The Whole Family Survival

How many of you remember or have every played the "Six Degrees of Kevin
Bacon" game?

In the mid-90s this silly party game challenged players to find a way to
link the actor Kevin Bacon with any other actor using no more than six
connections. (For instance, Val Kilmer was in "Top Gun" with Tom Cruise who
was in "A Few Good Men," which also featured Kevin Bacon.) Eventually what
was really just a movie trivia game became a way for us to see ourselves as
somehow related to anyone else on the planet with just six simple steps.
Poking fun at himself and at this trend, Kevin Bacon starred in a Visa check
card commercial. In the commercial a cashier won't take Bacon's check when
the actor has no identification on him. Bacon leaves and returns with a
group of people, explaining to the cashier, "Okay, I was in a movie with an
extra, Eunice, whose hairdresser, Wayne, attended Sunday School with Father
O'Neill, who plays racquetball with Dr. Sanjay, who recently removed the
appendix of Kim, who dumped you sophomore year. So you see, we are
practically brothers!"

By 2005 the quest for the "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" took on a serious
scientific status when The National Geographic Society, IBM, and the Witt
Family Foundation launched "The Genographic Project." Although originally
designed to trace the migration patterns of certain indigenous peoples,
anyone could participate in the Project. All that was required was to send a
DNA sample - a simple cheek swab - and the scientists would analyze the
sample's mitochondrial DNA and Y-chromosomes - the location for the genetic
markers for specific populations. These genetic markers would allow the
researcher to trace the long distant ancestry, the genetic history, of any
individual.

What the researchers hadn't figured into their analytic assignment, however,
was the fact that anytime you try and put a big family together squabbles
are going erupt.