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First Company Logo Visible From Space
Albert Sandberg writes, "KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken) has created the first logo that is visible from space. The construction was made by 65,000 1x1-foot tiles and covers about 2 acres. The logo was built and assembled over about a month and is located in the Nevada desert near Area 51. The article also has a short video showing the construction in time-lapse. Now the aliens know where to get their slimy food :-)"
KFC = Klingon Fried Crispy
I, for one, welcome our new fried chicken overlords.
I wouldn't cry if someone dropped a space station on it.
So the aliens will locate us by tracking down Hitler's speeches, and when they get here they'll see the KFC logo. I guess they'll cap it off by landing in Darfur. First impressions are so important...
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
... that we all taste just like chicken.
if I can see my backyard from google maps.. that's (ahem) [B] VISIBLE FROM SPACE [/B]
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
uh, in TFA? About 3/4 of the way down?
there is no need to sign your posts. this isn't usenet. your username is right there above your post. stop it.
How could an ignorant civilization have created such an intricate design that is only visible from high up? From the ground it looks like nothing. No human could have had the coordination to design such a picture. It must have been made by alien visitors, which neatly explains dinosaur fossils: those are their discarded "chicken" bones.
I wonder why someone doesn't make an advertisement in crops after harvest (e.g. like crop circles)? Seems like it would relatively cheap and easy to make something 100-200 acres (100X larger than the KFC ad), and it would certainly get a lot of press. More people might see it as well, since every flight attendant in the country would point it out to travelers as they fly over.
Crack - Free with every butt and set of boobs
What does it mean to be visible from space? This is totally absurd. My house is visible from space, I've seen it on Google Earth. There are other corporate logos that are probably visible from earth too, when you zoom in as much as they must to see this logo. Give me a break.
Lews
we've been beaming decades of reruns of "war of the worlds" into space via tv signals, so the aliens are certain to be wise to the bacteria threat and are certain to bring their antibiotics
but i don't think anyone has made a movie about alien susceptibility to "supersize me"-style death by artery clogging. so now when the aliens do come, this kfc beacon will guide them to their first meal of addictive tasty trans fats, and they shall die of arteriosclerosis, rather than sepsis
a brilliant plan! huzzah to kfc for saving the world!
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
It seems a reasonable investment, when you think of it. They're targeting the highly desirable "ISS astronaut" market, and everyone knows how much fried chicken those guys eat. They're insatiable!
That green slime had it coming.
"Man, I love the smell they have around this planet. Where's it coming from again? Oh, right, this 'KFC' place. Goodness, it smells good. And hey! There's the logo. Tell me, Xghrth, why don't we come here more often?"
[15 minutes and an empty box later]
"Ungh.... THAT'S why..."
Didn't Maxim already do this by putting a magazine cover of theirs somewhere near Las Vegas? It showed up as an overlay in Google Earth so I wasn't sure if it was just a bitmap they paid Google to show, or if it's a representation of the actual billboard but overlaid on older satellite images.
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
Oh great, now we'll be attracting all of those alien reefer heads to the Earth. The property values planet wide will start dropping.
I'm still waiting for the first company logo visible from earth (in space).
I always wondered how much it'd cost to paint the moon with a logo. I know it would be astronomical (heh), but surely it'd be worth it for whichever company (coke) did it? I mean, a logo on the moon! beat that, KFC. Who's going to be looking at their crappy from-space logo if the moon has a frikkin coke logo on it? ha!
I think I need some more coffee.
Darin Stevens couldn't be prouder of the accomplishment. Every marketer around the world just wrenched his fist upon reading this news - darn it, WE wanted to be the first logo seen in space!
OK Not really.
Nothing attracts a crowd, well, like a crowd.
Working to make ideas into reality. www.i4e.com
This is not such a bad idea; when the paranoids and UFO watchers check satellite shots of Area 51 they'll see the KFC ad, and notice they're hungry. Actually, Area 51 is probably near the top of the list of places people plug into Google Earth, so a lot of people are likely to see this.
"Lack of technical competence coupled with the arrogance of power, as usual, leads to no good end."
Billboard on busy highway during rush hour, $5,000
Television ad during Superbowl, $1,200,000
Getting your logo on Google for free, Priceless
So, what's next and how much will be spent to get "free" advertising on Google?
Or, when will GOogle get wise and start charging for AdSpace or EarthAds?
. 62,400 repetitions make one truth -- Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
I think we need the right not to look at advertising.
Am I alone in thinking that advertising should be restricted to certain public spaces designated as 'commercial', and should otherwise not be permitted? I strongly feel that I should be able to move around the world freely without having to look at KFC ads. We pay quite a lot of attention to our environment in a chemistry/biology context, but very little to it in terms of what kind of mental environment we are inhabiting.
I am generally relatively libertarian, believe it or not. I hate laws that interfere unneccessarily with people's right to do whatever they want. But the day I can't go anywhere on this planet without seeing an orbiting billboard is the day I become a serial killer. I guess I consider that a billboard or whatever isn't really 'over there' on someone else's property, because I feel its effects wherever I have the misfortune to observe it.
Put it this way - would we tolerate sound advertising that was audible from anywhere on earth? No. So why is visual advertising any different?
We are in danger of becoming a civilisation so enamoured with commerce that we have no independent culture or sense of aesthetics. I mean, we're branding the fucking PLANET now? It's sick. Commerce is a means to an end: we have made it an end in itself. As the first comment on the blog says, "this makes me want to kill myself".
Read Pynchon.
Just read the novel "Buy Jupiter" by Isaac Asimov. If I recall correctly, in that story the entire planet Jupiter is sold to aliens who want to use it as an enormous advertising surface targeted at spaceships travelling nearby.
-86.49187 Longitude
41.66944 Latitude
It is on the Bendix Proving Grounds, just West of South Bend, Indiana.
Those are 20-30 meter tall trees. And the word 'Studebaker'(original owner) is about 550 meters long.
Hey, Mom! Is it beer, yet?
Did anyone else notice at the end of the time lapse video the helicopter draft blowing away what looked like a tarp, and not tiles, making the design? Or am I just crazy?
A black hole is where God divided by 0
They must've forgotten about the "©2006 Google" clearly visible by satellite every 200 ft.
Visible from space means, visible from where the atmosphere effectively ends. Even in the lower strata, the buildings and the roads will also have to be visible for the logo to be visible.
Its really visible when you use zooming technology, in which case my house and care are already visible thanks to Google Earth as proof.
And plenty of company logos can be found going through Google Earth.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
What about the company whose logo is the Earth?
Back in 93' I mowed with a tractor a RHCP logo into my field that was over 10 Acers... It was not only visible by traffic flying into San Jose but also from space. SO.. I'm suing! Accually, you can almost still see it after the grass grew in.. you'll see it in teh center... http://terraserver-usa.com/image.aspx?T=1&S=11&X=1 551&Y=10252&Z=10&W=1 :-)
Here is a well known company whose logo is also visible from space.
Apparently KFC never heard of Maxim's giant magazine cover of Eva Longoria.
I'm still waiting for the first company logo visible from earth (in space).
;-)
If there is anything that would lead me to seriously consider engaging in open rebellion against capitalist western culture, a la Camus, this would be it. The last thing some New Guinea Fore or Enga tribesperson or some Australian aborigine needs to see is a damned red and blue sphere with a wavy white stripe down the middle floating across the night sky (personally, I think Pepsi would do it first). I mean c'mon people, have some fscking perspective! Are marketing gurus really so stupid and vain that this would seem like a good idea?
Hmm, lack of perspective, marketing gurus, stupidity and vanity....
I think I just answered my own question.
Crap. I don't like rebellion.
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool. -Richard Feynman
you've heard of it, right?
Job well done.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
0.
now the ROI on all the people who are posting in on every space/geek/tech/advertiser websites is huge!
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
This is bollocks.
I remember reading, decades ago, in the Guinness Book O' Records about the worlds' biggest sign - "so big it's visible from space" - being the Readymix sign in the Nullabor Plain.
You may or may not have heard the rumor that they were forced to change the name to KFC because the FDA said their chicken was not longer chicken... but apparently that is not true. According to snopes, here are the reasons they changed the name:
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Oh wow, you just made me realize why they put it near Area 51 ... Google Earth (and other desktop satellite imagery)! I couldn't figure it out before, but your link made me realize that even though Area 51 is a no fly zone, TONS of people will still see it online. Think of all the kooky UFO websites that republish satellite pictures of Area 51. They have a huge audience of folks who are browsing for more info on Area 51. Now all these late night UFOlogists will have the answer to their hunger pains.
Crack - Free with every butt and set of boobs
There, fixed the headline for you.
I bet this brilliant f**ing "event company" just saw that they needed to clear a bunch of "weeds". Apparently they didn't bother to find out how long desert plants take to regrow. Scars in the desert can take decades to heal.
I was born and raised in the Mojave Desert. It's a beautiful place and it makes me sick to see a bunch of out-of-town yahoos clearcut a bunch of it for their little stunt. 'Course environmental awareness isn't the first thing that KFC brings to mind so it's par for the course.
~~~~~~~
"You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
Needs antialiasing.
The time may come when the firefox logo is visible. Of course, then we must all panic as the giant space fox has come to hump the planet...
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
GoogleMap: http://tinyurl.com/ts7nh "About 1965, (3) probably in winter (Hoare, 2003), a decision was made to construct a giant rendition of the Readymix company logo virtually exactly halfway along the Eyre Highway, north of the 225 mile peg. ...The diamond, its long axis at a bearing of 82[degrees] true, measured two miles long by one mile high [3.2 x 1.6km, so each side was 1.8km], with each letter being 800x600 feet [240x180m]."
Reference:
http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286- 9508372_ITM
... but insuring marketing innovations like "If this logo gets hit by a falling space station then everyone in America gets a taco" must be like the career-crowning capstone of the profession. "Bah, any idiot can underwrite a life-insurance policy for a 36 year old male nonsmoker. Its the REAL men who can just close their eyes and say, yep, I know what the risk of getting plastered by satellite debris is. Incidentally, $234 premium for coverage through the end of the year on a $200 million policy with a $150 deductible. NEXT."
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
a) Define "pork", using the bible, of course.
b) Genetically engineer pigs enough so that they no longer match "a"
c) Profit!
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
"Kentucky Fried Chicken" was changed to KFC back in 1991! You may or may not have heard the rumor that they were forced to change the name to KFC because the FDA said their chicken was not longer chicken... but apparently that is not true.
Yeah, that's absolute idiocy. I was working for McDonalds at the time, back in high school, and we had the same bullshit: "The patties are 100% pure beef" implied that we'd created/purchased a company called "100% Pure Beef". We didn't; the supplier (name a Canadian or American national meat packaging company) and the ingredients were marked clearly on the box: beef. Some even stated province: Pure Alberta Beef. 100% Ontario Beef. New York's finest Dead Cow. (OK, the last one was a joke... d'Uh)) The fact is (and as a former manager, a position to which I was promoted quickly because I actually showed up on time and *most* days liked my co-workers, customers and my job) McDonald's hamburgers are a higher grade of beef (Cdn AAA) than you can usually buy in the supermarket. That's lower fat than is commonly available to consumers. And it's very important to McDonalds - higher fat would be bad for the cooking process (admittedly not an open flame, unfortunately) and for the dietary disclosures now required. Throw a 1/4 pound of top-end premium ground into a frying pan, and I guarantee you'll get more fat than if you threw a *half* pound of uncooked McDonalds quarter-patties in the pan. (Try a few McDonalds, tell them you're on some sort of my-parents-were-idiot-hippies raw beef diet, sooner or later one of them will let you have uncooked patties. American or Canadian, I'll bet money than 1/2 pound of McDonalds patties gives less fat than 1/4 of extra-lean grocery store beef.)
As for KFC, all you need to do is bite into it to know it's chicken. I don't know what sort of scientifically (and culinarily) inept uncircumcised inbred NDP-voter started the rumor that "KFC can't call themselves KFC because they don't serve chicken", but it's really sufficiently asinine that the offender shouldn't be allowed to vote or procreate. If you disagree, there's a great B-Movie (sparsely available by Torrents, etc.) called "The Willies" - you'll enjoy the Tennessee Fricassee Chicken scene for sure.
I can't speak for the PETA comments against KFC, which I hope are the usual PETA bullshit. I am a carnivore but I feel for anything with a nervous system - but I will remind you that PETA has been right on occasion. OTOH, if there were anything more stupid than chicken, it would be called a "plant", it would breathe carbon dioxide, and it would think George Bush was a terrific President.
Yes, KFC is chicken. Yes, it's fried. Yes, the founder was from Kentucky. If you're too stupid to understand that the K and the F became liabilities with the diet craze(s) (whatever happened to *moderation*, you know, like us adults do), you don't deserve to breathe or breed.
But so long as you money is still real, "Can I take your order?" (We don't even want to get into my experiences with fat people: "Double Big Mac combo, large sized, large soft drink... better make it a Diet Coke, I'm trying to lose weight..." Me, screaming in my mind at the top of my lungs: "THEN MAKE THIS YOUR WEEKLY NOT DAILY TREAT TO YOURSELF, GET AN ACTIVE HOBBY, AND CUT OFF THE BON-BONS, YOU FUCKING HIDEOUS AND STINKY BEACHED WHALE." Spoken: "Oh yes, a Diet Coke will do *wonders* for your physique." - if they were any dumber, or if I were a commissioned salesperson, I'd tell them I was gay and sell them a *simply fabulous* pair of culottes and a front-load washer - they're dumb enough to trust "diet" over common sense, so they must be dumb enough to trust a cute little rubber door seal over gravity.)
Finally, say what you want about KFC, but sometimes I just get a craving for it - it's damned good (except when you go to a sucky franchise whose left it under the heat lamps too long, in which case it's only slightly better than cafeteria food). KFC, aside from their proprietary seasonings,
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Looks like an allowable animal must both chew the cud and have a cloven hoof. Pigs have a cloven hoof but don't chew the cud. So, force the pig to chew the cud and you're ok? Some parts of "the law" strike me more as a guide for surviving in the desert in ancient times rather than arbitrary rules to follow. For example, Basically, the Dietary Law is a prohibition against eating scavenger animals. The article goes on about how the more complex digestive system of grazing animals leads to less toxicity in the meat. Perhaps farm pigs fed a controlled diet should be considered "clean".
I hope any intelligent aliens out there that see "The Colonel" in all his corporate glory, just drive on by...
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Why, as in why did the editors think this was worthy of condemning electrons to potential-drop hell? And as in why did the KFC marketing 'droids think that this would do something worthwhile for their corporate masters.
When did I last subject myself to a KFC? Probably not in the last decade or two. Do I feel motivated to rush out and partake of small bits of bony chicken drenched in greasy batter? Uh, no.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
The Nazca Lines were first, and much bigger. The picture at bottom left is even a baby chicken. Or a moose upside down.
Reduce, reuse, cycle
...the first graffiti visible from space?
You've got a great point, but consider the effect a large coke has on your body. Let us take a look at Ye Olde nutrition index. A Big Mac has 560 calories, and 47 grams of carbohydrates. A large coke has 310 calories, resulting from 86g of carbohydrates (all sugars.)
If you ate the kind of meal I usually eat when I eat at McD's, you'd have a couple of McChickens and a diet coke. The coke has no nutritional value, although I still think the jury is out on nutrasweet. And the McChickens have 370 calories, a little under half of which are from fat. Whee. But a large coke would have just as many calories as one of those, and I'd get half again more calories. 640 calories, on the other hand, is not unreasonable for lunch on a 2000 calorie diet.
But actually, carbohydrates have a greater impact on your body than fat. It is healthier for you to eat 600 calories of fat than 600 calories of carbohydrates. First, even saturated fat raises both your HDL and LDL levels. On its own, eating lard would probably not elevate your cholesterol score as a result of this. But carbs kick your pancreas into gear, and huge influxes of "ready" carbohydrates are the most damaging influence. In addition, your brain decides whether or not you are hungry based on glucose levels. Over time it becomes resistant to glucose and it takes more and more carbs to feel full. This leads to a vicious cycle of addiction that frequently leads to obesity. However, as you are putting ever-increasing loads on your pancreas, it is likely (but AFAIK not yet conclusively proven, only very strongly indicated) that this is the cause of the diabetes epidemic in the US. Apparently now India is also experiencing the same effects as their economy heats up and more people eat more processed foods, which are typically carb-heavy and have tons of added sugar, to improve both flavor and shelf life. Take a look at hot dog packages sometime and count carbohydrates if you want to know how much of the meat you buy is actually meat...
Of course you are quite correct that eating a big mac and a large fries is, as you say, more than pretty much anyone should be eating. In fact, back in the olden days, McDonalds only had one size of french fry, and it was what we now call a "small". This is all irrelevant to me however, because I can remember when they had crispy french fries that someone might actually want to eat, which was much more recently... and I won't bother to even eat their damned fries now.
But the bottom line is that saying that the diet coke is irrelevant is like saying that you shouldn't care if you get stabbed when you've just been shot, because you already have a more serious wound.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"