Six Degrees...

We've all heard of the "Six Degrees of Separation":  that every person on earth is connected to every other person on earth through six connections or less.  This could be all the more true in this very modern social media connected world we live in.  With all its vastness, it is indeed "a small world after all". 

I'm sure we've all also heard of the slightly less deep and thought provoking "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon".  My sister used to LOVE this game.  And for those who may not know, it literally is a board game:

But even without the actual board game (which we did have at home, by the way), it was a fun way for us to waste spend some time.  With my sisters vast knowledge of movies and actors, she could connect most people pretty quickly.  I got pretty decent at it, myself, but she could either do it faster or in less connections than I could.  (That's OK, though.  I just added it to the ever growing list of things she could do better than me.  But I digress.)  And this, of course, while not before internet was way before internet at our house.  Shoot, we didn't even have a computer.  But if she ever got stumped, we would just drive on down to Blockbuster.  They had this really great reference book there where you could look up an actor to see all of the movies they had been in, or look up a movie to see all of the actors who were in it.  So with a few flips of the pages (which would now be clicks of a mouse), she had her connection!

Well now, I think I might tell you about something that maybe you haven't actually heard.  Surely I'm not the only one who didn't know about this.  I know what you're thinking:  "Of course you're not, but don't call me Shirley."  OK, so maybe that's not what you were thinking, but it should have been.  And again, I digress.  What I'm going to tell you about is a way to find these Kevin Bacon connections with a lot less mouse clicks.  You can go to Google, and in the search window you type any celebrity's name followed by the words "bacon number".  For example, if you type "Charlie Chaplin bacon number" you will very quickly find out that he is connected to Kevin Bacon in 2 steps.  So his "bacon number" is 2.  Now, yes, this might take the fun out of the game, but I still think it's pretty cool. 

Kevin Bacon seems to be a pretty good sport about this whole thing (while you're welcome to watch to whole clip, the part I'm referencing doesn't start until minute 1:30...but I suggest starting at minute 1:17 if you enjoy a good pun as much as I do):

He has also used this idea to springboard some philanthropy.  His website, www.sixdegrees.org, is a way to make charitable donations.  But what I think is particularly cool are the "good cards".  These are basically gift cards for charity.  We've heard about people giving gifts that say something to the effect of "a donation was given in your name to such-and-such-foundation".  And that's great, but I suppose you always run the risk of that person not necessarily wanting their name associated with a particular foundation.  So maybe a better way of giving a gift of a charitable donation on behalf of someone would be to give one of these "good cards".  These cards are basically like a visa gift card, in that you are not limited to one specific place to spend them...but it does have to be spent in a charitable donation.  You just go to the six degrees website, and you can choose from over a million charities to give the money to.  I think that's pretty cool.  Here's a little video that explains a bit about the site, if you're so inclined.  It's a little long (16ish minutes), but I didn't mind watching it.

While it used to be a challenge to get some people connected to him in less than 6 steps, now you can have the challenge of using Google to find someone who's bacon number is higher than 3.  It's harder than you might think.  Now, GO!