Allegra Rivett Sloman's blog

When fishing for happiness, catch and release.
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30
Aug

The WORST you are here map I’VE EVER SEEN

Interesting, but entirely USELESS.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 30th, 2010 at 2:47 pm and is filed under Cosmology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

7 Responses to “The WORST you are here map I’VE EVER SEEN”

  1. chipper Says:
    August 30th, 2010 at 8:31 pm

    Only slightly better than GPS. Did I tell you about the Hansel and Gretel award, people who follow the GPS instead of my directions to get here? The last (long weekend story, of course) arrived at !:35 am having circled Lake Rosseau after getting to Lake St. Peter before arriving. Departed Thornhill 7 hours before arriving.
    Did anyone tip me for the late arrival? Did they wake anyone up when they pumped their air mattress up with the DC compressor?
    But I digress…
    I did regale them the next morning with the merits of their award (they could have waved to Kurt and Goldie on the way by if they had known where they were!), and that was when we discovered it was not signal loss that kept them from making cell phone contact with their friends, it was the part where they bought Fido, which only has major metropolitan area access. Cell towers all over my rural landscape, they buy the student plan and it’s my job to cover everyone’s posterior free of chg, tax inc
    But I digress…….
    On the other hand, Fluff (especially Local Fluff) is disturbing to me as a technical term for OH So Many Reasons……the least of which is american merchandising of marshmallows in a jar.

  2. chipper Says:
    August 30th, 2010 at 8:35 pm

    Oops, some bad feedback loop in that last one about directions, my editing skills suck at this late hour. The Hansel and Gretel team got to 34 km from here and then drove for 3 1/2 hours before arriving, going to the west side of Algonquin Park via backroads, to the Muskokas, and then driving back through the Park at midnight, the best time for colliding with a moose.

  3. Allegra Says:
    August 31st, 2010 at 8:16 am

    I said I’d speak respectfully to and of Paul, so I have to not recount our ‘driving through Algonquin Park at midnight in winter’ story. I will say the average speed dropped remarkably after we saw the dead moose, the cops, the trashed car, and the unhappy people by the side of the road.

  4. chipper Says:
    August 31st, 2010 at 9:25 am

    2 people have hit a moose on the way here late at night in Algonquin in the summer. One spun down the side of the car and only left mud, no dents. The other was missing the passenger window and mirror. That was part of my story for Hansel and Gretel the next morning. Strangely, H&G and the other 2 are all russian

  5. Cousin G Says:
    August 31st, 2010 at 9:58 am

    The question here, is that is this really a map? I think the problem that some have is that the representation of ‘space’ is very different from the more familiar ‘maps’ we are used to seeing (ie. earth based themes). Space has no up or down and the material in it, such as planets etc., are in constant motion relative to one another. The other issue to consider with the APOD image is that scale is not presented is the more traditional way. The image itself is just that–an image. To adequately represent spatial relationships in space (ie. outside the bounds of the earth’s atomoshpere) is the next great challenge to the mapping community. I shall end my rant here, but I must tell you cous, that prior to you posting this link on your blog, I went back several times to this particular image and did ponder the wonder of it all.

  6. chipper Says:
    September 1st, 2010 at 6:40 pm

    Cousin G, you have articulated the crux of the matter. The ‘map’ presented is full of inclination and direction, but does not have a “you are here” aspect. Also, because most peaple can hardly deal with x and y, even though they see z in algebra, they do not truly wrap their heads around cubic space. Then blow that up to the universe and add velocity, vector, all the other little physics goodies we studied in grade 9 when learning was progressive.
    Interstellar traffic jams! Maybe we could bottle it and sell it?

  7. Cousin G Says:
    September 1st, 2010 at 7:05 pm

    Chipper: You too have continued my crux. I only wish Star Trek NG would’ve dealt with their stellar cartography section with more vigor!

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