Category: International
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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…
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Almost Landlocked
Trivia. Trick questions. Fun Stuff. I love a good, lazy Sunday. Landlocked, double landlocked, borderlocking and boundary crosses have occupied my thoughts at various moments over the years. However, what about places not landlocked, but just barely? We all have our favorite territories that touch the sea by the thinnest of margins. Which ones would…
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Tangier Island on ESPN
ESPN has been airing promotional videos featuring Tangier Island, a small marshy inhabited locale within Virginia’s portion of the Chesapeake Bay. The premise is that Tangier Island is the biggest (per capita) sports town in America. I’ve been getting some pretty impressive website traffic from Google as a result. For First Time Visitors: Welcome to…
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Northernmost Southern Hemispheric Glacier
I discussed the southernmost glaciers in the northern hemisphere in the last installment and found some surprising answers. Today I take the opposite tack and examine the northernmost glaciers in the southern hemisphere. Let’s start again by reviewing the worldwide glacier map I discovered on the U.S. Geological Survey site. Maybe Cayambe Again? To recap…
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Southernmost Northern Hemispheric Glacier
My trip to Alaska got me thinking about snow, ice and glaciation. There were glaciers aplenty on the Kenai Peninsula but that’s not unexpected at sixty degrees north of the equator. Where, I wondered, was the southernmost glacier in the northern hemisphere? It’s not the first time my mind has wandered in this basic direction.…
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Suriname’s Disputed Borders
So this is Suriname. Go ahead and take a look at its shape relative to its neighbors, Guyana and French Guiana. These are the three Guianas. They all line up in a tiny, tidy row on the northeast corner of South American along the Atlantic Ocean. Suriname was once Dutch Guiana, a colony of the…
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Prime Meridian Capital Cities
School must be back in session. I can sense that must have happened because I’m capturing an exact phrase from multiple Internet Protocol addresses in my search engine query logs: “The Primer Meridian runs through what two capital cities?“ Could it be a Coincidence? I think not. I remember those bygone days of excessive homework…
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European Latitude Paradoxes
There aren’t any great research efforts or revelations today, just some interesting observations about various lines of latitude in western Europe. I spend a lot of time simply looking at maps, at the patterns, and the logical contradictions that aren’t always apparent in our conventional thoughts. These are a few that have made me smile…
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Nuevo León’s Quirky International Border
The border between the United States and Mexico has been a frequent topic of news and conversation this summer. But let’s be clear; Twelve Mile Circle doesn’t generally focus on political issues. Even so, it does have an interest in situations created by geography such as the recent border pirate phenomenon. In fact it was…
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Should I Ban China?
Twelve Mile Circle is about Geography, Geo-Oddities, Travel and the sharing of thoughts and ideas. Would it be ethical to ban 1.3 billion readers for the sins of a minuscule few? That would equal nearly 20% of the world’s population! The Problem China has become my website’s bane of existence. Internet Protocol addresses geo-locating to…