1 Degree of Separation

I have not been particularly proactive on the blogging front lately--I blame my dissertation. It's not so much that I have been writing as that I have been thinking about the fact that there is a dissertation, and that it is sapping me of the will to live. But enough about that.

This entry sprang from the novel idea of experimenting with the "six degrees of separation" idea--you know, that theoretically, you know a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy who knows Bin Laden. That is, our world is deeply interconnected. It also proves without a doubt that Hussein is tied to Al Qaeda--so there! (Of course, then so is Bush ...)

So, my idea was to pick an item on Amazon and use the "Explore Similar Items" function. My intent was to wade through the function until I found two completely dissimilar movies that were separated by a mere six degrees of separation. It was an exciting challenge, and with rampant giddiness, I typed in the phrase "Monty Python." With shaking fingers, I clicked on "Monty Python and the Holy Grail." With wanton tremblingness, I clicked on "explore similar items" and found ...

The movie Seven.

For those of you unfamiliar with Monty Python and the Holy Grail, I recommend you get a life. However, for those of you unfamiliar with Seven, let's just say that it involves a serial killer. Now, let's just say that Holy Grail involves coconuts. I cannot really figure out what coconuts and serial killers have in common. Granted, according to the Amazon description, in Seven, "green Detective Mills scoffs at his efforts to get inside the mind of a killer," and in Holy Grail, bad guys scoff with outrageous French accents, but that also seems too tenuous a connection.

All in all, the experience left me feeling cheated and hollow inside. I expected only to have six searches to come up with a completely weird relation, and I have it at the first try. Where's the challenge? Quite frankly, some of the one degree of separations are downright disturbing--why is it that if you search for similar items to this standard Bible, one of the hits on the first page is The Satanic Bible? Yes, Satan does show up in both books, and they do both have the word "bible" in their titles, but still ...