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Author Topic: Things that made you go "WTF?" today o_O  (Read 14840145 times)

Loud Whispers

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Re: Things that made you go "WTF?" today o_O
« Reply #102240 on: May 15, 2016, 04:34:48 pm »

New York is huge. How could anyone think NYC covered the entire state?
Most all international travelers from New York are from the city

Tawa

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Re: Things that made you go "WTF?" today o_O
« Reply #102241 on: May 15, 2016, 04:36:42 pm »

I also hear that some who are unfamiliar with American geography aren't aware it's a state and believe there's just the city, but I have yet to meet someone of this persuasion.
I used to think this.  :-[
Oh.

Don't feel bad, most American media exports never imply otherwise :P
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Sonlirain

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Re: Things that made you go "WTF?" today o_O
« Reply #102242 on: May 15, 2016, 08:42:55 pm »

For quite some time i didn't even knew that Washington is actually a state.
Goes to show how important it is when even Washington D.C. decides to have nothing to do with it and moves to the other side of the country.
Then again i have no ties with either of the americas and don't give a damn about its geography/state borders either.
I did notice that state borders made out of straight lines look silly.
Seriously it looks more like a meat map than a state map.
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« Last Edit: May 15, 2016, 08:45:33 pm by Sonlirain »
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TD1

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Re: Things that made you go "WTF?" today o_O
« Reply #102243 on: May 15, 2016, 09:00:48 pm »

For quite some time i didn't even knew that Washington is actually a state.
Goes to show how important it is when even Washington D.C. decides to have nothing to do with it and moves to the other side of the country.
Then again i have no ties with either of the americas and don't give a damn about its geography/state borders either.
I did notice that state borders made out of straight lines look silly.
Seriously it looks more like a meat map than a state map.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Hey, I can see my home county on there!
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MrRoboto75

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Re: Things that made you go "WTF?" today o_O
« Reply #102244 on: May 15, 2016, 09:01:47 pm »

Actually Washington state came about way before Washington DC.

Also the borders become more boxy as you go west because there's less landmarks.  All the eastern borders are usually based around rivers and such, but out west its either entirely flat plains or very lumpy mountains.
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Putnam

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Re: Things that made you go "WTF?" today o_O
« Reply #102245 on: May 15, 2016, 09:20:38 pm »

Actually Washington state came about way before Washington DC.

Washington D.C. was 1790. Washington state was 1889, 99 years after DC was founded. D.C. was granted some self-government in 1973, but even the district came about 18 before the state.

Descan

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Re: Things that made you go "WTF?" today o_O
« Reply #102246 on: May 15, 2016, 09:28:07 pm »

Borders are boxy not because there are less landmarks, but because they're less important. Rivers, mountains, bays, forests, before the railroad and the telegraph these were natural points to mark boundaries. After the railroad, it's easier to travel vast distances and natural boundaries matter less.

Same reason the western Canadian provinces are basically lines drawn on a map, where-as the eastern ones follow boundaries and islands.

California and BC are a bit of an exception because they were settled before the middling areas were.
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Orange Wizard

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Re: Things that made you go "WTF?" today o_O
« Reply #102247 on: May 15, 2016, 09:35:15 pm »

Australia's state borders are literally just squares, but NZ's region borders are all squiggly. Explain that.
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Reelya

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Re: Things that made you go "WTF?" today o_O
« Reply #102248 on: May 15, 2016, 10:45:03 pm »

When the distances are greater they're more likely to just declare a particular longitude / latitude to be the border. And nobody's quibbling over who owns a particular patch of the desert, at least until they find oil or something out there.

Also, improvements in transportation tech did in fact change the scale of how things are managed.

There's actually a really neat bit of research that was done way back (G. Edward Stephan), looking at county size evolution. Basically, when it was horseback, as population expanded, new centers of administration would spread with them, maintaining a specific (logarithmic) ratio of density vs size, and borders would fluctuate over time. But after railroad and later the automobile were invented, the pre-existing borders at that point in time basically stopped evolving, leaving a lot of long straight lines on the map, whereas prior to that, they would have evolved based on transport efficiency.
http://www.uvm.edu/~pdodds/files/papers/others/1984/stephan1984a.pdf

So, many of the pre-existing small counties in the East are basically too small for full efficiency, given modern transportation tech, but there's political inertia keeping the borders where they are.

It turns out those old counties have a very strong mathematical relationship. They're at the optimal size vs density to minimize the travel time (assuming horseback) for a central administration to service any particular person who lived at that time. This same mathematical equation also seems to predict the size of whole nations and empires throughout history. This suggests that logistical efficiency plays a part in where borders were, historically, and not just politics.
« Last Edit: May 15, 2016, 10:48:43 pm by Reelya »
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FearfulJesuit

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Re: Things that made you go "WTF?" today o_O
« Reply #102249 on: May 16, 2016, 01:32:51 am »

Can't wait to live the good life where I slip on my Air Jordans and watch the Kentucky Derby in my custom UK kitchenette.
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Yoink

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Re: Things that made you go "WTF?" today o_O
« Reply #102250 on: May 16, 2016, 02:51:18 am »

For quite some time i didn't even knew that Washington is actually a state.
Goes to show how important it is when even Washington D.C. decides to have nothing to do with it and moves to the other side of the country.
Then again i have no ties with either of the americas and don't give a damn about its geography/state borders either.
I did notice that state borders made out of straight lines look silly.
Seriously it looks more like a meat map than a state map.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Hey, I can see my home county on there!
Wait, what? Is Dwarfy originally from 'Murica, or are we talking about somewhere else with counties? ???
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IcyTea31

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Re: Things that made you go "WTF?" today o_O
« Reply #102252 on: May 16, 2016, 02:56:00 am »

Collier County, Florida?
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Arx

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Re: Things that made you go "WTF?" today o_O
« Reply #102253 on: May 16, 2016, 03:06:01 am »

For quite some time i didn't even knew that Washington is actually a state.
Goes to show how important it is when even Washington D.C. decides to have nothing to do with it and moves to the other side of the country.
Then again i have no ties with either of the americas and don't give a damn about its geography/state borders either.
I did notice that state borders made out of straight lines look silly.
Seriously it looks more like a meat map than a state map.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Hey, I can see my home county on there!
Wait, what? Is Dwarfy originally from 'Murica, or are we talking about somewhere else with counties? ???

That's a meat map. It shows the locations of cuts on the cow. Your vegetarian is showing :P
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Yoink

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Re: Things that made you go "WTF?" today o_O
« Reply #102254 on: May 16, 2016, 03:46:22 am »

Wait, what? Is Dwarfy originally from 'Murica, or are we talking about somewhere else with counties? ???

That's a meat map. It shows the locations of cuts on the cow. Your vegetarian is showing :P
I get that, I just thought... actually I can't remember what I thought. I had just woken up.
Mainly the use of "county" threw me, I thought that was only a US thing. Unless that was the joke. >.>   
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