OMG! I (indirectly) know the Dalai Lama?

I just saw this article http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25988549/?GT1=43001 that claims to confirm that game we all enjoy playing and in my case, enjoy being really bad at: Six Degrees to Kevin Bacon.

If you've no desire to read the article, it basically says that the game is true and that there are 6.6 degrees of separation between people linked through aquaintences.

However, the article continues on to pretty much discredit itself:

"The idea was taken up again, this time on a global scale, by Columbia University researchers in a 2003 report of an e-mail experiment. More than 24,163 volunteers agreed to try to send an e-mail through acquaintances to one of 18 target persons in 13 countries. Only 384 of those 24,163 letter chains were completed. Of those completed chains, the average number of steps was 4, and using statistical techniques, the researchers estimated that the average length in all of the chains was between five and seven steps. Still, it was an estimate."

Well if that isn't solid statistical data, then I don't know what is.

Besides, this six step theory cannot be true because there are people out in the world (like this tribe who haven't talked to someone from the outside in up to 60,000 years: http://www.survival-international.org/news/136 ) who don't have any outside contact outside their tribe. I can very safely guarentee you that I am not connected to any one of them in six or even six thousand steps.