The Great Span

January 5, 2025 11:47 AM

The Network Of Time is a kind of six degrees of separation (or of Kevin Bacon, if you like) for a growing database of portrait photographs.

Original Oracle of Kevin Bacon post from 2001!

posted by gwint (4 comments total)

The interesting challenge, I think, is to make as long a chain as possible.

Nicholas II of Russia and Nichelle Nichols: 5 photos
Edna St. Vincent Millay and St. Vincent (musician): 5
Karl Marx and Groucho Marx: 6
Osamu Tezuka and Mario Vargas Llosa: 6
Charles Dickens and Nat King Cole: 7
Richard Feynman and Jean Baudrillard: 7
Gloria Steinem and Emma Goldman: 8
Abraham Lincoln and J. D. Salinger: 10
posted by zompist at 3:33 PM on January 5

We watched N Is a Number: A Portrait of Paul Erdős. It's okay, they left out the pep-pills.

They should make a Hollywood biopic about Erdos, and they should totally cast Kevin Bacon to play him.
posted by ovvl at 5:14 PM on January 5 [4 favorites]

Oh but they should not have left out the pep pills!

Now geeks have to depend on caffeine.
posted by inexorably_forward at 11:52 PM on January 5

I was amused to find that my attempts to link Justin Bieber to other historical monsters such as Pol Pot and Hitler always ended up relying on a photo of him with former Canadian PM Stephen Harper, which seems appropriate.
posted by senor biggles at 7:43 AM on January 6 [1 favorite]