Brad is sane? Wow, just when you thought you could pigeon-hole someone they go and prove not to be pigeons... BTW, here's a history of the expression 'pigeon hole'.

We all hold a sense of The OTHER. The cultural (and physical) distance between people determines the degree of OTHER-ness. For most folks, their biases make this a positive correlation (the more distance the more OTHER other people become). For example, you certainly don't think of your family as the OTHER. Friends are a little more distant but you still know well how they tick. People from the same town as you are familiar, but you keep them at arms length. Nevertheless, you're happy to meet someone from your hometown when you're in a distant or foreign city... And so familiarity drops as distance grows and at some point, at some cultural distance, people become OTHER.

It seems odd that some people would have a negative correlation between distance and OTHER-ness. To them, the OTHER is the enemy within.
  ¶ 1:41 PM