Sometimes I worry about Google Maps

[fivemack]

I was talking to a friend in Columbus, Ohio, and asked whether he'd been affected by the tornadoes in Kansas, because I thought the middle of America was all one place.

To drive from Columbus, Ohio to Greensburg, Kansas is 1541 kilometres; almost exactly the same distance as to drive from Cambridge to Vienna. People rarely ask me whether my house is dry when they've heard that the Danube's flooded in Austria.

Comments

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

The problem isn't limited to Europe, or even Asia; there's a famous Saul Steinberg drawing (http://www.saulsteinbergfoundation.org/gallery_24_viewofworld.html), a New Yorker cover, rendered in an extreme perspective, which shows the whole USA telescoped into about 1/6 of the height of a page--much smaller than 1/4 mile of Manhattan island in the foreground, which gets 1/2 the height. And I am convinced there is a psychic barrier, like the one between Estcarp and the Old Country, at the Mexico-USA border; I can find more information about Tokyo in Powell's than I can about Ciudad de Mexico, D.F.