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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."

38 of 158 comments (clear)

  1. Fantastic.. by JD52 · · Score: 3, Funny

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

    1. Re:Fantastic.. by CUatTHEFINISH · · Score: 2, Funny

      You may joke, but considering it's an Earth sandwich; Al Roker would be eating you too.

    2. Re:Fantastic.. by Digital+Autumn · · Score: 3, Funny

      You may joke, but considering it's an Earth sandwich; Al Roker would be eating you too.

      In Communist Russia, you would be eating Al Roker too!

  2. condiments by Faustust · · Score: 2, Funny

    Got Mustard?

  3. Mashup by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    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.

    1. Re:Mashup by mpathetiq · · Score: 5, Funny

      Mashup some potatoes for me, please.

    2. Re:Mashup by Urusai · · Score: 3, Funny

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

    3. Re:Mashup by tyler.willard · · Score: 3, Funny

      Indeed. If we absolutely have to have trendy neologims, can we at least have some that don't sound so infernally stupid? Asinine != 'ironically hip'.

    4. Re:Mashup by Rob+T+Firefly · · Score: 4, Funny

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

  4. 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
  5. 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.
    1. Re:there is an old russian joke... by Kent+Simon · · Score: 4, Funny

      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 !

      --
      Kent Simon Multitheft Auto
    2. Re:there is an old russian joke... by zlogic · · Score: 2, Funny

      In Soviet Russia, joke laughs at you!

  6. Oblig. Song by Faustust · · Score: 4, Funny

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

  7. interesting results.... by GillBates0 · · Score: 5, Funny

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

    --
    An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
  8. 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?
  9. But what about the tetrahedron? by Myself · · Score: 4, Interesting

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

    1. Re:But what about the tetrahedron? by Red+Flayer · · Score: 4, Funny
      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.
      --
      "Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
  10. 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.
  11. Thats why by GmAz · · Score: 2, Funny

    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.

    --
    Click Click Bloody Click PANCAKES!
  12. Two words..... by dickeya · · Score: 3, Funny

    shit sandwich.

  13. 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.

  14. Ha! by catdevnull · · Score: 3, Funny

    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.

    --

    I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
  15. Re:Don't Bother Watching the Video by baadger · · Score: 4, Funny

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

  16. 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!
  17. Re:Murphy's Law by mcmonkey · · Score: 4, Interesting
    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.

  18. Re:Murphy's Law by bohemian72 · · Score: 2, Funny

    Or some how attach the buttered toast to the back of a cat thus creating the spinning, buttered cat, perpetual motion, anti-gravity machine.

    --
    The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.
  19. SO if I wanted to dig to China... by Chabil+Ha' · · Score: 2, Funny

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

    --
    We're all hypocrites. We all have hidden parts, it's the contrast between them that make us more a hypocrite than others
  20. 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? :-)

  21. Hey Farva... by iamlucky13 · · Score: 2, Funny

    Mac: Hey Farva, what's the name of the websites you like where they take $hit from other sites to make something new, like geo-caching with Google Maps?

    Farva: You mean a mashup?

    Mac: *Offers gun to Anonymous Coward*

  22. Nice idea, But... by kbox · · Score: 2, Funny

    I couldn't eat a whole one.

  23. You can't get to China from here... by brandizzle · · Score: 2, Funny

    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.

  24. China? by askreet · · Score: 2, Funny

    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.

  25. Wow. by celardore · · Score: 3, Funny

    That sandwich has everything I like in it!

  26. Re:Oh boy... by geoffspear · · Score: 3, Funny

    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.

    --
    Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
  27. use the poles luke by uberjoe · · Score: 2, Funny

    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.

    --

    The days of the digital watch are numbered.

  28. First in United States by unjedai · · Score: 2, Funny

    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).