Things I think about in the shower

Like many people, I do my best thinking in the shower.  Sadly, the things I think about are usually pretty goofy.  

Shower Thought:  Surely the term "Middle East" doesn't really make sense unless you live 1/4 of the way around the planet to the west?  

The website www.worldatlas.com suggests this portion of the world is the MIddle East (evidently what constitutes the MIddle East is disputed).  So it looks to me like Iraq is about the center.

So this looked like a latitude/longitude problem.  I can never remember latitude v. longitude (which I expect would infuriate my geography expert extraordinaire sister Molly) but I found the public domain image at right that explains the difference.

Okay. So Google says the middle of Iraq is about 33 o N by 43.5 o E.

So Baghdad is 44.3 o E. I grabbed a blank image off freeUSandWorldMaps.com and did a quick photoshop to add the numbers. Since right angles are 90o, then perpendicular to Baghdad is 45.7oW. The only named place at around 45oW I could find in this northern hemisphere map is a place called Nunataaq, Greenland.

(Fun fact: according to the Italian Wikipedia, Nunataaq is a village with 2 inhabitants as of 2005. I feel rather nervous that the latest data is from 2005. What's happened in the 12 years in between? Did the two inhabitants go on a quest northward only to freeze in the ice, never to be heard from again?)

How I spent my summer vacation:  Well.  That's an hour spent coloring and labeling this image that I will never get back.

How I spent my summer vacation:  Well.  That's an hour spent coloring and labeling this image that I will never get back.

In conclusion, if you stand in Greenland (or in the eastern portion of Brazil in the Southern Hemisphere), then it would be correct to describe the Middle East as the "Middle East".  Otherwise you are just confusing our alien watcher overlords on the moon.

Q.E.D.

The sad part about all of this, of course, is that you would have no one with which to discuss the Middle East in Nunataaq, Greenland, because presumably everyone there has been eaten by polar bears.  

 Today's Norwegian Vocabulary Word: for eksempel
  Pronounced: (for eks-emp-ull).
   (Translation: for example)
 Exercise: Use "for eksempel" in a sentence:
 Example: "Jeg elsker katter. For eksempel, jeg elsker min lille katt Kishi.
   (I love cats. For example, I love my little cat Kishi.)