Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
London line and continued to use its own meridian, through Paris, for thirty years. If the
French had been a little more persuasive or the ancient Babylonians a little less, Alex Jar-
rett andhisfellow confluence hunterswouldhaveatotally different gridofintersections to
contend with.
But that's the beauty of the Degree Confluence Project—its essential randomness. The
photos on its website are just as homogeneous as the ones on any roadgeek site: the same
unremarkable foliage and dry grass and mud seem to show up time and again, whether the
magic spot was found in Botswana or Bakersfield. But the pictures remind us that it's nev-
er enough just to
be
at a place—anyone can do that. The trick is to know where you are.
Columbus “discovered” America, in his own small Eurocentric way, but when the contin-
ent was named, he was snubbed in favor of Amerigo Vespucci. That wasn't just because
Vespucci marketed the sexy natives better, I learned at the Library of Congress. It's also
because he was the one who knew where he was, knew the context. Columbus thought he
was in India; Vespucci realized that a new continent had been found. By the same token,
Rodger had probably passed those ferns on the way to his garage many times, but it was
the Degree Confluence Project that “discovered” what they meant. That's what maps are
for: they provide the story of our locations and translocations. A $500 GPS device can tell
youyourposition,buta$10roadatlasisstillaninfinitelymorepowerfultoolforproviding
context.
The Degree Confluence Project isn't the
reductio ad absurdum
of our new constant
awareness of latitude and longitude. That honor would belong to the “Earth sandwich”
dreamed up in May 2006 by the Web humorist Ze Frank. In a short video, Frank instructed
hisfanstoplacetwopiecesofbreadonthegroundatdiametricallyoppositepoints,oranti-
He even broke out a tender “Imagine”-style ballad to commemorate his brainstorm. “As I
laythisbreadontheground,Iknowmyjobain'tdone,”hecrooned,“butiftheEarthwerea
sandwich, we would all be one. (Sandwich.)” Frank'schallenge was harder than youmight
think: looking at an antipodal map of the Earth's surface reveals that almost every bit of
landontheplanetsitsdirectlyoppositealargebodyofwater—almostasiftheGodofyour
choice always intended the sandwich version of His creation to remain open-faced! One of
the few possible sandwich sites is the Iberian Peninsula: if you were to dig a hole straight
throughthecenteroftheEarthfromSpain,you'dreemergesomewhereinthenorthernhalf
of the island nation of New Zealand. Just weeks after Frank's challenge was posted, two
Canadian brothers named Jonathan and Duncan Rawlinson, traveling from London to Por-
tugal, made a side trip into the hills of southern Spain to lay a half baguette on the dusty
ground, while an Internet co-conspirator did the same thing near his home in Auckland,
New Zealand. The first Earth sandwich in human history had been completed.
