It's late, I know, but I'm working on a paper and not very good at concentrating.

So I was thinking, connecting lyrics is fun, but honestly folks, it doesn't really take much creativity. So let's connect people. History is a tangled web of interconnected events and human interactions. In this "game", you're given two seemingly unrelated people and the task is to come up with some path of connection, six steps, more or less. When you come up with an answer, provide another pair for someone to try. It doesn't matter if more than one person responds to a certain post, that'll just make it more fun. Extra points for creative and far-fetched (but real) connections.

The first pair is: Kermit the Frog and the Dalai Lama

Kermit and Bert (of Bert and Ernie)
Bert and Osama bin Laden
Osama bin Laden and George Bush
George Bush and Pope John-Paul
Pope John-Paul and the Dalai Lama

Is that only five links? Does it matter if it's only five links? Six degrees is usually played at most six links.

Opie and Pol Pot

Ok, wait a sec Faldage. You're going to have to write that out in longhand. That went right over my head. Bert and Osama bin Laden?

re: bert and osama

my thought (and the only one I had) was that it must be the facial resemblance.

edit: (http://www.eonline.com/News/Items/0,1,8950,00.html)

Apparently Faldage saw some photos/footage of pro-bin Ladin folks in Afghanistan wielding posters with Bert's likeness on them. Go figger. I'm sure he'll report further when he gets back from the Rochester-Syracuse baseball game.

Extra points for creative and far-fetched (but real) connections. -the rules.

I vote we give Faldage extra credit for Bin Laden and Bert, and then take the credits away for giving us for Opie and Pol Pot.

Pol Pot > John Malkovich [Killing Fields]
John Malkovich > Keanu Reeves (Dangerous Liaisons :)
Keanu Reeves > Ron Howard (Parenthood)
Ron Howard is Opie

-joe (three links!) friday

edit: now I have to think of a new pair...

Bertrand Russell and Scrooge McDuck

May I humbly request that the posters who are clever enough to come up with these various pairings include a word or two explaining the linkage? Some are fairly obvious, but not all. At least not to me . Thank you!

A couple years ago Scientific American carried a series of articles by James Burke with fascinating linkages. Don't know if Sciam online has them in archives, probably not. I was sorry when seires ended.

I found them in www.sciam.com . Called Connections. Here is URL to a sample There are lots of them.

http://www.sciam.com/0997issue/0997connections.html

I thought Burke's first and second book and TV show on connections were wonderfull too, but by the time i was reading his column in Sci Am, the connections seemed way to tenuous.

there is a real connections between Jaquards loom with its punch cards, and the punch cards used in the analytical engine, and the first tabulating machines, that move right on in to the early IBM computers with punch cards.. but some of his connections.... seemed a bit far fetched!

Bertrand Russell > Russell Crowe
Russell Crowe > John Forbes Nash Jr.
John Forbes Nash Jr. > Forbes Magazine
Forbes Magazine > publishes annual list of world's wealthiest individuals
annual list > Scrooge McDuck

Mr. Duck previously was listed and was the wealthiest individual in the world, but has now been surpassed by Bill Gates. I have that on the indisputable authority of the web:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Den/3001/dofferings/gates.html

Post-edit: improving on the first pair of links:
Bertrand Russell > John Forbes Nash Jr.
(each a mathematician who won a Nobel Prize; 1950 and 1994 respectively)

Ok, lemme clarify. Y'all are just listing names of people who might have appeared in the same movie or both won the same award. I'm thinking more along historical lines. Connect the people through historical or cultural events, and at least give us a creative paragraph with it. Geez.

OK Mr. MC Jazz-o, we'll try to do better, you don't have to be so harsh. So Jazz-o, what pairing are we working on now? I forget.

Much as I hate to admit it, jazzo was completely correct about my post.

Hey, Jazzo? How about you do the next and show us how it's done? Is this also known as the "Kevin Bacon Game"?

Or anyone else can take a crack at Russell < MacDuck, which is still on the table. (again, apologies)

>Y'all are just listing names of people who might have appeared in the same movie...

hmmph. Ron Howard directed Parenthood, and Pol Pot links historically to the Killing Fields. but I withdraw Russell/McDuck, since the missing link I had in mind was Donald Duck to Daffy Duck, and Chuck Jones is related to Bertrand Russell by biographer. perhaps a new thread is in order....

()

Ok, this is more than 6 steps, but oh well.

Bertrand Russell was one of the world's most influencial mathematicians and liberal philosophers. At one point, he traveled to Russia in support of Vladmir Lenin and the Bolsheviks. Lenin, after Marx, was the leader of the socialist movement. The movement inspired many novels, including Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, which takes place in Chicago. One of the most important events in Chicago history is the Chicago Fire, which occured in 1871. In that same year, Germany unified and became the German Empire. In 1914, the United States joined World War I fighting against the Germans. One man who left his home in America to volunteer as an ambulance driver was a young Walt Disney, whose company would later invent the character of Scrooge McDuck.

Beat that.

Beat that.

Can't JazzO! Well done...

Hev