From http://travel.cnn.com/rise-big-unnecessary-crazy-travel-adve... :

Johnson hopes the walk will help create a name for himself in the Internet industry.

He wants to develop cross-platform Web applications that engage nations.

Not sure I could think of a worse way of doing this than spending 5 years hiking across Siberia.

It's not just about what you do, it's about what you do and how you do it.

- Let the story unravel.

Imagine if an American said he was going across the "world" from New York to California.

I think you're getting the words, 'Across' and 'Around' mixed up.

If one were to attempt to "walk across the world", this would be about as close as they could get. :)

It makes for a much better headline than "Man attempts to walk across the largest section of the earth that you can."

And also, to "walk across" sort of implies you only need to do half of it.

I'm too tired to check, but Internet, is there any continuos stretch of land that connects one point on earth to it's polar opposite on the sphere?

(too "tired to check" should also imply "too tired to post comment", but oh well. it already is resulting in "too tired to properly edit")

>If one were to attempt to "walk across the world", this would be about as close as they could get. :)

I know this sounds ridiculous, but I've sometimes fantasized about walking around the world and the best you could do in theory is about 10x the distance from New York to California: South America to West Africa (assuming you can cross a frozen Bering Strait). That's 20,000 miles. In reality, you'd probably face insurmountable political and legal difficulties with crossing borders.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumnavigation#Human-powered

The 9,000 miles Michael Lee Johnson is attempting is pretty impressive. I've got a lot of respect for this guy for trying.

>I'm too tired to check, but Internet, is there any continuos stretch of land that connects one point on earth to it's polar opposite on the sphere?

Yes! I believe so, based on what I said previously. Here are some tools to get you started:

http://www.findlatitudeandlongitude.com/antipode-map/

http://www.daftlogic.com/projects-google-maps-distance-calcu...

There are hundreds of people who have visited every country on the world.

It definitely isn't an insurmountable challenge.

I imagine you could do slightly better. Maybe from the edge of Siberia to the south of Spain, or Singapore to the north of Norway. Walking to London has a big obstacle in the way, the English Channel. I'm not sure how he intends to deal with that.

Edit: D'oh, you could probably do much better by ending at South Africa.

...and his project has already been banned from Facebook:

https://plus.google.com/u/0/100125012078853567494/posts/LS9V...

It's not the first time this has happened.

Nice! Let's all do that.

>Imagine if an American said he was going across the "world" from New York to California.

Imagine if they did it too. It would be quite mind expanding for people to see that not everybody lives like they do in California or Iowa or New York or Texas.

TV can only get you that far -- you have to experience it too. There are people in New York that are more provincial (in relation to the ways of the world) than people in Idaho, and vice versa.

It's a cold substitute, but for those who are interested in life in the American Midwest, Malle's film gives a small taste.

Reminds me of a scene from Pulp Fiction: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPfPYVVNgVw. Doesn't seem so ridiculous to me.

Will there be a book, and if so, will the book be as interesting as "Danziger's Travels?"

There will be a book, yes... Possibly a couple. And of course it will be interesting. :)

Google+ is banned by the great firewall of China...

That's what VPN's are for. - At least in this case anyway.

Alternately: Please, please, Google notice this!

It'd be pretty great if it was sailing.