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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."

22 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 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. 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?

  3. 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
  4. 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!"

  5. 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
  6. 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
  7. Two words..... by dickeya · · Score: 3, Funny

    shit sandwich.

  8. 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.

  9. 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...
  10. 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.

  11. 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!
  12. 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.

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

    That sandwich has everything I like in it!

  14. 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.