Nonsensical Paradigms: Continents

From a young age, I have been taught that there are seven continents. In alphabetical order: Africa, Antarctica, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America, South America. There doesn’t seem to be any clear definition of what a continent is and why Europe for example, should be considered separate from Asia, but the Arabian Peninsula, which actually has its own tectonic activity relative to Europe and Asia. Furthermore, what makes continents separate isn’t clear. Europe and Asia are “separated” by a relatively small range of mountains (the Urals) a collection of rivers that bear no particular importance, some large salty lakes, and another range of mountains.

Here’s a Pierce Quincuncial projection map of the world (the north pole is at the center and the south pole is at the corners), based on this map posed on the Wikimedia Commons:

What is the unifying concepts that makes this things continents? They are large chunks of land and their boundaries seem to be defined by where they are connected by narrow isthmuses. There seem to be vague cultural overtones to them and an appeal to tradition set when people didn’t know jack shit about geology.

It seems that if you set the definition of continents to be areas of land that are connected above sea level that are the size of Australia or bigger, you could come up with four continents: Afroeurasia, America, Antarctica, and Australia, and that creates the lovely coincidence that they all start with “A”. Of course, you could raise the number to six by considering land separated by canals joining bodies of salt water at sea level to: Africa, Antarctica, Australia, Eurasia, North America, and South America on account of the Panama and Suez canals.

Those are just two simple logically consistent concepts that could be proposed in place of the current system that seems to be taught in just about every elementary school in the United States. You could also consider anything that has its own tectonic plate to be a continent, but things start getting really fuzzy there: Is the sliver of California to the west of the San Andreas fault its own continent? So I prefer the replacement ideas above, particularly the four continent idea, but in the end, paradigms exist only because lots of people agree they do. So, they won’t change until a significant group of people agree upon a new paradigm, and considering how little this topic really matters to most people, I don’t see any change in the near future.

Iran: Nation of Bloggers

via Andrew Sullivan

Here is an interesting short video created by The Vancouver Film School regarding Iranian bloggers. I esppecially appreciate the graphic layout of the movie, which I think is particularly well done:

I’m actually quite interested to see the political course in Iran in the coming years. The U.S. has been hostile to Iran for decades and there isn’t much mutual cultural understanding currently, but it seems with the incoming Obama administration and the Iranian Presidential election in June 2009 that there is an opportunity for dialogue unlike one that has been seen in many years.

Edited December 18 to embed player rather than keep as link.

Change

One notion that I’ve seen bouncing around the Internet and the news waves is that many of the familiar faces that Obama is bringing into his adminstration somehow represent a betrayal of his campaign mantra of change. To me, this notion betrays a lack of serious though taking place in the minds of those who espouse it.

“Change” is a ridiculously vague term, which I believe was by design in the Obama campaign. Change from what? The Obama campaign never really filled in the blank except to repudiate any unfavorable suggestions as to what it meant. Instead, they let people fill in the blanks themselves. So, during the primary, it carried a feeling as a break from the nepotism that characterised the current President’s rise to power that would be somewhat reflected if Hillary Clinton won. During the general election it carried more of a break from Bush feel.

So, “Change” can mean anything. Anything that isn’t the current status quo would be a change, and Obama certainly isn’t reusing the Bush Cabinet. He isn’t exactly reusing the Clinton Cabinet either, though it seems that he will be using some of the personell who worked under Clinton and a fewer number that worked under Bush. Is this a problem? Hardly. I want our government to be run by a mix of those who have worked in government before and some new people to take their place as they learn the ropes. This is because my chief concern is competence, not some vague notion of change. I want a government that is competent and efficient and gets the job done while using less resources. That would be a change and a welcome one.

Nader Voters

For what reason do you vote for Nader? What possible rationale overcomes the reality of the American electoral system that compells you to support Nader?