Six degrees of separation refers to the idea that everyone is on average approximately six steps away, by way of introduction, from any other person on Earth, so that a chain of, "a friend of a friend" statements can be made, on average, to connect any two people in six steps or fewer. It was originally set out by Frigyes Karinthy and popularized by a play written by John Guare.
That is a direct quote from the fine folks at Wikipedia but how dare they not mention KEVIN BACON in that sentence! Kevin deserves the most credit for making SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION into the greatest name game since Shirley Ellis. It was from Wikipedia, however, that I learned about Bacon's website, SixDegrees.org.
(If you have already hyper-linked to Shirley Ellis' wonderfully whimsical song, you may need a few minutes to get her voice out of your head.)
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In a previous post, this blogger proved that there are only three degrees of separation between Lewis Carroll and Mark Zuckerberg. Allowing "words" to substitute for "friends", I will now demonstrate the ONE DEGREE OF SEPARATION between these two men:
One of these men is Yogi Berra and the other is not. He is Robert Musil. The best description of Mr. Musil's book Post-humous Papers Of A Living Author is it reads like a Franz Kafka stand-up comedy routine. Musil died in 1942–when Yogi Berra was still a minor league baseball player. It is safe to assume that Yogi has never read the German author whose most famous book is a thousand page novel. Therefore, if it aint plagiarism, it must be One Degree Of Separation:
Robert Musil said: In my imagination, I have long since given up on anything imaginable.
Yogi Berra said: I can't imagine me ever having an imagination.
Blogger's Note
The quote is from p.31 of Post-humous Papers Of A Living Author, which is now available from the Long Beach Public Library.
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