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knb comments on Worth remembering (when comparing ‘the US’ to ‘Europe’) - Less Wrong
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I'm not sure how important all this is, but I had no idea so much of Africa was above the equator, and I have an unpleasant suspicion that I assumed the equator was more or less at the upper edge of Africa/lower edge of Europe because it just seemed tidier. Is tidiness/simplicity a named bias?
People are often surprised by how far south the United States is compared to Europe. Chicago is on the same latitude as Rome. North Dakota is parallel to the wine growing region of Bordeaux in France. It seems like people consider the US/Europe to be parallel, and South America/Africa parallel.
The Czech Republic isn't any further east than central and southern Italy. And certain people (not me) are surprised that certain parts of Ireland are further west than mainland Portugal. (Generally speaking, it's like people's mental map of the world is rotated around 20° clockwise.)
As for the Portugal/Ireland thing, one could easily blame the conically projected maps which conventionally have the 15th (or so) eastern meridian vertical, making Portugal's 5th western meridian slanted and pushing poor Portugal more to the left than the more northern Ireland.
And it is easy to underestimate the east-west dimensions of Italy. We tend to assume that it is hanging freely from below the Alps, right down as a pendulum in equilibrium should, while actually it is tilted almost 45 degrees to the right. The region commonly refered to as "south Italy" could be as easily be described as "east Italy", although that strangely never happens.
Similar thing happens to Norway. Northern Norway can be as far east as Cairo or Kiev, which only few people realise.
Yes, especially because the borders of pretty much any reasonable definition of it (the border of the former Kingdom of the Two Sicilies; the western border of “Neapolitan and related varieties” in this map; the western borders of present-day Abruzzo, Molise and Campania; the western borders of present-day Molise and Campania, to name the ones I can think of at the moment) run mostly north-to-south. There's no way someone from Termoli will identify as any less of a southerner than someone from Rome, which is geographically further south.
I was surprised when someone in Wales had trouble growing basil which I (in Delaware and Philadelphia) I thought of as the easiest plant in the world. However, Wales is a good bit north of the middle Atlantic states, and doesn't get nearly as much sunlight.
This is at least partially due to different weather- the Gulf Stream makes Europe much warmer than parts of North America at similar latitudes.
Edit: Read down, this has already been mentioned.