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Re: six degrees
So, what are the rules to "six degrees", anyway? If it's just knowing people,
my friend Jim Infantino was in plays in high school with Kyra Sedgwick, who was
(is?) married to Kevin Bacon. And if we're only allowing "worked together", I
worked on plays in college with Immanuel Jacobowitz, who was in The Seventh
Sign with Demi Moore (he was the kid who helped her with the biblical
prophecies, listed in the credits as Manny Jacobs), and Demi Moore of course
was in A Few Good Men with Kevin Bacon. I don't think I can get closer than
three degrees, though. Of course, if the rules are stringent enough to only
allow *acting* together, then I drop one more degree back, because I don't
think I was ever *in* a play with Manny; I usually did tech stuff. But I did
act in plays with people who were in plays with Manny, so only one more degree
back.
Although I think the more interesting point about the "Kevin Bacon" game is not
so much "I know famous people", as to demonstrate the exponential growth of
relationship connections. There was a fascinating experiment where several
hundred random people all over the country were mailed a letter, asking them to
forward this letter to people they thought might know X, who was some guy they
also chose at random. Most of the letters made it to X, and most of them only
needed three or four steps to get there. (Some people, of course, chose not to
play along.) Kind of amazing. Although I suppose that story could be an urban
legend, come to think of it, I never did see the actual documented results.
Has anyone else?
I expect Kevin Bacon is kind of sick of the whole thing by now, though. What a
weird way to become a household name. :-)
--
Don Smith Robotic Optical Transient Search Experiment
donaldas at umich_edu http://xte.mit.edu/~dasmith/
"In order to attain the impossible, one must attempt the absurd" - Miguel de Unamuno
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