From a cursory look, the plots just seems to correspond with population density more than anything else.
How Far Can You Get From McDonald's?
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Re: How Far Can You Get From McDonald's?
#12This post is from 2009, he updated it in 2010: http://www.datapointed.net/2010/09/distance-to-nearest-mcdon... He also visited the spot http://www.datapointed.net/2010/10/the-farthest-place-from-m... which makes for a pretty entertaining tale.
What's interesting is to "View Image" on each in two separate tabs and flip between them. Notably there was one closure in the west that left an even bigger black hole.
Re: How Far Can You Get From McDonald's?
#13> 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.
Apollo 13 holds the record for farthest distance from Earth, because in its aborted mission, it swung farther around the moon at higher altitude rather than dropping into lunar orbit.
Re: How Far Can You Get From McDonald's?
#14I 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.)?
Re: How Far Can You Get From McDonald's?
#15> 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.
Apollo 13 holds the record for farthest distance from Earth, because in its aborted mission, it swung farther around the moon at higher altitude rather than dropping into lunar orbit. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_13#Mission_notes
But there were 3 of them together in the capsule.
Re: How Far Can You Get From McDonald's?
#16This post is from 2009, he updated it in 2010: http://www.datapointed.net/2010/09/distance-to-nearest-mcdon... He also visited the spot http://www.datapointed.net/2010/10/the-farthest-place-from-m... which makes for a pretty entertaining tale.
The followups are nicer than the original one, and I think that, in spirit, NW Nevada/Southern Oregon are a better fit for 'far away' places. The desert out there is very high and lonely, in a hauntingly beautiful sort of way. It's also extremely empty.
One place in particular that merits a visit is Steens Mountain - you can drive most of the way up it and hike around. The view from the top is amazing - you can see for miles, and there are very few signs of people visible.
Re: How Far Can You Get From McDonald's?
#17From a cursory look, the plots just seems to correspond with population density more than anything else.
Very closely, I'd say:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_Stat...
The major difference I see is the McDonaldses following highways in the western states -- for example, look at the sparsely populated parts of Montana.
And even there, it's possible that the McDonald's density matches the population density. That's just not what's graphed.
Re: How Far Can You Get From McDonald's?
#18I 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…
Ah, but there may be a McDonalds behind you that's much closer!
Re: How Far Can You Get From McDonald's?
#19I 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!
Re: How Far Can You Get From McDonald's?
#20>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…
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