Eric Fischer has been mapping Twitter traffic in major cities, resulting in beautiful cartographic representations of our information flow. It’s all faintly reminiscent of blood vessels or a network of neurons. I think there’s a metaphor in there somewhere.

(via Animal New York)

He suggests coining a term for someone or something that bridges a huge span of time, in this case almost two hundred years of history.

There’s also this 1956 game show appearance of a Lincoln assassination eyewitness and Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes (1841-1935) shaking hands during his lifetime with both John Quincy Adams (b 1767) and John F Kennedy (d 1963), one man spanning 200 years of American history.

Jason suggests “history bridges”. I suggested “minding the history gap“. His is more of a noun, I suppose mine is more of a verb — as in John Tyler’s grandson is minding the history gap. Neither really hits the nail on the proverbial head, so to speak. But doesn’t there need to be a coined phrase for this sort of phenomenon.

Patrick Feaster studies the culture of early phonography (the recording and reproduction of sound) and blogs at Phonozoic, where I’ve been hanging out for the past hour or so. At the 2011 conference of the Association for Recorded Sound Collections, Feaster shared “Phonogram Images on Paper: 1250-1950.” You can listen to his presentation and download slides here. Just scroll down a little ways and you’ll find the links.

(via Excavated Shellac)

This one’s Crater Lake.

The colors on geological maps represent different rock units of different ages. With an active lifespan of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of years, volcanoes produce many layers of ash and flows of lava that will end up as different colors on the map. And with the circular shape of many volcanoes and the radiating rock units, the maps can really be striking.

Ten more at the link.

I don’t mean to be a troll here or anything, but one does not need a penis in order to fuck and/or pee.

From a photo-graphic of various hand signals the maitre d’ at New York’s Eleven Madison Park uses to signal the waiters.

Meaning: “You are a dickhead”
Used in: United Kingdom

Bring the fingers and thumb together as if holding a phallus near the forehead.

From Romana Lefevre’s Rude Hand Gestures of the World, with photographs by Daniel Castro, The Atlantic put together a handy clutch of rude gestures to carry with you wherever you go.

(thanks, Casey)