North to North: a North-off
At work the other day, Seattlest was talking to a coworker and friend who originally hails from Minnesota. Naturally, we talked of the bridge collapse. As one would expect these sorts of conversations to go, the conversation logically ended with us looking up the coordinates for the northernmost point in Maine.
Just how did this happen? In the course of conversion, it came up that Minnesota, not Maine, is the northernmost contiguous United State. So we fired up Google Maps and compared Norths. Then we took it a step further. Having been there numerous times, we knew that Maine was pretty damn North and we remembered reading that Seattle was even further north. So we stabbed with latitudes and longitudes to manually find Maine's northmost point. Then we shifted longitude until we found a suitably meaningful part of the Seattle metro area for comparison. This turned out to be the intersection of S 160th Street and Tukwila International Blvd, just east of SeaTac.
At all points in Seattle, to restate the obvious, we're pretty far north, y'all.
Our coworker did us one better and plotted a course from this point near SeaTac to the northmost point in Maine. Looking over the suggested route, we were reminded of just how much we dislike Google/Yahoo/Mapquest driving directions sometimes.
What the hell, Google? If we are already on I-94 in Michigan, why would we not continue on I-94 to the Detroit-Windsor border crossing which would put us on the 401? Sure sure, the Port Huron-Sarnia crossing is marginally less busy and a somewhat prettier drive. Also, we're no sticklers for taking the most direct route when we travel --we often prefer the stupid route-- but we figure we're in the minority. Besides, if we wanted scenery, we would have hit the ferry crossing instead.
Incidentally, we like Yahoo's route better. It is, by far, more scenic. Also, Mapquest, you lose. If you need less precise coordinates (city/state/zip) in order to grok more precise lat/long, you are dead to us!
As if most people already were unacceptably daft at reading maps, Yagooglequest driving directions are making all of us even more illiterate. What's more, they are making us dependent upon The Machines. And as has already been demonstrated on numerous occasions, The Machines do not have humans' best interests in mind. We have even astonishingly had to correct a Seattle cabbie taking a Machine-mandated, circuitous route to our house. A cabbie, for cripes sakes! They are listening to The Machines now? It's not like this is Boston; crappy as it may be in places, Seattle's grid is not so bad.
At the very least, though, online maps still display easily-viewable flat maps rather than employing that insipid, pixel-wasting, faux 3-D, "fly-over" effect favored by automobile GPS units. Still, though, our most recent Stephen Colbert-inspired "On Notice" list has the phrase "turn-by-turn navigation" occupying the top spot.
If lost, we don't mind popping out to ask directions from the local natives. Unfortunately, we've been finding that gas station and convenience store employees no longer have the geographical aptitude of their locales that they once did. For that reason, we also pack maps in our vehicles. That is, until The Machines mandate discontinuing the printing of paper maps and disallow autonomous, human reading of digital maps.
But we digress; back to the matter at hand. We feel the need for some sort of marker at S 160th and International Blvd to assert our greater Northness over Maine. This is not a light matter. We know we're being hemisphere-centric here but North, in all its incarnations, forms the basis for geolocation and navigation. This is heavy stuff, people. Appropriately, we propose that our marker ought to be some sort of greasy joint selling delicious, artery-stuffing poutine.
