CURIOSITY CORNER: Curiosities found around the globe
By Dr. Jerry D. Wilson
Emeritus Professor of Physics
Lander University
(submitted to Rob’s Megaphone)
The Curiosity Corner on the Four Corners
The Four Corners is the only place in the United States where the boundaries of four states come together – Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico. It is a popular tourist attraction and features a marker that marks the spot.
But the Corners are in trouble. The location was determined in an 1868 survey that established Colorado’s southern boundary line. Because of surveying errors, the four corner states’ intersection is approximately 2.5 miles west of the marker. That’s modern technology for you – GPS and so on. But in all fairness, the surveying was pretty good, given the crude instruments of the day.
What this means is that Utah and Arizona lost land in the original survey, and Colorado and New Mexico gained ground. Even so, there is serious doubt that the boundaries of the states will be changed.
Oh Ma
It is reported that the Chinese government is attempting to modernize its database of 1.3 billion people in order to replace hand-written identity cards with computer-generated ones. However, the government computers were programmed to read only 32,252 of the roughly 55,000 Chinese characters in which names are written.
One character is “Ma,” the 13th most common family name in China, shared by some 17 million people. Not only are the Ma families having trouble, there are about 60 million other Chinese whose name characters are missing. What does this mean? These folks can’t get their new identity cards unless they change their names. No more Fu Ma(n)chu.
C.P.S. (Curious Postscript): The trouble with our times is that the future is not what it used to be. ~Paul Valery
Curious about something? Send your questions to Dr. Jerry D. Wilson, College of Science and Mathematics, Lander University, Greenwood, SC, 29649
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