Brian and I were talking about El Cupachabra earlier tonight. For those in the know, this is a mythical(?) animal that has thus far eluded scientific analysis or capture in South America, violently feeding off of farm animals and dogs. Some people believe it is a real night-prowling demon animal, others think it is a convenient and mythical way to explain all cattle mutilation, regardless of the actual cause. Either way, there is no proof that this animal does exit, nor is there proof that is does NOT exist, therefore (according to quantum theory) it both exists AND does not exist at the same time.
Anyhow, our discussion turned to whether it is possible that every square inch of America has yet been explored by man. Brian (whose creativity is outmatched only by his photographic memory) quickly suggested forming a huge human search line - like you sometimes see in crime dramas when the cops are looking for evidence in a field or something and don't want to leave any square inch uncovered. Americans could be recruited from Florida to Maine to link hands and move from the coast westward. If this was turned into a giant relay moving from the right coast to the left coast (each person could walk, say, 10 miles and then be replaced by someone else), we could use the sheer population mass of our great country to literally and methodically cover every square inch, pushing the Bigfoots and El Cupachabras of the country into the Pacific ocean ahead of it.
Of course, the engineer in me started to think about how this could be made a reality. Never mind an actual sweep of the country - what would it take to populate Route 95 from Key West Florida to Houlton Maine? According to Google, there are 2,006 miles between the two. If each person was able to span 5 feet hand to hand on average, you would need 1,056 people per mile, or 2,118,336 people to be recruited to show up at the same time, each in a specific location, and join hands.
We have the technology to recruit people, one could set up a Web site through which people could register for a specific zip code - and if you knew how many miles each zip code spanned you'd know how many people you needed. You could over-recruit to accomodate gaps when people inevitably didn't show up. When you had enough people you could schedule a date. Getting legal approval from the po-po would be problematic, but maybe a national and federal exception could be made in the interest of extreme coolness.
You'd have all sorts of people showing up dressed like pirates or ninjas or animals or star wars characters. It would be the coolest social experiment ever. Imagine a line of people hand in hand that could be seen from space.
Just a thought.
A really, really, REALLY cool thought...
