I love how American that is… pretty much the entire uk except for the Scottish highlands is within a 6 hour drive radius it’s hard to imagine a Brit saying ‘ you should totally visit Birmingham it’s a great base to visit Devon and also Kent
Yeah, bruh. Y'all are tiny over there! I had no idea you'd fit in New England with plenty of room to spare, though.
Yeah, if I were to drive from where I live now to my hometown, it's at least a 15-hour drive, all without leaving the central US.
Long learning curve ahead, obviously. Maybe start him off as janitor and see how he does? Or, since he has IT qualifications ... put him in charge of an abacus.
Indeed. All the UKians should come on down to Aussieland! 'Cos everyone knows we got the best beer, and the best football ... and the world's deadliest spiders! And scorpions! And dropbears! And they'll all shred you to bits an' spit in yer eye as soon as look at ya! *rubs hands, à la every Evil Wizard ever invented* Mwahahaha!!! Today, the tourists -- tomorrow, Pinky? We take over the world! Oh yeah, and we're also almost bigger than the USA. Behold! And yeah, we got the best damn prawns this side of the Pacific. So come on down, and we'll throw another shrimp prawn on the barbie for ya. All kidding aside, one serious bit: we do have some serious-sized spiders, but if you stay in the cities, you'll be fine. The really nasty ones (like the funnel-webs and redbacks) stay in the country. On the other hand, don't make a cassowary angry, mate. They're mad dangerous buggers. What steps would I take if I saw a cassowary coming? Very long ones, and the other way. (Oh - that's only half-true. Cassowaries are shy, and usually hard to spot, at least in their natural rainforest habitats. They are not too aggressive, and attacks are rare. But don't approach them or make them angry. They can do a lot of damage, even fatal damage. And don't swim with the crocs, neither!)
Damn, Australia and the continental US are almost identical. 7.65m sq k vs 7.68, with australia slightly bigger.
Gosh, Canada is huge. But hey, it's not a competition. Incidentally, I just looked it up on the map (because I was wondering how big continental Canada was, i.e. without the islands). Google wouldn't tell me, but Google Maps placed Greenland very close to Canada. I had no idea Greenland and Canada were so close. I never understood how serious the current US-Greenland-Canada situation was until I saw it on the map. Wow. (No political commentary intended or sought, thank you). Anyway, to lighten the mood - I recently bought (and nearly finished reading) The Management Style of the Supreme Beings, by Tom Holt. Very funny. Aside from "The Portable Door" (which I didn't particularly enjoy), I hadn't read any Tom Holt before, but I'm enjoying it very much.
Yeah, Mercator projection is responsible for more honest ignorance about the world than anything else I can think of. There was a good West Wing episode involving CJ finding out that the maps were wrong from, IIRC, Neelix from Voyager.
OK ... I had heard of the phrase "Mercator projection" before, but a long time ago. I googled it again and learned it anew ... and wikipedia also told me how limited it is. But now I'm confused: if it distorts the real size of countries (which it does) ... how can we trust that what google maps (and other map apps etc.) are saying is true? I mean ... I'm confused. I've even played computer games with maps of the earth (e.g. Age of Empires 2, or the various Civilization games), that use the Mercator projection as the basis of the maps. I always thought they were mostly true? I mean, sure, the point of a game is to let people have fun, not worry about accuracy, but still -- maybe a game like Civilization, at least the later iterations of it, is ... or should be ... true? Mostly? *shrug* Suddenly I feel like I need to run out of the house and trumpet the news, like a (definitely clothed) Archimedes. "Ahh! They've been lying to us all our lives, ahh!"
