Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How Far Can You Get From McDonald's?

datapointed.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 115 posts

Re: How Far Can You Get From McDonald's?

#41

Post by ars »

narcissus wrote: post #7

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…

Don't forget people go to dealerships also for maintenance and repair, not just to buy a car.

Re: How Far Can You Get From McDonald's?

#42

Post by tocomment »

tzs wrote: post #8

> 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.

He should have said "raises the question". " begs the question".means assuming the conclusion of your argument.

Re: How Far Can You Get From McDonald's?

#43

Post by mcclung »

Tichy wrote: post #38
DanBC wrote: post #26

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.

The Apollo command module orbit was approximately ~110 kilometers (~60 nautical miles) from the surface. The initial TLI leaves it with a highly elliptical orbit but this is corrected before the LM descent.

Re: How Far Can You Get From McDonald's?

#44

Post by brntn »

grecy wrote: post #21
vacri wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, but there may be a McDonalds behind you that's much closer!

Haha, no. It's a 500km (310mi.) drive, and there is only a McDonalds at the start and one at the end.

I find this hard to believe (grew up in Swan Hill).

Where are you heading to from Melbourne? I doubt you could stay in Victoria and be more than 250km from a McDonalds.

Re: How Far Can You Get From McDonald's?

#45

Post by GigabyteCoin »

I can't find the source for the life of me, but I remember reading an article about 6 months back that declared basically "there is not a single square foot of land inside the continental USA that is considered 'silent' any longer".

In other words, no matter where you "go to get away" in the USA, you will never truly leave the buzz of the city.

EDIT: Perhaps this is it http://geohazards.usgs.gov/staffweb/mcnamara/PDFweb/McNamara...

Re: How Far Can You Get From McDonald's?

#46

Post by wisty »

grecy wrote: post #10

I grew up in rural Australia, and we used to host a ton of exchange students from North America. Driving from Melbourne back to my home town, there is a huge billboard saying "Next McDonalds 100km" (60 mi.). Many times we would have to pull over so the American exchange students could take a photo, as they were in disbelief they were so far away from one. On that same road you're easily 250km (130mi.) away, but there…

Most Americans have no taste-buds. They don't eat lamb, and prefer grain-fed beef (which tastes like slightly gamey chicken) to grass-fed beef (which has a much more ... beefy ... flavor). And don't even think of offering them kangaroo.

On the other hand, I'm sure there's some Minnesotan here, who'll tell me I'm a wimp for not eating gopher. Regional US food rocks, but generic "US food" is just bland.

Re: How Far Can You Get From McDonald's?

#47

Post by Retric »

GigabyteCoin wrote: post #45

I can't find the source for the life of me, but I remember reading an article about 6 months back that declared basically "there is not a single square foot of land inside the continental USA that is considered 'silent' any longer". In other words, no matter where you "go to get away" in the USA, you will never truly leave the buzz of the city. EDIT: Perhaps this is it http://geohazards.usgs.gov/staffweb/mcnamara/PDF…

If you want quiet try caving 100m down and it's like another world.

Re: How Far Can You Get From McDonald's?

#48

Post by Retric »

narcissus wrote: post #37
jackalope wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does that include all car brands? What happens when you include all fast food burger joints (Burger King, Wendy's, etc.)?

That's a good question and I really don't know. To be perfectly honest, though, in my head, at least, any number less than maybe 10 fast food restaurants to each car dealership is low on the fast food restaurant side I reckon... but again, that's just my gut feeling about the ratio.

Except, a single McDonalds can serve ~5 orders a minute. Yet, a car dealership that can sell 2 cars a day is doing Ok. Let's assume 2 cars a day over 5 years = 3,650people before you get repeat customers. (Average salesman sells 7 cars a month * 8 sales guys.)

Edit: http://www.bluemaumau.org/6057/ten_largest_restaurant_franch... 2 million / store per year / 52 weeks / 6$ a meal = 6,410 people averaging 1 vist a week per McDonalds.

Re: How Far Can You Get From McDonald's?

#49

Post by dredmorbius »

tzs wrote: post #39
Tichy wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How high is the lunar orbit? What about some people drifting shipwrecked on the ocean?

I don't know how far above the Moon the command module's orbit was, but the Moon is about 3500 km in diameter, so when the command module was on the opposite side of the Moon from the lunar module, the astronaut in the command module would have been at least 3500 km from any other human. 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 examp…

The ISS orbits between 330km and 410km above the earth. Really just a hair's breadth off the planet, skimming the outside of the atmosphere.

While distance is one measure of loneliness, travel time would be another.

I'd suspect among the most isolated humans were early Antarctic explorers. Robert Scott, when he died on the return leg of his failed South Pole expedition, was some 400 miles (670 km) from his intended destination. Very few McDonalds' in the neighborhood, I'd wager.

Re: How Far Can You Get From McDonald's?

#50

Post by dandelany »

andersh wrote: post #29

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.

The algorithm isn't broken, the zones you're talking about are squashed together to show you, at any given point, which McDonalds is the closest to that location. It's like a Voronoi diagram (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voronoi_diagram).
Post reply on HN