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army1987 comments on Minor, perspective changing facts - Less Wrong
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Huh. I thought Canada would be a lot bigger than Europe, probably because I know that Western Europe is not that big and tend to forget how big Eastern Europe, especially the European parts of the former USSR, is.
Another possible factor is that Mercator maps increase the size of areas that are farther from the equator.
Yes. I somewhat compensate for that (e.g. I don't expect Greenland to be ginormous), but apparently I don't do that enough.
Speaking of European countries and size/distance, according to google maps it takes almost an hour less time to drive between London and Paris as it does to drive between San Francisco and LA.
If anything, I expected the difference to be larger: London is in the far south of Britain and Paris is in the far north of France, so they are quite close together, whereas SF and LA are pretty much at opposite ends of California. (OTOH, I had no clear idea how long it'd take to take the train in the tunnel below the Channel -- according to Google Maps it takes one hour and a half to drive from Dover to Calais.)
(Exercise for the reader: guess how long it takes to drive from Milan to Rome and how that compares to those two.)
The California-Oregon Border hits the coast at the 42 parallel, and the California Mexico Border starts at 32.5. SF's latitude is 37.8, making it only 55% of the way up the coast. Far from being on opposite sides of California, San Francisco is only a bit past the midpoint. The misconception that SF is at the opposite end of California is likely due to the fact that past San Francisco, Northern California is pretty sparcely populated (an Oregonian friend of mine once describe Northern California past the Bay as "not inhabited by humans").