Subject:
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Re: Geography (was: We'll take in your poor....)
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Tue, 13 Jul 2004 00:26:51 GMT
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Viewed:
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1601 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Frank Filz wrote:
>
> "Purple Dave" <purpledave@maskofdestiny.com> wrote in message
> news:I0ny3F.F5E@lugnet.com...
> > I've often wondered about this sort of thing. Admittedly, I have it easier than
> > most US citizens, having lived my entire life on the longest lakeshore in the
> > world, but I have a really hard time imagining not being able to point out where
> > I live on a map. Anyways, what sort of map would you be talking about? If it's
> > a globe or a world map, would it be color coded only by country, or would the US
> > be divided up by States? Trying to find a single city in the entire US without
> > benefit of State boundaries is roughly equivalent to trying to find a single
> > city in Europe without benefit of national boundaries, and I'm amazed at the
> > number of people who scoff at the intelligence of US citizens while failing to
> > remember that. I think my favorite real-world example is a story a friend of
> > mine told me, where they were visited in Michigan by German relatives who
> > thought it'd make a good day-trip to visit the Grand Canyon.
>
> Hmm, I think I could come reasonably close to pointing out the location of
> every city I've lived in without just a map of North America including major
> natural features. I might not get the location of Raleigh NC too well, but I
> am sufficiently familiar with the coastline that I should at least place it
> in North Carolina. Troy NY might also not get placed in the correct place
> along the Hudson River. My locations of Massachusetts towns might not be
> perfect either. Beaverton OR should be pretty easy to place correctly.
Yep, and I'd probably have no trouble with the places I've lived (and most of
the places I've visited) in Aus. I'd probably take a little longer to find the
places I stayed in the USA & Canada, but I think I'd generally get pretty close.
> One comment I have about people's knowledge of geography in other countries
> and such is that people are going to know and remember stuff that's
> important to them. To the average American who has never left his home state
> (we have had high school students in our church youth group here in Portland
> who have never been out of the state - and here, you can take a city bus out
> of state!), the locations of many geographical features even in the US are
> of little importance, let alone some country halfway around the world. These
> tales of Europeans who totally underestimate distances are just a good
> example (actually, one would think they would be a little better seeing as
> distances for a daytrip in Europe are considerably shorter than in the US,
> we once tried to take a daytrip from a city in Yugoslavia to the beach, and
> discovered we had really forgotten about the fact that a "highway" in Europe
> (especially in Yugoslavia) is not like a US interstate).
Ans Australian highways suffer the same problem - around the major cities,
they're generally pretty good, but it doesn't take long before the quality goes
down. Even the main artery between our 2 main cities Sydney & Melbourne still
has large portions of 2 lane "highway" (that's 1 lane in each direction!). And
the latest plan I heard won't involve that changint until at least 2012.
> One I always thought was ridiculous was my Scottish co-worker's dismissing
> the efforts of the US railroad builders, totally ignoring the order of
> magnitude in difference between the trials of building railroads in the US
> as compared to the UK. Of course there are other countries with even bigger
> railroad building challenges, though I'm not sure if any have the extent of
> railroad building across their large expanses that the US have. Canada is
> probably close. Ok, India probably actually exceeds the US for railway
> network across an expanse. The USSR does have the Trans Siberia, but it's a
> single rail line, not a network. Hmm, I tried finding some world railroad
> ton-mile statistics, but was unable to find any. I did find this statement:
> U.S. freight railroads are the world's busiest, moving more freight than any
> rail system in any other country. In fact, U.S. railroads move more than
> four times as much freight as do all of Western Europe's freight railroads
> combined.
Yep well our rail network is puny compared to the US, but we do still have the
last surviving trans-continental rail journey (Indian Pacific), and the longest
stretch of straight railway (Nullabor plain 478km). And as of January this year,
we now have The Ghan crossing the mainland north to south.
ROSCO
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: Geography (was: We'll take in your poor....)
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| "Purple Dave" <purpledave@maskofdestiny.com> wrote in message news:I0ny3F.F5E@lugnet.com... (...) easier than (...) the (...) where (...) If it's (...) the US (...) without (...) single (...) the (...) failing to (...) of (...) Hmm, I think I could (...) (20 years ago, 12-Jul-04, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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