Twelve-Mile Circle

As a wee lad I grew up south of Downingtown, Pennsylvania, an old mill town situated along the banks of the East Branch of the Brandywine Creek. Drop a little stick in the Brandywine and it would float downstream until it joins the Christina River in Wilmington, Delaware and thereafter shortly into the Delaware River.

Delaware has tax-free shopping and movie theatres I frequented in my youth. First laptop purchase for university? Delaware. Furniture for moving out to Chicago? Delaware. In other words, when I posted my most recent map of where I have been, the three counties of Delaware were some of the earliest counties filled in.

Delaware—for better or worse—is seared into my mind. If you look at the state border, you will see the northern border is circular. Look at all other state borders and that circle is kind of weird. Most other borders are straight(ish) lines, mountain ridges, rivers, or bays. The reason is the border between Pennsylvania and Delaware was, essentially, taking out a protractor and drawing a circle twelve miles distant from New Castle, Delaware, the original capital.

Anyway, I have not thought about that in quite some time. But thankfully, xkcd did.

As many of you know, I love geography and so I am aware of many of these places. Lake Manicouagan is one of those places that has an island in it, which has a lake on that island, in which there is another lake. There might even be another island/lake combination, but I could be mistaken.

Happy Friday, everyone.

Credit for the piece goes to Randall Munroe.

Electing An Expert in Nameology

Congratulations on making it to Friday. Though it was a short week for my American audience.

Now that the State’s Labour Day holiday has passed, the 2024 electoral season can begin in earnest. And to begin the insanity we have a helpful graphic from xkcd.

Clearly I’m not cut out for high office with a name of seven letters.

Credit for the piece goes to Randall Munroe.

The Observation Table

We made it to the end of yet another week. Before the weekend begins for most of my audience—though for my UK readers, enjoy the extended bank holiday and God save the Queen—I wanted to take a look at a graphic from xkcd that shows one can use different types of scopes to make different types of observations.

All the scopes.

I’m constantly thinking about getting a record player. But if I do, maybe I’ll just start calling it my radiogyroscope.

Credit for the piece goes to Randall Munroe.

Hey, Cousin!

As many of my long-time readers know, I count genealogy as one of my hobbies. A few weeks ago for Orthodox Easter I travelled up to the hometown of my late grandfather. There I get to see people to whom I’m related as many of us can point to ancestors from the same few villages in a small geographic cluster in the Carpathian Mountains of Slovakia and Poland. In other words, we’re all cousins.

But as xkcd shows, so are we all. And that means you too, cousin.

He’s my cousin too.

Happy weekend, cuz.

Credit for the piece goes to Randall Munroe.

Madagascar

Well we made it through the week. Yesterday we looked at plate tectonics and the future shape of the world. So today it’s time to look at a map recently made by xkcd. Specifically it looks at the world through the lens of Madagascar.

Now try to roll it up onto a sphere.

Greenland isn’t as big as it looks on Google Maps. So this piece fixes that by placing Madagascar in its place.

Credit for the piece goes to Randall Munroe.

Tea. Earl Grey. Hot.

Any science fiction fan—and likely many who are not—can identify the character who utters those words in that order: Jean-Luc Picard, Star Trek’s captain of the USS Enterprise, NCC-1701-D. Ask your Amazon Alexa for it. Or your Google Home.

Thanks to the work of xkcd, we now know that Jean-Luc—may I call him Jean-Luc?—had a number of other options in the replicator from which to choose before he settled on “hot”.

Although Garak would still like to meet that Earl Grey and tell him a thing or two about tea leaves.

Credit for the piece goes to Randall Munroe.