Earth Sandwich

yourhotneighbor writes "If you haven't seen Ze Frank's hilarious videoblog, it's worth checking out. A few weeks ago he challenged visitors to create an "Earth Sandwich" where two pieces of bread are placed exactly opposite each other on the globe. Google mashups showing what's on the opposite side of the Earth and a live GeoRSS-based bread gallery were provided. A piece on NPR this Saturday details the concept and a team from New Zealand and Spain completed the challenge. Then on Friday he allowed his show to be written by his viewers who battled out 2,000+ script revisions in a Wiki. Sunday's New York Times describes the results."

Fantastic..

What good is that? The only person with a mouth big enough to eat it would be Al Roker.

Direct link to article

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/18/fashion/sundayst yles/18ze.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print [nytimes.com]

condiments

Got Mustard?

Mashup

If I have to read or hear the word 'mashup' or any variation of it, ever again, someone is going to pay with their life.

Re:Mashup

Mashup some potatoes for me, please.

Re:Mashup

And when you're done with that, could you put my video of "M*A*S*H" up on the third shelf?

Re:Mashup

I feel your pain. The blogosphere is rife with Web 2.0 leveraged mashups.

Not really...

It isn't a sandwich by the usual standards. The bread wasn't cut. It was just the earth in between two baguettes of bread.

there is an old russian joke...

... which can be (more or less) translated like this:

an elephant steps onto a slice of bread, puts a slice of bread on his back, looks in the mirror and sais:
- gosh, that's one big sandwitch!

Re:there is an old russian joke...

perhaps you heard it like this

a slice of bread steps onto an elephant, puts a back on his slice of bread, mirror looks in and says:
- big sandwitch, that's one gosh !

Oblig. Song

"I've got the whoooole world in my sandwich,
I've got the whoooole world in my sandwich!"

interesting results....

The interesting part of the experiment was that the slices always fell the earth-side down...

Need a boat

Looks like most of the US will need to charter a boat, as the opposite side of the globe is in the ocean. At least I know now not to try to dig that hole to china.

Tropical Fruitness

So if a team from Hawaii and Botswana did this I suppose it would have to have a pineapple ring on it as well. If China and Argentina did it, would would it be garnished with? Dirt?

Next week: Earth Soup

Of course, as any Seinfeld fan could tell you [seinfeldscripts.com], it still won't be a meal...

But what about the tetrahedron?

Dave Barr [artsearch-corporate.com] has been there, done that [si.edu],years ago. He placed four marble tetrahedra [umich.edu] at points on the globe (New Guinea, South Africa, Greenland and Easter Island) so that they describe a giant tetrahedron inside the earth itself.

Re:But what about the tetrahedron?

so that they describe a giant tetrahedron inside the earth itself.

Well, that's still inferior to the sandwich. After all, the tetrahedron is inside the Earth, so it leaves off the tasty corners, whereas the sandwich includes the whole thing.

Then again, if you're the type of person who likes the crusts cut off their sandwiches, then I guess Barr's work takes the... erm, cake.

On the down side of the sandwich, of course, is the fact that it may have have awakened the Devourer of Worlds, Cthulhu. Nothing like a nice sandwich to go with your galactic soup, I always say.

Murphy's Law

So if you drop a piece of buttered bread in this case, will it always fall buttered-side down, since your chances are proportional to the value of the Earth?

Or not, since that would be a good thing in this case?

Or do you need to stand on a carpet to do this?

Must go. My head a-splode.

Re:Murphy's Law

They did the buttered toast thing on Mythbusters.

Yeah, they completely botched the job.

Their final experiment involved dropping a vertically-held slice of bread from the roof of their building. This is a great set-up--if you routinely eat your breakfast toast on the roof of a warehouse.

Strangely, they actually built the perfect apparatus for testing Murphy's Law, if memory serves designed by Adam, but for some reason didn't use it for the final test. This set-up involved the slice of bread on a table top, pushed slowly over the edge until it was far enough off to tumble down.

Scientific American had an in depth article on Murphy's Law about 7 years ago. It was basically proved the toast-landing-butter-side-down phenomenon was tied to the fundamental constants of the universe, and for any bipedal species evolving on any planet, toast will always tend to land top-side down. The only way around it is to butter the bottom of your toast.

Or move to another universe.

The only thing this shows...

...is that there are far too many people with way to much time on their hands.

Including me for reading and posting to this article.

Mama Mia!

That's a spicy meatball!

I do not believe in no antipodes

Saint Augustine (354-430) argued against people inhabiting the antipodes:

But as to the fable that there are Antipodes, that is to say, men on the opposite side of the earth, where the sun rises when it sets to us, men who walk with their feet opposite ours, that is on no ground credible. And, indeed, it is not affirmed that this has been learned by historical knowledge, but by scientific conjecture, on the ground that the earth is suspended within the concavity of the sky, and that it has as much room on the one side of it as on the other: hence they say that the part which is beneath must also be inhabited. But they do not remark that, although it be supposed or scientifically demonstrated that the world is of a round and spherical form, yet it does not follow that the other side of the earth is bare of water; nor even, though it be bare, does it immediately follow that it is peopled.

He almost got it. If you look at the map in the Wikipedia page, you'll see that some 95% or more of the dry land meets an ocean on the other side (no ground credible indeed). As for the rest, well, you know.

Thats why

So that is why when I was a kid I couldn't dig a hole to China. Apparently, you have to live in Chile or Argentina to dig a hole to China. At least a straight hole.

Two words.....

shit sandwich.

Are we in it?

I wonder if we're considered part of the sandwich...maybe we're just the ants ruining this cosmic picnic.

Geocaching

It seems like you could call this a variation of geocaching [wikipedia.org]. Or maybe an international (and IMO cool weirdness) version of the Geological Society of America's earthcaching [earthcache.org], where the "unique geoscience feature" is the entire freakin' planet.

Experiment link

I never did see either in the summary or even at his site a quick link to the experiment's results - here it is - although he seems to be slashdotting as we speak...

http://www.zefrank.com/theshow/archives/2006/06/06 0906.html [zefrank.com]

It's actually fairly amusing. The edits make it very familiar to 99 percent of the threads around here. Almost makes you wonder what a decent video project involving slashdot exclusively would look like.

Not that difficult

Call me when someone manages to make a moebius strip sandwich.

Ha!

That's dude's pretty funny. I wonder, before turning on that video cam, if he eats espresso beans or if he free-bases them ?

Reminds of the fast talking guy who used to pitch Micro Machines.

Scale?

Why does the scale of the map change as you drag it around?

Looks like nowhere in North America is there land at the other side of the world (except Hawaii, does that count?)

Looks like the server is Digged

or should it be Dug?

The only thing larger...

would be the doggie bag for leftovers.

Hawaii & Botswana

Of course, good luck telling the latter locale's locals, "Silly Botswananites, this bread's not for eating!!"

NZ superimposed on Europe

There aren't many sizable landmasses at antipodal points, but NZ has a good overlap with Spain, as shown in this map of NZ superimposed on Spain [photobucket.com].

Supersize it please. I want a Uranus sandwich!

An Earth sandwich is OK, but what would be really good is if you could supersize it! Two pieces of bread on Uranus would be much bigger and therefore better.

SO if I wanted to dig to China...

I'd have to go through Argentina! I knew my uncle was full of &*^% when he told me he was digging to China!

map of possible antipodal land locations

This map [zefrank.com] shows possible locations for land-based antipodal points, which have large areas of Greenland and some of Siberia overlapping Antarctica, as well as the more reachable Argentina/Chile with China pairings. There are also some northern South America with Phillipines and other island areas possibilities. But it is no surprise that the NZ/Spain pairing was the first realized, as those are both close to reasonable cities that are likely home for people who visit his page.

I remember a story a while ago about a man from northern Spain (Galicia) who went to visit the village antipodal to his, in NZ, but unfortunately he did not have the foresight to construct a sandwich. That could have been with two slices from the same loaf if he had planned ahead.

I am so disillusioned

In the 70s, I had thought the China Syndrome could really happen. Jack Lemmon spouting off that our nuclear power plant would melt through the earth into the Indian Ocean just does not cut it. I want my 4 bucks back. The Indian Ocean Syndrome. Bah.

PS: First person that corrects me by saying he corrected himself by saying it would only melt to the center gets a slap. It was the name of the freaking movie for fsck sake.

Ok .. for the next trick

.. we need someone to drop a piece of bread on the dark side of the moon .. and figure out the exact opposite side of the earth from that point at a certain point in time ... That would really make it a sandwich. It's not a decent sandwich unless you've got at least two things between the bread. Of course it would be a very short-lived sandwich .. unless you kept moving the earth-bread to stay in alignment with the position of the moon as it passed. ze rules.

Where's the GeoRSS feed?

The story is misleading. I feel like the submitter does not know what GeoRSS is [georss.org]. Which reminds me, there has never been any story on slashdot regarding GeoRSS at all, which surprises me (and yes, I did submit some but they all got refused :-)

The first place to start is on georss.org, but you can also read the buzzy OGC press release [opengeospatial.org]. From which you'll learn: "A number of organizations have already implemented GeoRSS in open source and commercial mapping, blogging and other software products. Yahoo and Microsoft have expressed interest. Raj Singh, Director of OGC's Interoperability Programs and one of the original team that created GeoRSS explains why, "We designed GeoRSS to be easily implemented in software. Once GeoRSS is part of an application, it allows just about anyone to point a GeoRSS enabled feed at GeoRSS enabled software and instantly make a map.""

But this doesn't tell you what GeoRSS is and why the story's summary is misleading. You can read this article about GeoRSS and read more about the georss standard woes here [slashgeo.org].

GeoRSS is geospatially-aware RSS. There is a lot of applications, see the links above, like geotagging news items or sensors or podcasts or... I haven't seen any georss in the links above, only mashups and funny pictures. (maybe I should look harder? :-)

Direct video links

May 8th show [revver.com] and May 15th show [revver.com]

You can't get to China from here...

Dammit. So when I was little I really should have been trying to dig to Australia instead of China. I'd need to go to Chile to get to China. Maybe that's why I never got anywhere.

China?

When I was young I asked my mother what would happen if I kept digging. She said, "Well, you'd come out in China".

Thanks for 'what if earth were a sandwich' I now know I'd come out in the middle of the ocean, and i'd have to live in Argentina for her to be right.

Wow.

That sandwich has everything I like in it!

use the poles luke

This shouldn't really be that hard. Bored Guy at South Pole Research Station gets on sat phone and calls Bored Guy at North Pole Research Station and asks if they have any bread.

Make the world healthy again!

Put it in a pita! IT'S OKAY!

First in United States

I'm going to be the first Earth sandwich maker in the USA by visiting "French Southern and Antarctic Lands", and Northern Montana. Looking for sponsors for this important trip. Please send money (cash only).

hindsight

y'know, this sandwich would make one big turd.

Soul Sucking Registration Required

What happened to the old warning on NYTimes links?
I actually clicked on this one, assuming that I would now go to the story.

Try northern Montana.

There, you'll hit land - The French Southern and Antarctic Lands.

Re:Oh boy...

It doesn't. It uses longitude and latitude, which assume the Earth is a sphere.

Re:Oh boy...

I think you'll find that there are actually several governments on the Earth, and that your use of the singular is incorrect.

I think you'll also find that a vast majority of the Earth's goverments couldn't care less about precision in measurements of the Earth.

But thank you for introducing pedantry into a discussion of Earth sandwiches. Have a nice day.

Re:Oh boy...

It uses longitude and latitude, which assume the Earth is a sphere.

Not true: there are actually several types of latitude and longitude. The most common type (used by most maps) is Geodetic latitude and longitude [wikipedia.org], which does take into account the oblate [wikipedia.org] shape of the Earth. What you are talking about would be geocentric latitude and longitude; in reality pretty much everybody prefers and uses geodetic.

There are a lot of interesting problems in the area of defining coordinate systems for maps and navigation. Reading about WGS84 [wikipedia.org] would be a good place to start learning more.

Re:What's next?

Easy: A meatball hoagie, made of planets!

Re:Is this slashdot?

This is Slashdot
Glad I could help :)

Re:Don't Bother Watching the Video

How long is this hair? Left or right toe? Do you blog about it? Awww comeeon where's the link dude.

Re:Oh boy...

What somebody needed here, was a good understanding of antipodes [wikipedia.org]. Could have saved a lot of time, and Google's bandwidth.

Re:Saved some time....

I think that would save a little more than half the trouble.

But bravo, good idea. It's this kind of thinking that's going to be required if America is to remain at the top when it comes to planet sandwich making.

Barbequor, Eater of Worlds

Haven't you seen that episode?

Re:Oh boy...

I'd be curious to see just what percentage of time being on land on one side places you in the ocean on the other. It'd seem like 2/3 of the time would be a good estimate, but looking at the distribution of land I think that's probably quite a bit off.
Sorry if that got covered in the article, I didn't get a chance to read it all over yet.