Is there anything worse than mile-high Finnish renditions of the Violent Femmes?
And, flying on thin ice in Antarctica. By Patrick Smith Oct. 15, 2004 | Last month, curious about this column’s international appeal, I asked my overseas readers to identify themselves. Letters have since shot back from more than 55 nations — a tally that now includes Gabon, Mozambique and Saudi Arabia. For an updated look at Ask the Pilot’s imperial progress, click here. Those who visited previously will see that I’ve changed the map. This one is more attractive and easier to read. Alas, the projection still leaves Greenland oversized, though not as grotesquely as on the Mercator scale I demonstrated last week. Remind me, if you will, never to talk about map projections again. As I thought might happen, my limited knowledge of the topic left me open to dissertations on cartographic arcana. Reader Craig DeForest was one of many to chime in: “You mentioned the Mercator projection,” writes DeForest, “which reminds me of my favorite, little-known word in the English language: loxodrome.
