First trials of the Deparochialiser

[fivemack]

Did you know that the US was more than 41 times the size of Portugal and Belarus combined? That Russia was more than 405 times the size of Denmark? That India was just under 78 times the size of Lower Saxony?

This kind of useful information is a side-effect of a proxy I've always wanted to write to remove the parochialisms in the CIA World Factbook - it's of little use to point out that some place is twice the size of Oregon. I haven't quite figured out how to set it up as a proxy yet (and also would rather avoid things that could be construed as imitating the CIA]

Comments

[jojomojo.livejournal.com]

Irritating though it can be, the Factbook is presumably funded by US citizens' taxation, so it's not too surprising that that's their intended audience :/ (And my taxes, come to that. You can thank me for a few digits of Kazakhstan's GDP on that website, or something)

[stephdairy.livejournal.com]

Make it a greasemonkey script, perhaps?

(S)

[diffrentcolours]

Damnit, that's what I was going to suggest, along with polling Americans to see whether they know how big Oregon is ;)

[scottscidmore.livejournal.com]

About the same size as Wyoming. Better poll is to see how they pronounce 'Oregon'.

[(Anonymous)]

What's that in London buses?

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

How about "localizer"? I don't see that knowing, or not knowing, the size of Belarus or Portugal is inherently more or less parochial than knowing, or not knowing, the size of Oregon. But people around Belarus are more likely to know about it than Oregon, and people around Oregon are more likely to know about it than Belarus.

And that publication is, after all, a US publication; relating things to stuff relatively around us is just good writing.

[fivemack.livejournal.com]

Localiser's a good term, thanks.

The program is at least in part a joke - or at least a way of indicating that I've no more intuition of the size of Oregon than I do of that of Belarus or of the wonderfully named German state of Mecklenberg-Vorpommern. There's something intrinsically ridiculous about the string 'almost exactly eighty-one times the size of Belgium'.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Mecklenberg-Vorpommern is indeed a thing of beauty.

You're quite right about "almost exactly 81 times the size of "; 81 is *not* a round number.

So perhaps I'm being a bit overly-sensitive about US parochialism. There's enough of the real thing around, and hence enough legitemate complaints about it, to keep me sensitized.

[scottscidmore.livejournal.com]

Easy - the UK at 241,590 sq km is slightly smaller than Oregon at 255,026 sq km.

It's useful having a feel for some of the relative sizes, especially for the larger countries and some common trips in the smaller ones. Some years ago I was visiting friends in Victoria BC when friends of theirs, from the UK, were arriving from Japan. We all kicked around the city for a couple of days, at the end of which the UK folk announced that they were going to rent an automobile and do some touring of the mainland. "We'd thought we'd seen Vancouver, and then visit some friends in Toronto"

"Ummm, how long you planning to take?"

"We're taking it easy, a whole day just to get there." (innocent, cheerful smiles)

"Toronto is like 4100 km (about 450,000 London buses) away"

"Oh..."

[fivemack.livejournal.com]

I'm planning some travel around Europe by train, and starting to realise that Europe itself is distinctly large; Cambridge to Krakow is two days each way, though of course if I'm travelling by train in Europe I should probably break the trip at interesting German cities.

I had pondered Vancouver to Montreal by train as part of my round-the-world travel last year, but it didn't fit in sensibly with everything else I wanted to do; and after travelling through mile after mile of snow-clad farms for the in-comparison-tiny trip from Montreal to Quebec City, I think I'd not have coped well with 48 hours of prairie, Winnipeg to Edmondton by way of Saskatoon.

Given that anyone travelling across all Canada on a train is probably a tourist and interested in the view, I'm somewhat surprised that the Vancouver-Montreal trip crosses the Rockies at night, both directions!

[scottscidmore.livejournal.com]

And perhaps a reference database of the most interestingly named geographic units would be a Good Thing for comparisons. Never mind that the reader has never heard of it, looking it up will educate them. And make sure you've sufficient digits, none of this 'almost exactly eighty-one times...' stuff but rather 'is 80.947 times...'

Expressing distances in bus, bowling alley (2.19 buses), or similar, lengths adds to this educational value.