{"id":882,"date":"2007-02-07T12:24:46","date_gmt":"2007-02-07T10:24:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.randform.org\/blog\/?p=882"},"modified":"2007-02-07T12:24:46","modified_gmt":"2007-02-07T10:24:46","slug":"edge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.randform.org\/blog\/?p=882","title":{"rendered":"edge"},"content":{"rendered":"<div align=\"center\"><img id=\"image881\" src=\"http:\/\/www.randform.org\/blog\/wp-content\/2007\/01\/worldT.png\" alt=\"worldT.png\" \/><\/div>\n<div align=\"center\"><small>not a feasible design <a href=\"http:\/\/page.mi.fu-berlin.de\/polthier\/video\/Geodesics\/index.html\">either<\/a><\/small><\/div>\n<p>When it became common knowledge, that the world is a ball (and not a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.terrypratchettbooks.com\/discworld\/\">disk<\/a>), the world faced its first big problem.<!--more--> Suddenly no one knew where to place the marginal groups. Seamonsters for example  where traditionally expected near the border of the world (a feature  a round world obviously misses) and today they can be found (and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/story\/0,2933,238263,00.html\">filmed<\/a>) all around the oceans.<br \/>\nAll the other most urgent problems of the world are of course due to its <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Slartibartfast\">shape<\/a> as well. Like overpopulation: If there is an edge there  is a canonical place to add on. Or the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sciencemag.org\/cgi\/content\/short\/315\/5810\/368\">rise of the ocean level<\/a>: On a round, borderless world the excess water simply cannot flow off. Or take the global warming in general: For a disk the average temperature can easily be finetuned by simply tilting the disk against the ecliptic plane, something which is pointless for a sphere.<br \/>\nEven the world trade could profit from a disk world: Anything going over the worlds border could be made liable to customs duty. <\/p>\n<p>Maybe its time to put the world over the edge.<br \/>\n<small>footnote: the mathematicians of course have already a solution for that up their sleeves: Using a suitable <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Norm_%28mathematics%29\">metric<\/a> a cube makes a good sphere as well. However, this solution would make the profession of a cartographer a rather dull job if not even practically dispensible.<\/small> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>not a feasible design either When it became common knowledge, that the world is a ball (and not a disk), the world faced its first big problem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[25,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.randform.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/882"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.randform.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.randform.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.randform.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.randform.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=882"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.randform.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/882\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.randform.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.randform.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.randform.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}