Miraflores locks

This is a pic of the miraflores locks, one of two sets on the pacific side of the Panama Canal. .  
Butbmostly just a test blogbpost from my phone.

Capital Proximity

Offhand the closest two distinct national capitals I can think of are Kinshasa (Democratic Republic of the Congo, formerly known as Zaire) and Brazzaville (Republic of the Congo), which are located opposite each other on the banks of the Congo river. While the river has some breadth I expect the townships border each other. If you want to split hairs you could measure the distance from the capital building of each to get a distance.

So... anyway for the sake of this exercise... what are smallest distance between three national capitals? To define this we'll imagine a triangle connecting the three and take its... perimeter. I put it this way so if by some miracle three capitals are in a perfect line we don't get someone trying to say that triangle has zero area. Just add the distance from capital A to capital B, then B to C, then C back to A. That is your combined distance.

As part of this exercise we can repeat this with four capitals.. and five.. and so on.

But let's just focus on the 3, 4 and 5 for now. Some of them might be the same. I would imagine we'd be looking at smaller nations here, perhaps in carribean isles. I have not looked this up yet, am just posting it then hopefully will answer later. Since I'm getting almost no responses to things here I'll cross-post this in e-sam and maybe copy some of the replies back to here.

Geography Myths and Coiba

Way back in elementary school I remember the teacher (I think this was 4th or 5th grade) telling us that Maine was the northernmost state of the lower 48. I immediately disagreed, knowing well that this as Minnesota (thanks to the northwest angle), and that all the states of the 49th parallel with Canada extend farther north than Maine. She again disagreed, then proceeded to get a yardstick to show us on the wall map that it was indeed farther north. The map was not a Mercator where this would have been shown correctly.... I don't recall exactly but I think it was some type of Lambert Projection. I look in disbelief and muttered "you're not measuring it right"... and she kind of went "doh!" and then moved on without explaining about parallels or projections to the class.

But the myth persists. There are still people today who hold this misconception about Maine (which does hold the distinction of having the easternmost point in the United States, at the ironically named West Quoddy Head (it is west of Quoddy Strait between Maine and New Brunswick).

At any rate geography myths are everywhere, even to the point where some towns erroneously claim designations. Some are matters of semantics (i.e., various towns in the Tierra del Fuego region claim to be the world's southernmost town, but it depends on your definition of "town"). Others are just commonly perpetuated myths.

World's Shortest River?

Some friends in Texas told me of a Comal River near New Braunfels which locals proclaim to be the "shortest river in the world". It is around 3 miles long. This is nowhere close, a short investigation revealed a "D" River in Oregon which was measured at 440 feet. It flows out of a coastal lake into the Pacific. They advertised it as such and even put up signs proclaiming it as such. Then a Roe River in Montana was found that flowed some 200 feet from a spring into the Missouri River. Oregon countered by measuring their river at extreme high tide, which they claimed shortened the "D" River to 120 feet. And so on. At some point you have to argue what is a river... (and whether or not starting from a lake which has headstreams counts).

Coiba

Living in Panama I was long aware of its largest island, Coiba. Located in the Pacific off the Azuero peninsula, it was home of a feared prison colony under Noriega but otherwise undisturbed and is now a national park, where one can see Scarlet Macaws and other animals now rare on the mainland. At 503 square kilometers it is easily Panama's largest island... but locals claimed it held a greater distinction: that it was the largest island on the pacific coast of the Americas. As soon as I heard this I immediately knew it to be false... there are plenty of islands far larger on the pacific coasts of Canada (e.g., Vancouver at 31285 sq km) and Chile (e.g. Chiloé at 8394 sq km). But there is a long ways between these, so maybe it held the distinciton of largest between them.

South of Pugest Sound (which has Whidby and the Juan de Fuca islands) there aren't that many notable islands on the Pacific coast of the United States. There are a few notable small ones in San Fransisco Bay (e.g., Alcatraz)... but really the only serious archipelago is the Channel Islands of California. The largest of these is Santa Cruz, which is just under 250 sq km, which makes it about half the size of Coiba.

Moving south into Mexico there are a number of decent-sized islands, the largest being in the Gulf of California, one called Ángel de la Guarda and another called Tiburón. The former is sq 931 km and the latter is 1201 sq km. Both far larger than Coiba. So already we need to curtail the claim to "south of the Gulf of California".

Continuing on there is nothing to threaten it through the rest of Central America or Columbia until we get to Ecuador. Ecuador has the Galapagos Islands which are a fair distance from the coast. The largest island of the chain is Isla Isabela, at 4640 sq km, easily larger than Coiba. But even if you don't venture off the coast, there is Isla Puná, at 865 sq km, located in the Gulf of Guayaquil.

So the proper claim is that Coiba is the largest island on the pacific side of the Americas betwen the Gulf of California and the Gulf of Guayaquil. Or to make it simpler, just call it the largest Central American Island in the Pacific. Or just the largest Central American Island (the largest on the Carribean Coast I can find is Roatan, at around 90 sq km)... though Cozumel in the Yucatan is larger, but Mexico is not normally considered part of Central America.

European Capitals by Elevation

This was a fun dataset to compile. Not all cities listed had an official elevation... and many are obviously coastal, so their lowest elevation would be zero... I took standard wikipedia elevations where listed. Where not, the rest mostly comes from CIA factbook or various weather stations. A number of cities have quite a large range in elevation, I gave them benefit of the doubt and used the highest elevation within the city limits where I could. Anyway, some may be surprised to find Switzerland didn't top the list, but they aren't the only mountainous country, and it isn't that high up in the country. There are a few notes at the end....

anyway, our list:

Country	Capital	ft	meters
Liechtenstein	Vaduz	4898	1493
Luxembourg	Luxembourg	4327	1319
Andorra	Andorra la Vella	3356	1023
Armenia	Yerevan*	3246	989
Switzerland	Bern***	2834	864
Georgia	Tblisi*	2526	770
San Marino	San Marino	2457	749
Spain	Madrid	2188	667
Bulgaria	Sofia	1804	550
Austria	Vienna**	1778	542
Croatia	Zagreb	1699	518
Slovakia	Bratislava	1686	514
Bosnia-Herzegovinia	Sarajevo	1640	500
Czech Republic	Prague	1309	399
Greece	Athens	1109	338
Poland	Warsaw	1076	328
Slovenia	Ljubljana	968	295
Belarus	Minsk	920	280
Russia	Moscow****	837	255
Macedonia	Skopje	787	240
Ukraine	Kiev	587	179
Monaco	Monaco	535	163
Lithuania	Vilnius	410	125
Serbia	Belgrade	384	117
Germany	Berlin	377	115
Romania	Bucharest	295	90
Moldova	Chişinău	279	85
Hungary	Budapest	246	75
Vatican City	Vatican City	246	75
Latvia	Riga	240	73
Italy	Rome	217	66
Sweden	Stockholm	200	61
Portugal	Lisbon	184	56
Belgium	Brussels	141	43
Estonia	Talinn	131	40
France	Paris	115	35
Finland	Helsinki	85	26
United Kingdom	London	79	24
Norway	Oslo	62	19
Ireland	Dublin	30	9
Denmark	Copenhagen	16	5
Netherlands	Amsterdam	7	2
Azerbaijan	Baku*	-92	-28

It should be noted many of the lower elevations are coastal, and obviously descend down to sea level (or below it in the case of Baku, which might be the largest city below sea level in the world (easily larger than New Orleans... might be a topic for a future post). Anyway as mentioned tried to take an average elevation for even these coastal cities... but the differences are generally small, though some have impressive heights despite being right on the sea...

A few other notes:

* = debate on whether south causcus countries are considered European or Asian... even though some area of each country might cross the causcus, the capitals themselves primarily fall on the "asian" side. So disregard if you wish, including for completeness' sake... (the EU seems to consider them valid for membership anyway).
** - Vienna ranges from 151m to 542m
*** - Bern ranges from 480 - 864, average is 542.
**** Moscow weather station is 156m, 255m is highest area (Teplostanskaya Highland)

There are probably quite a few more that need notes, and I should have taken the time to list the source for each. Apologies. Still hope this is interesting. And one day maybe someone else will read some of this blog...

European Quiz

Thought the other ones were a little US/North American centric... this one uses Europe as its setting.

1. What is the second largest European island?

2. Russia borders more countries than any other European country. Which country borders the second-most?

3. How many seas can you name that are arms of the Mediterranean Sea (or connected to other "arms")? It must have "Sea" in the name (i.e. not "Gulf" or "Bay")

4. What European capital has the highest elevation above sea level? (bonus - which is second-highest?)

5. Ireland as you should know is split between two nations, the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom. Name another European island that is also divided between two nations.

6. What is the highest mountain on a European island?

7. What is the highest waterfall in Europe? (bonus - what is the largest in terms of water volume?)

8. What is the largest lake in Europe that is not in Russia?

9. Not counting overseas provinces, how many nations have land both on the mainland of Europe and on the mainland of another continent? (by mainland I mean islands do not count) Because the dividing line might be vague leave the boundary in the Causcus Mountains out of it (e.g., do not worry whether Georgia, Armenia or Azerbaijan straddle the boundary).

10. This German island was formerly a british possession and was essentially traded for Zanzibar in east Africa.

10.

Lake Islands farthest from shore...

This is something I've been working on for awhile, as I don't believe this information is available online anywhere.

The answer to the question: What lake island is farthest from shore?

First, some clarification. I'll accept any lake including saline or endorheic lakes. By farthest from land I mean if you take the shortest distance between any point on that island to any point on the border of the lake, what is the longest resulting distance you might have? This would count against a large lake island whose far side was far from the lakeshore, but might have a near side very close by (e.g., Manitoulin for example). Secondly I do mean from the lake shore, not closest other land (which might well be another island of a chain).

Right off the batch I started looking for large, wide lakes, as opposed to long narrow ones. e.g., Lake Tanganyika is a very large lake, but you can't get that far from shore because it is a very long, relatively narrow lake.

The Caspian seemed a logical place to start, but its islands seem to be entirely coastal. Kulaly Island seems to be the farthest from shore I could find.

There are two other logical locations to search: The Great Lakes of North America... and Lake Victoria in Africa.

First, the Great Lakes. Glancing at a map there are a few large islands that jump out immediately, Isle Royale in Lake Superior... and the Beaver Island Archipelago in Lake Michigan. Isle Royale is a little to close to shore, the others looks a little more interesting. There are a number of islands surrounding Beaver Island, and trying to determine which is farthest from land is a bit tricky. Actually the nearby Fox Islands might be better.

However, my candidate for lake island farthest from shore in the great lakes is Caribou Island in Lake Superior. There are actually several islands with that name including at least one other in Lake Superior, in the Thunder Bay area. But the one I mean is located at 47° 21′ 33″ N, 85° 48′ 36″ W.

Caribou Island appears to be about 30 miles from the closest shoreline of Lake Superior, which is to the East-Northeast in Superior Provincial Park in Ontario. There is a closer shoreline in the form of Michipicoten Island, but as I noted we're not counting other islands.

Now as for Lake Victoria... it is a very large lake (as well as generally acknowledged as the source of the White Nile). There are many islands in the lake... At first glance closest to the center appears to be Nabuyongo Island. At second glance it seems a peninsula from the southeastern end of the lake extends towards it reducing its distance... but looking closely you see the end of that peninsula is actually an island itself (named Ukerewe), separated by a narrow channel. A quick eyeball test puts it at between 50 and 60 miles from the closest point on that peninsula.... and about the same distance to the western shore of the lake.

Anyway this is my candidate for lake island farthest from shore in the world. I havent' gone and calculated actual distances via GPS coords or anything, the difference seems to be large enough to justify it as nothing else I've found comes close. Anyone have another candidate worthy of consideration?

FWIW Nabuyogo Island was the site of a naval battle that took place on Lake Victoria during World War II.

US State Capitals

This is another US-based one, based on US state capitals. A short quiz

We'll do state capitals today.

1. What is the smallest state capital, population-wise?

2. Most state capitals are relatively central to their state. Only three are actually adjacent to the state border. Two of those border another state, one actually borders another country. Which are they?

3. What river (or rivers) has the most state capital on its banks?

4. Six state capitals are on the sea (I'm not counting ones on navigable rivers that can allow ocean ships to reach them, it must border on actual salt water. (e.g., Albany does not count).

5. What state capital has the highest elevation inside its city limits?

6. Five state capitals do not currently have an interstate highway within their city limits. Which are they?

#2 quiz

Finding superlatives is easy with google. Want to know what the longest river in California? It is easy to find that.

Hopefully these types of questions prove a little more challenging. I mean by all means use google (or whatever your search engine of choice may be). But some of these things take a bit of digging, and the end result is more geography knowledge.

So, anyway, here we go. I'm not getting any responses on these yet but hopefully one day we will then these will still be here for people to take... sticking to North America and mostly the US for this quiz. Don't worry, will cover most of the planet in others.

1. What is the second highest mountain in the United States?

2. What is the second highest mountain in North America?

3. What is the second highest mountain in the 48 contiguous states?

4. What is the second largest island in the United States?

5. What is the second largest island in North America?

6. What ist the second largest island in the 48 contiguous (well apart from being an island of one of them) states?

7. What is the second longest river in the United States? (to qualify it must be entirely inside the US)

8. ditto for North America

9. What is the second largest lake in the United States? (must exist entirely in the US to qualify)

10. What is the second longest river to exist entirely inside one state?

For bonus points, answer #9 hydrologically. (it is not the same answer if you do).

Limpopo River

A friend of mine named Angrist related a somewhat lengthy pun that goes as follows:

One day, Henry Stanley was going through the jungle, looking for Dr. Livingston. He came to a clearing and there was Tarzan, Lord of the Apes painting lines on everything, the tree's, animals, what have you. "What a strange thing" he thought to himself and continued on.

10 years later, Stanley was again touring darkest Africa looking for the source of the Great Gray-Green Greasy Limpopo River. He came to the same clearing, and there was Tarzan, Lord of the Apes, painting lines on everything. "Ok, that's a bit off" he thought to himself. But again carried on because progress waits for no man.

30 years later, Stanley was nearing death and he wanted to die in the jungle, exploring. He came to the same clearing he had visited in the past. There again was Tarzan, Lord of the Apes, painting lines on everything. Finally, he had enough curiosity and called over one of his native porters. "I don't understand. When I came looking for Dr. Livingston, Tarzan was painting lines on everything. I came back looking for the source of the Great Gray-Green Greasy Limpopo River, and again I find Tarzan painting lines on everything. Here I am, 50 years later, and I find him once again painting stripes on everything. I don't understand.

His porter looked at him quizzically and says "You mean you've never heard Tarzan stripes forever?"

Rather than acknowledge the pun, I felt the appropriate response was to conduct what I call a "geography check":

The Limpopo (which is indeed known as "great grey-green greasy limpopo river" in the story The Elephant's Child by Kipling) is a river in southern africa, and it forms the border between South Africa and both Zimbabwe and Botswana. Its lower basin is navigable, but once you move beyond that (moving towards its source) it flows through increasingly arid land and eventually the Kalahari desert. The upper reaches do not flow most of the time during dry years.

The Limpopo River Basin

Area map with national boundaries for reference

This is not the kind of area that Tarzan, Lord of the Apes would have been found. Tarzan, whose was raised by gorillas, would either have been in an area of Gorillas. Gorillas are found in central africa, in two areas, the mountain ones (as in the Sigourney Weaver / mist movie) and an area along the western coast of the congo. It was almost certainly the latter as the tarzan stories begin with the Greystokes being marooned on the west coast of africa by mutineers.

Gorilla Habitats (lowland in orange, mountain in yellow)

I should point out that Burroughs mentions the species of Apes that raised tarzan were a fictional third species called the "mangani", but the rest of it with marooned off west africa would put him nowhere near the Limpopo. Even if he were that far south and they were apes that died out, there were never any jungles at the latitude of the Limpopo. The southernmost african rain forest (even allowing for areas that have been lost since that time) was found in Madagascar (and much of that is gone). The bulk of it is up in the Congo (kinshasa). And the pun does say he was in "the jungle" and "darkest africa" (which is a title Stanley used for his account of his epic mission to rescue Emin Pasha (epic catastrophe in most accounts other than Stanley's) in which he travelled up the Congo river and then cut across to Equatoria).

Rain Forests of Africa (present day)

Thus we must conclude that if this story is accurate, Stanley was hopelessly lost. ;)

Game of Thrones Map Problems

As I mentioned in the intro I also like to do analsys of maps from fantasy, places that never were. One problem is that they could probably have never existed drawn up as they are.

Yes, this is a nitpick. Let me state that I did like Game of Thrones, and I quite liked the first episode of the adaptation being shown on HBO (only one thus far as I write this).

Alright. The maps of westeros are... somewhat problematic. They look like something someone drew up on two dimensions without thinking things through fully in three-dimensional or hydrological terms. Specifically the map has a tendency to have rivers that cross like 95% of the landmass (still don't think it is quite continent-sized) to get close to the other shore. Now while that does indeed happen in places (e.g., the Amazon's source is near the Pacific Ocean... but this means there must be sufficient elevation as rivers do not flow uphill. The Andes Mountains provide this. This is a key point in my issue.

Starting with the Southern section of Westeros:

Click on image for a larger version

okay, so the Mander River which flows out in to the west, crosses most of the reach and rises in the woods near Storm's End near the Blackwater Rush. This means, therefore the divide between the east and west coasts must pass between here. THis also means that this particular location must be higher in elevation than any point further downstream on the Mander... despite it being so close to the other coast. One would expect hills or even mountains (ala the Andes for the Amazon) but there are none depicted. Therefore we must conclude that the reach of westeros is rather flat, so the difference in elevation, while significant, is not great. This would suggest a slow-moving river.. and indeed the name, "Mander" suggests this might be the case, as in "meander".

Okay, but we're just starting. The Blackwater Rush one might imagine to be a swifter-flowing river, with a greater elevation change resulting in a swifter river. It at least is shown to rise near mountains. So our divide must make a sharp turn west to get around the Blackwater (I write it as if it is the divide, moving to accommodate the rivers, but of course it is the other way around). Moving north, that brings us to the rivers of the trident. The Red Fork and Tumblestone are shown having headwaters in mountains, all good. But then we get the Blue and Green Forks, and here it gets bad. Both of them almost reach the other coast. Both of them are shown as rising in swamps. If we are to accept this... then we must surmise high sea cliffs, with swamps atop them, all so our rivers can descend from these high swamps and flow eastward. Our continental divide thus must hug the west coast all the way up the neck. We are told that these coasts are ones raided the viking-like folk from the Iron Islands, however, to the point of having a bay named after them ("Ironman's Bay"). Its either that or a reference to a long-lost Stark brother named Tony.

If we proceed to the north, we see that the very same swamp the Green Fork rises in also gives rise to a river which flows into the western coast, into a bay named Saltspear. I presume this to be a fjord, because of the cliffs (and because vikings and fjords go together. as to why vikings and iron do... well, descendants of vikings settled in Minnesota, which has a lot of iron. but I digress). So this swamp must somehow encompass both sides of our subcontinental divide. Whatever change in elevation is taken by the Green Fork, it is duplicated by this short, unnamed river flowing into the Saltspear, albeit in maybe one fiftieth of the distance. Its not a river, it is a waterfall.

This problem is hardly unique... if you look at the world of greyhawk you'll see a three rivers, the Dulsii, the Black Water and the Opicm that all rise in the Cold Marshes that border the Icy Sea. The waters of these marshes, rather than flow into the icy sea, instead takes a marathon route into Whysetil Lake, down another river into the Nyr Dyv, and finally down another two rivers (the Nyr Div having two completely different outlets to the sea is hard enough to accept as it is) to the sea. So this means these cold marshes are higher than any of these points in this southerly route. And from there it has to somehow descend down to sea level.

Islands Quiz

Today's topic: Islands that belong to one political entity but are closer to another.

1. This island is just off the coast of Connecticut yet belongs to New York. Its name suggests it might be used by fishermen, but these days primarily it is used for vacation homes and summer estates.

2. This island is far closer to Sweden yet belongs to Denmark. Once in a treaty Denmark gave it to Sweden, only to have the islanders revolt and expel the swedes. They then sent a delegation to Denmark offering the Danish King the island on the condition that he never give it away again.

3. This "colossal" island is far just off the shore of Turkey, yet belongs to Greece. It does not lead to Rome.

4. This regal island is closer to Minnesota, yet belongs to Michigan.

5. This large island is just off the shore of Ontario (only 12 miles) yet belongs to Nunavut, whose mainland is over 600 miles away.

6. This island belongs to Equatorial Guinea, despite being far closer to São Tomé and Príncipe. A good year could be spent explaining that.

7. This festive island is far closer to Indonesia (about 360 km) yet it belongs to Australia, around 2000 km distant.

8. This island is far closer to somalia, yet belongs to Yemen. Actually there are a couple of islands that fit this description, including one much larger than this one. But this one is closer to Somalia.

Welcome...

Not sure if anyone will read this. But basically the idea from this stems that I frequently make geography-related posts on a website I frequent, Electric Samurai, and I thought I would like to have them collected for my own sake if nothing else. They are a mix of things related to geography trivia (many quizzes based on themes usually), geography checks on what other people mistakenly post or even say in the news... and just random musings.

This is not entirely listed to real-world maps, as I also frequently comment on fantasy maps from stuff like Tolkien, Donaldson, Martin, Kurtz, etc., basically anything that bothers to have a map in it that I can look at.

BTW, in case I didn't mention it, I really like maps. I collect maps, have tons of them in my home where I sometimes treat them almost like wallpaper. Some of them are your standard National Geographic type, some form a Rand McNally store, some from obscure sources (nautical charts, foreign universities, whatever). I spent a lot of time in the Republic of Panama so I have a particular fondness for maps of that area, including my prize, which is a raised relief map of the entire country that measures about four feet across (exaggerated relief, so Volcan Baru is somewhere over an inch higher than the surface of the map).

Anyway, enough about me.