Friday, March 31, 2006 at 01:26 PM

Talking to The Beautiful Girl who kicked her brother out of the house so I'd have a bed to sleep in and who sent the Lovely Stephen to come talk to me about chat bots and their interesting features outside the National Art Gallery until she skipped into focus about friends and why some stick and some don't.

She was doing the talking, I was doing the listening -she was making the point and I've been thinking about it all night. Well - all night between the sleeping and the snoring and the sleeping and the dreaming, of course.

The Beautiful Girl was saying she was thinking about what it was that made friends become friends - especially communities of friends online. Like us, for instance. And although the common interests draw people together initially, by far the most attracting thing was friends of friends - the community welcoming newcomers who were associated with existing members. then, once involved in the group, the common interests create a certain level of comfort in the beginning, then the differences become the attachment hooks.

okay she didn't say that so much but that's what perculated around my brain last night. It's the sames that attract us, but the differences that bind us.