I’ve been getting spam e-mails of late, from a spam bot I’m sure, suggesting that it’s from some woman who’s ‘just a few minutes away’ though I’ve seen suggestions of up to 45 minutes.
Really? By what measure?
Being generous, we’ll suggest that ‘a few’ means not more than 5. After all I’m male, and we mails are all too often willing to exaggerate things that measure ‘a few’ of something. If you are going to be pedantic and suggest that ‘a few’ is 3, you’ll have to make some adjustments for numbering. Have fun. So, ‘a few’ minutes becomes not more than 300 seconds. (5*60) The speed of light is 300,000 kilometers per second. 300*300,000 becomes 90,000,000 kilometers. The distance from earth to the sun is about 93,000,000 miles, and the ratio of miles to kilometers is about 3/2, which means that a few minutes means that you’re within 2/3ds of the distance to the sun, or that distance in any direction from the earth. I guess you’re not on Voyager 1 or Voyager 2. Ok, a quick check of this is the knowledge that light takes about 8 minutes to cross the space from the sun to the earth. So far no human has reached a distance more than 5 light seconds from the earth, but as a bot you could very easily be on a satellite or probe at a Lagrange point for earth to the sun, one of which is on the far side of the sun, and thus would be a bit difficult to communicate with. And the 254 hop tcp timeout becomes an issue as well, I suspect that if I were to send e-mail back, it would bounce from there.
Ok, so a few minutes at the speed of light probably isn’t what was ment.
Well, how about a reasonable lower end. A few minutes of walking. I walk at about 3 miles an hour, meaning that a few minutes is probably under a quarter mile. So a circle that is ‘a few minutes’ from me is about half a mile in diameter, and about 1.5 miles around. More interestingly it’s about 0.2 square miles. Robbinsdale (where I live) has an average population density of just under 4,000 people per square mile. Multiply those two values, and this _woman_ is one of about 800 people. Well, and the ratio of men to women here is just a bit skewed towards men, so _this woman_ is one of under 400. I’m going to say for the moment that that population might be a bit small for the number of _women_ who’ve been sending me e-mail suggesting that they are interested in me.
So we’ll have to reach out a bit. How about within a few minutes of driving? That seems a bit more reasonable. Robbinsdale has an area of a bit over 8 square miles. If I’m obaying the speed limits, signage, and other rules of the road, ‘a few minutes’ gets me out to about a mile and a half. That gives me a circle of just over 7 square miles, or a bit over 28k people. Again with the slightly less than half of those people being women, that’s about 14k women. If I spent 1 day for each of these 14k women talking with them, and getting to know her, it would take me about 42 years to complete the task. Of course the twin cities has been loosing population over the past decade, and that trend may continue, so let’s be conservative and go with 40 years. I’m hoping that you find someone more interesting in the next 40 years, for all I know I’m not going to be much of a conversationalist before that timer runs out.
but wait, what about those suggesting 30 min, or 45 min away? Well, for the speed of light, that puts you in a sphere up to just under 6 AU in diameter. If you are always within 6 au, then that means that you’re orbit from the sun must be within 5 au of the sun. If you are willing to allow that at times you may be more than half an hour away, we can stretch the sphere out to 7 au from the sun. That puts all of the inner planets and Jupiter (5.2 au orbit) into play. But as mentioned before, 30 min of delay for light speed is a really annoying issue, and not likely to lend itself well to a stable relationship. I’m never going to be comfortable with predicting the appropriate timing for a joke if I’m trying to read your expression.
And half an hour to 45 min of walking doesn’t change much from driving 5 minutes, so we’ll have to consider the possibility that you’re one of the women within 45 min of driving for me. Now there are a few places in Hennipin county that I don’t think I can drive to within 45 min, but then there are a lot of people in some of the neighboring counties where I probably could drive to. So let’s consider the population of Hennipin County. There are some 191,000 females in Hennipin County. My current life expectancy doesn’t suggest that I could meet all of them in my lifetime even if all we did was speed date. If we limit it to unmarried women, we need to eliminate just over a third, or some 60,000 females. I’m not sure exactly what the curve is by age, but since I’m not fond of bars, I’m going to guesstimate that I can eliminate another 1/3 of the population as under 19. leaving about 60,000 women to try that meet them all. At one a day that’s over 180 years. If I live that long, I sure as heck hope that I’m still as good looking as I am today. Which probably isn’t saying all that much.
The thing is, within a few minutes of me right now, even if I were to be crawling on my belly, is a woman I love dearly. We have plans on getting married, and I really have no intention of changing those plans. My experience is that she is not likely to share either. So as pleasant as I find the though of spending time with some of the women I’ve met over the years, it’s not going to happen. I’ve found who I want to spend my time with.
Fortunately for you, there are a few alternatives for you to find a guy in the area. Good luck.
