Maphead: Charting the Wide, Weird World of Geography Wonks (51 page)

^†
One counterexample is the
West Lancashire town of Argleton
, which appears on Google Maps and Google Earth but, sadly, not in real life. Google officially blamed the anomaly on “occasional errors” in its database and removed the label from the map, though you can still find it if you search for it. The discovery of Argleton made international headlines, making it the most famous nonexistent town since
Goblu and Beatosu, Ohio
, which appeared on the official state road map of Michigan in 1978. University of Michigan alum Peter Fletcher, who chaired the State Highway Commission at the time, inserted the fake towns to tease Ohio State fans. Their names mean “Go blue” and “Beat OSU,” respectively.

^*
Avi Bar-Zeev, the Keyhole cofounder who wrote much of the early code for Google Earth, remembers a similar motivation for his decision to make point-to-point movement in the geobrowser a high-orbit “jump” rather than a “flight” at jetliner level: he wanted to use the software to emphasize the nearness and the interconnectedness of every place on the planet.

^*
Google lore has it that the Street View project was born when company cofounder Larry Page filmed a driver’s-eye view of his morning commute using a video camera and told the Geo team, “Do this.” He may have lived to regret the idea, though. In 2008, in response to controversy over Street View “spying,” a privacy watchdog group used Street View imagery to compile
a report on Page’s private life
, using Google photos to reveal the name of his landscaping company and the license plate number of his Lexus SUV.

^*
Google Map Maker has a complicated set of protocols in place to avoid Wikivandalism on its maps. “So if I draw imaginary highways to spell dirty words in the middle of Siberia, you’ll catch me?” I asked Google’s Jessica Pfund. “Oh, we’ve seen that,” she said wearily.

^*
If you do the math, there are actually 64,422 latitude and longitude confluences, but most of them are located on water or on the polar icecaps. Jarrett and company have also disallowed many of the higher-latitude confluences because lines of longitude converge there. As you get further from the Equator, confluences crowd together until they’re less than two miles apart at the poles.

^*
The singular form of “antipode” has three syllables, like “antipope,” but the plural has four: “an-tip-uh-deez.” This is because the word “antipode” shouldn’t really exist at all. The correct Greek singular of
antipodes
is
antipous
; “antipode” is an iffy back-construction.

^*
At the “
Crystal
Day” festival thrown by the Bunnymen to celebrate their hometown in 1984, the band led hundreds of Liverpudlian fans on a cycling tour of the city on a course designed to form the shape of a rabbit. The rabbit had been drawn on a city map by the band’s eccentric manager, Bill Drummond, with the rabbit’s navel placed at a manhole cover at the bottom of Mathew Street, in front of the city’s famed Cavern Club. There were some last-minute adjustments to the course when it turned out that the hastily sketched route would require the peloton to cycle through the city’s cathedral and then straight into the River Mersey.

^*
Take note, map lovers: your spouse may not believe you when you insist you just read
National Geographic
“for the articles.”

^†
Yes, we are aware that this could explain a
lot
of things about our daughter. Particularly some of our potty-training difficulties.

Table of Contents

Cover

Description

Back Cover

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

Contents

Chapter 1: Eccentricity

Chapter 2: Bearing

Chapter 3: Fault

Chapter 4: Benchmarks

Chapter 5: Elevation

Chapter 6: Legend

Chapter 7: Reckoning

Chapter 8: Meander

Chapter 9: Transit

Chapter 10: Overedge

Chapter 11: Frontier

Chapter 12: Relief

Notes

Index

Footnotes

Chapter 1

Note 1

Note 2

Note 3

Note 4

Note 5

Chapter 2

Note 1

Note 2

Note 3

Note 4

Note 5

Note 6

Note 7

Chapter 3

Note 1

Note 2

Note 3

Note 4

Note 5

Note 6

Chapter 4

Note 1

Note 2

Note 3

Note 4

Note 5

Note 6

Note 7

Chapter 5

Note 1

Note 2

Note 3

Note 4

Note 5

Note 6

Note 7

Note 8

Note 9

Note 10

Note 11

Chapter 6

Note 1

Note 2

Note 3

Note 4

Note 5

Note 6

Note 7

Note 8

Note 9