My new Bacon Number.

Idle curiosity prompted me to go to the Oracle of Bacon – which is a Bacon Number calculator – and check my name in its database. I was rather surprised to see that my new Bacon Number is 2 (if documentaries and TV shows are allowed).

A Bacon Number is the distance between a person, and Kevin Bacon, the Hollywood actor. Conventionally, it is calculated using feature film appearances, but there is an extended version that takes into account TV documentaries and other TV shows. Under the extended version, my Bacon Number is just 2. The reason for this is because I appeared in a TV show with Mark Dolan, the British TV presenter called The World’s Cleverest Child and Me. He, in turn, appeared in a show in 2011 entitled X-Men First Class 35 mm Special, with Kevin Bacon, himself. (That would mean that Mark Dolan’s Bacon Number would be 1).

Of course, Ainan’s Bacon Number would also be 2 – so too would my wife’s and my other two sons Fintan and Tiarnan. We all have a Bacon Number of 2, if documentaries are considered.

This situation tells us more about Hollywood and the TV and film industry than it does about us, however. It is very clear from this, that the film world is very small indeed – and highly interconnected. Because we have appeared in a few shows, that is enough to put us very close to Kevin Bacon, in terms of professional separation (shared projects).

The only way for my Bacon Number to get lower, now, would be to work with Kevin Bacon himself. That, however, I cannot imagine being likely. After all, what project would bring us together? We shall see if such a thing ever happens.

Posted by Valentine Cawley

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My Internet Movie Database listing is at:http://imdb.com/name/nm3438598/

Ainan's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3305973/

Syahidah's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

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This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.)

The power of word of mouth.

I find myself, quietly astonished, sometimes, at the power of word of mouth. Today, for instance, someone searched for "Ainan Cawley", from Gaborone, the capital city of Botswana. Now, I found that rather startling, that someone, from a third world city, of 191,000 people, should know of Ainan. How did they find out about him? What had they heard of him? It struck me as rather unexpected.

Yet, this is not the first time this kind of thing has happened. People have arrived on my blog, searching for Ainan or myself, from the most far flung parts of the world - parts which I am sure have never had any media coverage of either of us. Yet, word of us has penetrated those countries and reached cities we will never visit and people we will never meet.

All of this is a strong reminder of just how interconnected the world is. One cannot, now, do anything of note, in one part of the world, no matter how seemingly isolated it might appear to be - without the rest of the world, even in its most distant parts, eventually getting to hear about it. It is a commonplace idea to say that it is a "small world"...but in truth, it is not that the world is small, but that it is highly interconnected. Only a few people and a few conversations lay between any of us, and everyone else in the world. We are not "alone". We are, in fact, all conjoined, as one.

So, welcome readers from Botswana, St. Helena and Cambodia...and all the other unusual places...I don't know how you heard about us...but I know that you have. Happy reading.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 6 and Tiarnan, 4, this month, please go to:
http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html

I also write of gifted education, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

My Internet Movie Database listing is at: http://imdb.com/name/nm3438598/
Ainan's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3305973/
Syahidah's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is at http://www.genghiscan.com/

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.)

Kevin Bacon Number - or degrees of separation in Hollywood.

The Kevin Bacon number has become a famous way to measure the linkage between actors and other performers, in Hollywood. It is based on the idea that there are "six degrees of separation" between any two people on Earth. This label actually arose in a play title by John Guare, and not, as commonly supposed, in an academic thesis.

The notion that we are closely interconnected in a social network, only separated by a few individuals, was popularized by the social experiments of Stanley Milgram. He was not, however, the original conceiver of this understanding, though he is often credited with it. Michael Gurevich and Manfred Kochen, both did pioneering work in this area, prior to Stanley Milgram.

The "six degrees of separation" refer to the idea that everyone is connected through the people they know, to anyone they don't know, through their friends' friends. Thus if someone is your friend, that is one degree of separation; if they are the friend of a friend, that is two degrees of separation; the friend of a friend of a friend, would be three degrees of separation and so on.

Around 1994, an idea, "Six degrees of Kevin Bacon" began to float around. The concept was simple: how many degrees of separation were there between Kevin Bacon and any other actor? It became a party trick for its inventors Craig Fass , Brian Turtle and Mike Ginelli who were all students at Albright College at the time. They would challenge people to throw the names of actors at them, then they would connect them to Kevin Bacon.

The Kevin Bacon number is a very simple way to measure the connectedness of an actor, in Hollywood. For instance, Tom Cruise has a Kevin Bacon number of 1. (This is because they both worked together in A Few Good Men in 1992); Rachel Weisz, who is successful, but not so successful as Tom Cruise, has a Kevin Bacon number of 2. (This is because she appeared in Confidence in 2003 with Andy Garcia, who then appeared in The Air I Breathe (2007) with Kevin Bacon). Incidentally, Laurence Olivier, the famed stage actor, who also worked in film, also has a Kevin Bacon number of 2. (This is because he appeared in Dracula (1979) with Frank Langella who went on to appear in Frost/Nixon with Kevin Bacon in 2008).

Now what really surprised me is to learn that both Ainan Celeste Cawley and myself have a Kevin Bacon number of 3. This is only in the expanded version of the Kevin Bacon number that includes documentaries and TV shows as well as films. If only films were allowed, Ainan would have a Bacon number of infinity because he has never been in a feature film. Ainan (and my) Kevin Bacon number of 3 arises because we were both in a documentary called The World's Cleverest Child and Me on Channel 4 with Mark Dolan, the presenter. Mark Dolan did a show called The 50 Greatest Comedy Films in 2006 in which Tony Curtis appeared. Tony Curtis then went on to appear in the Graham Norton Show 2007 with Kevin Bacon.

So there you are. The Kevin Bacon number just goes to show how small the worlds of tv and film are. Furthermore, even though neither myself nor my son have ever met Kevin Bacon, we are pretty close in the film world, being only three steps away. How odd.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, please go to:http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.

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This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication prohibited. Use Only with Permission. Thank you.)