31–40 of 115 posts
If you look closely you can see his coloring algorithm is broken. The "spheres" of close restaurants appear to "squash" each other rather than just intersecting. The result is grooves between restaurant spheres that should be more brightly coloured. If anyone even notices this comment and replies to it, I expect them to be disagreeing with me. TL;DR: I can tell by the pixels.
>Which begs the question: just how far away can you get from our world of generic convenience? And how would you figure that out? I'm an insomniac much of the time. Some weeks/months I don't sleep until it's light out. Out here in suburban Chicago, the only places still open to me when it's late and I'm hungry are 7-11, McDonald's, and Burger King. So I'll take "generic convenience," because it at least makes my life…
The United States, visualized by distance to the nearest McDonald's (DISAPPOINTED.net)
I know it's not really related but still... this article reminded of the section in the book 'Behind The Golden Arches' that discussed that although many people think that there are too many McDonald's restaurants around, there are still more car dealerships. And how many times do you buy a car compared to a burger? So this article claims around 13,000 McDonald's restaurants, and I just found a page that claims 37,50…
When you say "separate ... dealership franchises", are you counting each physical location once, or once per brand? Around here, many dealerships carry multiple brands. Also, there tend to be multiple dealerships clustered together (probably due to zoning, and tax incentives that some municipalities offer), so they're not as smoothly distributed as McDonalds. Still, those are amazing numbers!
But yeah, I agree that the numbers are amazing...
I know it's not really related but still... this article reminded of the section in the book 'Behind The Golden Arches' that discussed that although many people think that there are too many McDonald's restaurants around, there are still more car dealerships. And how many times do you buy a car compared to a burger? So this article claims around 13,000 McDonald's restaurants, and I just found a page that claims 37,50…
Does that include all car brands? What happens when you include all fast food burger joints (Burger King, Wendy's, etc.)?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How high is the lunar orbit? What about some people drifting shipwrecked on the ocean?
The moon is about 60 Earth radii away from the centre of the Earth. It's considerably further away than someone could get in a boat.
> Which begs the question: just how far away can you get from our world of generic convenience? An interesting kind of related question is to ask what is the farthest you've ever been away from other humans. For most of us, we've never been more than a few miles from others. I've read that the record is probably held by one of the Apollo astronauts who remained in lunar orbit while the landing party landed.
How high is the lunar orbit? What about some people drifting shipwrecked on the ocean?
There are enough inhabited islands in the oceans that it is hard to find a place where you might be 3500 km from anybody. For example, draw a 3500 km circle centered on Hawaii and that takes care of a pretty big chunk of the middle of the Pacific.
Get out of that circle, and you are now close enough to the US, Japan, and New Guinea to have someone within 3500 km.
Southeast prospects are better, but before you get 3500 km from Hawaii, you are within 3500 km of the Pitcairn Islands.
It does look like there might be places in the ocean that are 3500 km from any inhabited place, but then you have to add in 3500 km circles around every ship and every plane (well, slightly smaller for the planes as they are at high altitude). That is going to take a lot out.
And don't forget the International Space Station! If could be over 3000 km from the point it is directly over, and you'd be within 3500 km of it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The moon is about 60 Earth radii away from the centre of the Earth. It's considerably further away than someone could get in a boat.
I meant how far is the moon orbit from the surface of the moon, where the other people were.