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Earth Sandwich

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the no-mayo-mayo-sucks dept.

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."

11 of 158 comments (clear)

  1. Oh boy... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Informative

    Ocean. Yay, interesting.

    Seems most of the places you put it, the opposite side has ocean.

    Wonder if this even accounts for the aspherity of the earth.

    1. Re:Oh boy... by geoffspear · · Score: 1, Informative

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

      --
      Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
    2. Re:Oh boy... by belg4mit · · Score: 2, Informative

      Which is close enough for government work.

      Seriously, at this scale it's not really an issue. Especially if you're willing to consider the
      Earth's ellipsoid symmetric across the equator.

      --
      Were that I say, pancakes?
    3. Re:Oh boy... by modeless · · Score: 5, Informative

      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, which does take into account the oblate 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 would be a good place to start learning more.

      --
      Firebug. It will make your jaw hit the floor.
    4. Re:Oh boy... by ObsessiveMathsFreak · · Score: 4, Informative

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

      --
      May the Maths Be with you!
  2. Direct link to article by mrnutz · · Score: 3, Informative

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

  3. Not really... by Recovering+Hater · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

    --
    My humor is probably your flamebait
  4. there is an old russian joke... by dunkelfalke · · Score: 4, Informative

    ... 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!

    --
    Conservatism: The fear that somewhere, somehow, someone you think is your inferior is being treated as your equal.
  5. Re:Need a boat by geoffspear · · Score: 2, Informative
    You can still dig a hole to China. You just need to curve the hole a bit.

    You're really better off doing that anyway, to avoid having to dig through the solid iron in the center. That stuff can wreak havok on a shovel.

    --
    Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
  6. Re:Is this slashdot? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    This is Slashdot
    Glad I could help :)

  7. Where's the GeoRSS feed? by Lord+Satri · · Score: 2, Informative

    The story is misleading. I feel like the submitter does not know what GeoRSS is. 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. 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.

    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? :-)

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    Animoog.org