Google really wants you to play ‘Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon’

Looking for an entertaining way to feature the Google Knowledge Graph, the search company added support for the popular Kevin Bacon game.

First noticed by The Next Web earlier today, Google has added a new, custom search element for people addicted to playing ’Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon’. For anyone unfamiliar with the game, the player is given the name of an actor or actress and they attempt to link said actor or actress to Kevin Bacon within six steps. The player is allowed to link to other actors from television shows and feature length movies. For instance, Jimmy Stewart appeared in Airport ’77 with Kathleen Quinlan and Kathleen Quinlan appeared in Apollo 13 with Kevin Bacon. In addition, other players can attempt to link the actor or actress to Bacon in a fewer number of steps in order to win the round. 

In order to see this on Google, simply type “bacon number Jimmy Stewart” into the search field. The results will appear at the top of the search engine results page, likely in the shortest number of steps. While someone could simply cheat at the game by conducting secret Google searches on a smartphone, the tool will be handy for movie and television buffs that want to verify their choice for the shortest path to finding a Kevin Bacon connection. 

Pointed out by New York Magazine, the Google results are light on including politicians in the game beyond a handful of U.S. presidents. When asked about the absence of politicians included within the results, Google senior communications associate Roya Soleimani claimed that the Bacon number is based on Google’s Knowledge Graph rather than results from popular movie site IMDB. 

Soleimani stated “Google’s Knowledge Graph is our ‘map’ of real-world people, entities, and the connections between them. For most celebrities and some public figures, the feature will return their Bacon Number based on the connections in the Knowledge Graph. Our team is constantly working to make search smarter, and features like the Bacon Number equip our users with ways to explore and discover more.”

The concept for ’Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon’ was created approximately eighteen years ago by three students attending Albright College. The trio first came up with the game after watching a couple movies during a snowstorm that starred Kevin Bacon and the game developed into a fun party trick.

As the game become more popular, the trio had an appearance on Jon Stewart’s short-lived MTV show and they eventually landed a book deal. While Kevin Bacon originally disliked the concept of the game, he eventually warmed up to it and ended up writing a forward within the book for the three authors. Bacon also appeared in a Visa commercial poking fun of the concept in an attempt to prove his identity. 

Bacon has capitalized further on the popularity of the game by founding SixDegrees.org, a charitable organization that partners with Network for Good. Through SixDegrees.org, people can purchase gift cards that can be redeemed by charities or use the platform to create a fundraiser for a good cause. Since the inception of the organization, Bacon has helped raise nearly four million dollars in donations for charities and other worthy causes.

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

Bill Nye ‘The Science Guy’ Hits Evolution Deniers

Araya Diaz/WireImage

In a clip posted to online knowledge forum Big Think via YouTube, former children’s show host Bill Nye spoke out against the denial of evolution, saying such views harm young people especially and hamper scientific progress.

Nye, who hosted the educational show “Bill Nye the Science Guy,” which aired on PBS Kids from 1993 through 1998, made the statements in a clip posted online on Thursday, and has since been viewed over one million times.  In the clip, Nye praises the United States for its contribution to technological innovation, but says that the denial of evolution is unique to the country.

“People still move to the United States. And that’s largely because of the intellectual capital we have, the general understanding of science,” Nye said in the clip. “When you have a portion of the population that doesn’t believe in that, it holds everybody back, really.

“Evolution is the fundamental idea in all of life science, in all of biology. It’s like, it’s very much analogous to trying to do geology without believing in tectonic plates. You’re just not going to get the right answer. Your whole world is just going to be a mystery instead of an exciting place,” he added.

Nye made a three-stop tour through New Hampshire earlier this summer to tout President Obama’s education policies while making a push for science and engineering programs. He has endorsed Obama’s reelection bid.

In the clip, Nye said that one’s “world just becomes fantastically complicated when you don’t believe in evolution.”

“Here are these ancient dinosaur bones or fossils, here is radioactivity, here are distant stars that are just like our star but they’re at a different point in their lifecycle. The idea of deep time, of this billions of years, explains so much of the world around us. If you try to ignore that, your world view just becomes crazy, just untenable, itself inconsistent,” he said.

Nye then goes on to urge adults not to deny the teaching of evolution to young people.

“And I say to the grownups, if you want to deny evolution and live in your world, in your world that’s completely inconsistent with everything we observe in the universe, that’s fine, but don’t make your kids do it because we need them. We need scientifically literate voters and taxpayers for the future. We need people that can — we need engineers that can build stuff, solve problems.

“It’s just really a hard thing, it’s really a hard thing. You know, in another couple of centuries that world view, I’m sure, will be, it just won’t exist. There’s no evidence for it.”

Source : abcnews[dot]go[dot]com