Proud Geek

We’ve all heard of the immense distances between our star and our neighboring stars.  But like all near-infinite numbers, it’s hard to get a grip of just how far away everything is.  I regularly read Daily Kos, a political blog site, and it has a regular science writer.  He recently wrote about the discovery of a new planet that has some moons that seem to be in the correct position for inhabitable conditions.  This planet (and moons) orbit the star 55 Cancri, which is about 40 light-years away.  And then DarkSyde, the writer, goes on to say:

To get an intuitive handle on those formidable numbers, consider that if our sun was the size of the period at the end of this sentence, the earth would be a microscopic dot a mere 2 inches away. On that same scale, the two stars in the Cancri binary would be separated from one another by 50 yards, but reside a whopping 75 miles away from the earth and sun! The fastest spacecraft to date would take about half a million years to reach 55 Cancri. And it’s one of the closest stars. Most are much, much farther away.

Whoa.  Man, that’s far.

Take a moment and imagine the Canadian cities of Quebec City, Montreal, and Toronto. Does your mind conjure up images of snow, heavy winter coats, car tires spinning in heavy snow, and in general being so far north that you’re within spitting image of the Arctic Circle?

Now think of Seattle. Lots of rain, no ice, very little snow (except on gorgeous Mt. Rainer), heavy on the coffee intake, lots of bridges and very few snow tires …

Would it surprise you if I told you Seattle is located more north than Toronto, Montreal, and even Quebec City? See the red line on the map below showing where Seattle is in relation to the three Canadian cities (click on the map to enlarge):

In fact, Toronto is so far south that it’s nearly on par with Detroit and Chicago. (And in fact, if you head south from Detroit, you’ll end up in Canada!)

Oh, you knew all these? Ok, grump grump, I’m not talking to YOU, I’m talking to the person behind you …

For millions of immigrants, Ellis Island was where they first stepped upon the United States, after swinging by the island upon which the Statue of Liberty stood. (Yes, the Statue of Liberty does NOT stand on Ellis Island.) And just about everyone’s grandma and grandpa knew that Ellis Island is in New York. After all, every immigrant there knew that they would be stepping into a part of New York City — onto Ellis Island — when they step off the boat.

But is Ellis Island really a part of New York? Not really.

A first look at a map shows that Ellis Island is on the New Jersey side of the border.

However, from the beginning, New York had taken possession of Ellis Island, and New Jersey allowed it. In 1834, the two states entered into a compact recognizing that New York would have exclusive jurisdiction over Ellis Island.

However, beginning around 1890, the Federal government began to expand Ellis Island through landfill on all sides so that it could operate its immigration station there. Between 1890 and 1934, the Federal government poured so much landfill that the island ended up being 9/10th artificial land. That is, the original island area was only one-tenth the size of the entire “new” Ellis Island — everything else was artificial land.

New Jersey eventually filed claim to the “new” portions of Ellis Island, claiming that all of the additions were outside the boundaries of the compact and therefore a part of New Jersey. New York disagreed, and the two states actually duked it out in front of the Supreme Court in 1998. Rudy Giuliani, then Mayor of New York City during this dispute, famously claimed that his father, an immigrant from Italy, never intended to go through New Jersey.

The end result? The Supreme Court agreed with New Jersey, and said that the new additions were all part of New Jersey. If you look at the map below, the green shaded area is where the original island boundaries were — and therefore a part of the state of New York. Just approximately 5 acres were New York’s. All other portions of the island — or approximately 31 acres — were New Jersey’s. Only the Main Building was almost wholly in New York; all the other buildings were entirely or mostly in New Jersey. The two states ended up deciding to share claims to Ellis Island.

Since 1954, no immigrants have gone through Ellis Island. The entire island is Federal property anyway (although the land is shared by both states), and the Federal government operates the museum and maintains all of the buildings there.

Much ado over so little? Maybe not.

Good news for intrepid folks who (like me) like to navigate down city streets with their Treo’s in front of them telling them where to go: Google Maps Mobile has been significantly updated, with new features that just begs you to use them.

A while ago, I hailed Google Maps Mobile as one of the best apps ever for the Treo. It still is, and this update is pretty much icing on the cake. A quick overview of the new features added in this update — see this Treonaut blog for screenshots:

• In map view, there are now several icons across the top of the screen - find location, find nearby business, directions, show traffic, and view satellite. The last two icons change to show whether traffic / satellite is turned on or not - a nice touch.
• You can now look up and pull an address from your Treo’s contacts - another very nice feature. You can also save addresses into a new contact on your Treo. Of course, I don’t make it a habit of saving the address of just about every Starbucks I need to find and navigate to. But I’ve often found the need to copy and paste addresses of my friends. This new feature saves time and a lot of stylus-presses.
• Traffic information (when turned on) is now auto-refreshed every 60 seconds. I just wish there weren’t so much grey (signifying no information for that stretch of the freeway) sometimes.
• Some menu options have been simplified. For example, “Erase All” has been changed to “Reset Google Maps…,” “Show / Hide Traffic” is now just “Show Traffic,” “View / Hide Satellite” is now “View Satellite,” and more.
• “Directions to” and “Directions from” options have been updated to make it somewhat easier to use.

There’re still (at least!) three things I’m hoping Google will soon incorporate:

• Auto-checking for version updates (but giving the user the choice of auto-installing new updates, informing the user of new updates, or just don’t check for new updates).
• Auto-reseting Google Maps when the Google tile cache gets too large (i.e., user should be able to set it to auto-reset and erase the tile cache when it grows past 1 megabytes).
• The ability to quickly switch addresses in the “To” and “From” fields when doing directions (I often end up with the destination address in the top field instead of the bottom field; a quick “Switcheroo” button like what Google Maps has on its website would save a few stylus presses).

(Thanks, Treonauts!)

It’s a little-known fact that there is a 17-square-mile area of Kentucky that’s totally isolated from the rest of the state. How did this happen?

The southwestern border between Tennessee and Kentucky was set to follow latitude 36°30′ — a straight horizonal line with the Mississippi River on the western end and Kentucky Lake on the eastern end. When the border was established, surveyors had incorrectly estimated that the border would meet the Mississippi River just once. However, the Mississippi River actually flows south past latitude 36°30′, then loops back north, and then loops around again and flows down past latitude 36°30′ once again.

As you can see in the picture, the end result is that this 17-mile-square portion of Kentucky — called the Kentucky Bend — is surrounded by the Mississippi River (and the State of Missouri) on three sides, and Tennessee on the fourth side. The only way to get to this portion of Kentucky is via a small Tennessee country road. Just seventeen people live there, according to the 2000 Census.

Tennessee tried to claim this land as its own, but then eventually dropped its claim by the late 1800’s. Mark Twain wrote about this area in his book, Life on the Mississippi.

I can’t imagine feeling detached and isolated like this. Even the mailing address is in Tennessee, not Kentucky. Who knows how law enforcement is set up — is it the responsibility of the sheriff from the same Kentucky county that this Bend area is part of, or from the nearest Tennessee county? Confusing. I wish the Kentucky Bend population well!

I’ve always been fascinated by maps. Don’t know if it’s a geek thing or not. I love finding “weird” things through maps, and now with Google Maps and Yahoo Maps, the world awaits me - sort of.

A treaty sets the western half of the border between Canada and the United States at the 49th Parallel. The border follows the 49th Parallel - actually a latitude coordinate - in a straight line from roughly north of Minneapolis, MN to all the way out just past Washington State into the middle of the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Once in the Strait, the boundary loops south and then west, so that Vancouver Island stays within Canada’s boundaries. Other than that, everything north of the 49th Parallel is Canada’s, and everything south of that is the United States’.

Simple? Not really.

In several places, the ruler-straight border creates strange mapping results. At least three practical enclaves /exclaves were created — little “islands” of property belonging to the United States but almost entirely surrounded by Canada and/or accessed only through Canada. (Well, Alaska lies north of the 49th Parallel, but, well, that’s different because, well, um, it didn’t become a state till much later, um, or it wasn’t part of the United States till after …)

The first and perhaps most well-known out of these exclaves is Point Roberts. Where the USA-Canada border reaches the Strait of Juan de Fuca west of Washington State, it actually crosses one more land peninsula jutting off the mainland north of Seattle before the border actually reaches the middle of the Strait.

Point Roberts, WA is a small community of just over 1,000 people a mere 22 miles south of Vancouver, BC. Over land, the only way to reach Point Roberts is through a single road from Canada. Of course, one can take a boat from Point Roberts to the rest of Washington State. There’s only one school for kindergarten through second grade students; older students must take the bus up into Canada, around the bay, and then back into Washington State. I think after 9/11 they had to take a ferry or boat to school, but then they were able to use the bus once again once border crossings were less chaotic.

Two other exclaves are caused by the razor-straight 49th Parallel, this time at the eastern end. The 49th Parallel border runs through (and actually begins its eastern end in) the Lake of the Woods, shared by the USA (Minnesota) and Canada (Manitoba and Ontario). But the 49th Parallel border actually skims two peninsulas jutting from Canada into the Lake of the Woods. As a result, a few square miles of unpopulated, forested land is owned by the USA, even though on the map it looks like it’s part of Canada. The larger one is named Elm Point; the other is unnamed.

Interestingly enough, when viewed via Google Map’s “Map” view, it looks like the 49th Parallel international border doesn’t cut through any peninsulas in the Lake of the Woods:

But switching to the “Hybrid” view shows a different story:

Ah-ha, the two enclaves (or exclaves, whatever) clearly show up in the hybrid view.

I can’t wrap this up unless I point out one more enclave / exclave: the Northwest Angle. Many years ago, the Canadian / USA border was set at the very northwestern tip of the Lake of the Woods, and then it would run due south to the 49th Parallel then directly west. Due to ignorance of geography by the early mappers and developers of the then-young United States, it was not realized till later that the border running south from the northwestern border of the lake would set apart a good-sized chunk of land from Canada. About 140 people live there, according to the 2000 Census. For a good idea of what life’s like there, read the book, In the Lake of the Woods by Tim O’Brien.

Enough for now! More later.

Google Maps has long been my favorite mapping website, and several recent features has made it even better.

When mapping directions from one point to another, you usually can see a blue path marking the route Google is suggesting to you. But what if you want to avoid a certain highway, or if you want to take your favorite scenic route on the way? You can now click on any portion of the blue path marking the route and drag it to a different street or town or highway. And as you drag, Google Maps will quickly and automatically re-configure the path to give you the best directions along the new path you’ve picked out. Awesome.

An additional new feature: you can now click on the start or ending point (the green arrow or the red square, within balloon icons) and drag it to a different point. As you drag, you’d see a small white box with the street name and closest intersection. Kick-ass feature!

As if these two new features aren’t enough, Google went and added a third feature that I’d found sorely lacking in the past (and which I sometimes used Yahoo Maps just for this feature): the ability to right-click anywhere on the map (and not just on the route) and add that point as a new destination. Might not sound like much, but how often have you browsed a map, found the place you needed, and then wanted to do directions to THAT place but didn’t know the exact address? “Um, um, I know there’s a 7-Eleven on that corner, and we’re to meet in that parking lot, but I don’t know the address …” Now you can just find that spot on the map, right-click on that spot, and pick “Add a destination.” Google, I’m dumping my long-time partner, and will you marry me?  :-P  (Barry, I’m kidding — I swear!)

This is gonna be very, very useful. Google Maps now has street-level views in five USA cities, with more on the way.

What are street-level views, you might be asking? Ah, when you’re looking at, say, a Google Map of New York City or any city that has this feature, you’ll see a new button in the upper right corner of the map: “Street View.” Click on that, and you’ll see a series of blue lines around blocks having street views. You’ll also see a cute little yellow “person” icon. You can drag this icon (with this “person” bending at the waist as you do so). Whereever you put this person down, you’ll then see a panorama picture of that block. You can click on this picture and drag it around to rotate this view (as if you were turning around) — seeing all the buildings around you in the progress.

Totally awesome.

(Click on the image for a larger size)

The following cities now have this street-level view feature: San Francisco, New York, Las Vegas, Miami, and Denver.

How would you use this feature? You’d scout out a place to see how you’d like it before you even drive there. Or if you’re trying to find a place, now you can see what it looks like from the front. Or you could do virtual tourism, visiting this site and then that site before even flying out there. Or, or, or … The possibilities are (almost) endless.

I should note that Google ain’t the first mapping service to implement this kind of street-level view. Microsoft Live’s mapping service has had “birds-eye view” for a while, and I remember at least one mapping service had street-level views — if I can remember which, I’ll post it here.  [EDIT: Amazon's A9 service had street-level views too for a while, but A9's maps are now no longer available.]

Another example showing how useful Google My Maps can be — this time in drawing and shading shapes and areas. And yes, this example also makes a point.

The National Wildlife Federation recently released a report, “The Gardener’s Guide to Global Warming” (PDF file). Deep in this report is a list of states (including the District of Columbia) that could see their state flowers and/or trees soon leave or become extinct because global warming has already been shifting growing zones markedly northward.

I created a Google MyMap showing each state that could lose its state flower and/or tree. Orangish yellow areas show each state that could lose its state flower; green areas show each state that could lose its state tree; and purple areas show each state that could lose BOTH its state flower and tree.

(Click on the map to see the actual Google MyMap)

Google Maps has a relatively new feature: making your own personalized maps called Google My Maps. I’ve been wanting to do a simple example of this feature, and now here’s my opportunity.

Over the past week, suburban Maryland has seen at least four water main breaks. One of my employees was affected by the Bradley Blvd water main break. She had to shower at her gym, but even so, she had to scrounge around to get water for simple things like cooking, washing, etc.

Here’s a Washington Post article about three of these breaks, and a WTOP news article about the fourth break.

I created a map showing the locations of these water main breaks. If you know or hear of any more, let me know through the comments and I’ll add them!

(Image below is current as of 12:50pm on Saturday, May 19, 2007. Click on it to see the latest map.)