during November, buying 600 Union Jacks for your extended family, and looking decidedly unenthusiastic when winning a set

inevitably disappointed fans end up retiring to a nearby pub and drowning their sorrows with a pint and a packet of pork scratchings, which is the quaint term reserved for chicharonnes in the UK

Donald Tsang and fish eggs

Edited January 26, 2007 by insomniac (log)

[MarketStEl]

Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Eskimo Pie:

The peripatetic promoter of peace and reconciliation between peoples delivered an address last year to more than 3,000 youths attending the PeaceJam at the University of Denver

Denver, Colorado, was where Clara and Russell Stover started their boxed chocolate manufacturing business; Russell Stover Candies, now based in Kansas City, Missouri, is the third-largest chocolate maker in the US and the largest producer of boxed chocolates*

Russell Stover was the business partner of Christian Nelson, an Iowa schoolteacher and candy store owner who came up with the idea of a chocolate-dipped ice cream bar in 1920; Clara Stover suggested the name "Eskimo Pie" for the new treat, which made all three wealthy until competitors came out with identical products, leading the Stovers to give up on ice cream and go into candymaking instead

*One degree of separation between me and Russell Stover: Tom Ward (Pem-Day '76), one of my classmates, is the current president of Russell Stover Candies. His family, which made Russell Stover's packaging for decades, bought the company from the Stovers in 1969

Grand Ayatollah Sayid Ali Husaini Sistani and a Big Mac

Edited January 26, 2007 by MarketStEl (log)

[insomniac]

Grand ayatollah al Sistani is the mullah lite (sorry) of Iran

Ayatollah Khomeini was the revolutionary fundamentalist mullah whose actions caused thousands to flee Iran

Included among those who fled was the 15 year old Anousheh Ansari, whose father ran a wine business

In 2006 Iranian American Ansari became the first woman space tourist, being shot into space from Star City

Earlier, in 2004 Chinese American astronaut Leroy Chiao was launched into space from the same Russian Star City site in Kazakhstan

Bizarrely, on his return to earth McDonalds, not a company to miss a marketing opportunity, was there at Star City to present to Chiao his first meal back on earth.....a big mac and fries.

(I was a tad dubious about whether Chiao actually ate the meal but judging by a photo of Leroy I think it's a fairly safe bet )

Michiko Kakutani and kippers

Edited January 28, 2007 by insomniac (log)

[MarketStEl]

Grand ayatollah al Sistani is the mullah lite (sorry) of Iran

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He is also the Ann Landers of Shiite Islam.

Check out the Q&As on a host of topics at Ayatollah al-Sistani's Web site.

Edited to add a link that takes you directly to the English-language version of the site.

Edited January 28, 2007 by MarketStEl (log)

[Toliver]

Andy Roddick is a young, successful American tennis player who has appeared at Wimbledon for several years

now Wimbledon is a strange time of the year for the British who become temporarily injected with unusually large levels of optimism resulting in the mistaken belief that their Tim Henman can actually win a tennis cup

Symptoms of Henmania include: getting confused and saying Hen Tinman or Tin Hatman, shouting come on Tim at totally inappropriate times during November, buying 600 Union Jacks for your extended family, and looking decidedly unenthusiastic when winning a set

inevitably disappointed fans end up retiring to a nearby pub and drowning their sorrows with a pint and a packet of pork scratchings, which is the quaint term reserved for chicharonnes in the UK

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Do tongue-in-cheek replies really count?

-Andy Roddick dated Mandy Moore who once dated actor Wilmer Valderrama whose family once lived in Venezuela where they eat chicharonnes.

But your answer was funnier.

[insomniac]

Toliver I would have NEVER come to that conclusion

What I love about this game are the infinite paths that lead from A to B. Only once has someone come up with the solution I was thinking of and some beautiful solutions are so convoluted and clever that serious brainpower has been expended