Closer Than…

There’s no overt or even covert intellectual discussion on Twelve Mile Circle today. In fact I won’t blame you at all if you choose to skip this post and come back on the weekend. I might do the same if it wasn’t already too late.

I’m back to drawing lines again. I got fixated on various shapes in South America and eventually this map resulted from my various fiddlings:

So what do we have here? Google Maps graffiti? A few mildly interesting observations, perhaps?

• The blue line. Start in Natal, Brazil and travel west to the other side of the nation, a total of 2,600 miles by air. That’s an impressive distance without ever leaving Brazil. Travel northeast from the same spot, however and Natal is closer to many places in Africa including the nations of Senegal, The Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Cote D’Ivoire and Ghana.
• The red line. Measure the length of Chile. It comes out to about 2,500 miles. The northern tip of Chile is closer to places in El Salvador and Honduras, than it is to places in its far south.
• The green line. There are places in Bolivia that are closer to Miami than Miami is to Seattle! That’s a stretch of about 2,700 miles.

This would have been a much more entertaining exercise if Google would only add a circle tool to its maps program. I won’t hold my breath, though. I keep asking for county line markers to no avail.

That is all.