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lozwich
Joined: 25 May 2003
Posts: 1536
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 Posted: Tue May 04, 2004 3:28 pm Post subject: |
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And which supreme being created the whole thing in the first place....
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yaramaz
Joined: 05 Mar 2003
Posts: 2384
Location: Not where I was before
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| Posted: Tue May 04, 2004 3:33 pm Post subject: |
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| ummm, Slartibartfast? |
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Teacher Lindsay
Joined: 31 Mar 2004
Posts: 393
Location: Luxian, Sichuan
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| Posted: Wed May 05, 2004 1:09 pm Post subject: |
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arioch36 wrote:-
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| I was greatly surprised me how many people concidered Australia a continent. This has to be an Anglo Whitey thing. Certainly Greenland is bigger then Australia. |
WTF??????
Greenland - 2,166,086 square kilometres [only 410,449 ice-free]
Australia - 7,617,930 square kilometres [land only]
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lozwich
Joined: 25 May 2003
Posts: 1536
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| Posted: Wed May 05, 2004 1:25 pm Post subject: thanks mate! |
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Thank you Teacher Lindsay!
I didn't want to mention it, at the risk of sounding rabidly patriotic, but yeah, Oz is HUGE! From all of my 'what is a continent?' research, I found out that Greenland is about the same size as Mexico, but it looks that big because the maps have to represent a round surface (the earth) on a flat surface (the map) and so at the edges it all looks a bit oversized.
If you imagine Greenland being the size of Mexico, and Australia just under the size of mainland USA, you get a more accurate idea.
I also found on About.com there's a free online 'course' on geography. I don't have time to do it, but there it is.
Have a good day,
Lozwich. |
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RVN
Joined: 05 May 2003
Posts: 62
Location: China
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| Posted: Thu May 06, 2004 1:43 pm Post subject: |
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If Australia is a continent can it be an island?
When does an island become a continent?
I agree with the Eurasia Booo! idea, why not just have Afreurasia? Europe and Asia should be separate continents. I'm from Britain and I consider myself to be a part of Europe, but not Asia. I'm sure that most people from both Europe and Asia wouldn't want to think of the two as the same continent are as political and cultural as they are geographical.
As to why continents are important, how else would we organise qualification for the World Cup? |
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lozwich
Joined: 25 May 2003
Posts: 1536
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| Posted: Thu May 06, 2004 2:05 pm Post subject: |
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| RVN wrote: |
If Australia is a continent can it be an island?
When does an island become a continent? |
When its as big as Australia. The general definition is that a continent is a large land area, but the actual semantics of what constitues 'land' and 'large' is what gets people a little steamed up. I had "Australia is the world's largest island and the only island continent" rammed down my throat every year at school in geography class (I'm Australian, and for some reason my teachers thought it was a matter of pride for us to live on such a unique lump of rock).
| RVN wrote: |
| As to why continents are important, how else would we organise qualification for the World Cup? |
This is exactly what started my continent 'discussion' in my class full of Mexican football enthusiasts!  Personally, I have no problem with the idea of 7 continents that are geographical delineations. I don't know why every country needs to be part of a continent, I don't think it matters. For me its just some arbitrary label that a bunch of earth scientists put on things. But, the political regions that have the same names as the continents (with the exeption of Oceania) are very important. I think that's where the whole argument has originated.
Do you consider yourself to be a part of a political region, or a part of a mass of minerals?
Have a good 'un. |
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khmerhit
Joined: 31 May 2003
Posts: 1874
Location: Reverse Culture Shock Unit
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| Posted: Thu May 06, 2004 2:09 pm Post subject: |
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Just to re-cap---how many continents are there? Or rather, how many do we think there are? This always makes for a good lesson.
k |
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Dr.J
Joined: 09 May 2003
Posts: 304
Location: usually Japan
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| Posted: Fri May 07, 2004 1:59 am Post subject: |
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Well if you want to have an ultimate champion answer to this question, which is like a no-holds barred martial arts tournament champion, you have to start arguing which value system is more valuable.
Sure, geographically we have an 'answer', but what's the point of dividing it up geographically, apart from that it makes it easier to test grade school kids on how to spell 'antarctica'?
The important things are political and cultural differences. With this in mind the continents should be; north america, south america, western europe, northern and southern africa, the middle east, eastern europe, a few russias, a few chinas, east asia, india, south east asia, maybe australia & co., and the rest (including antarctica and easter island).
Or do it like the BBC does on their news website. |
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arioch36
Joined: 21 Jan 2003
Posts: 3589
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| Posted: Fri May 07, 2004 3:47 pm Post subject: |
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Australia is that big!!! Wow! My apologies everyone down under. Unfortunately this is a product of my eurocentric upbringing which uses distorted maps in which Greenland appears to be as large as Australia 
Does the Bertrand guy ever speak English ???? I suspect he has never been to China |
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Shaman
Joined: 06 Apr 2003
Posts: 446
Location: Hammertown
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| Posted: Fri May 07, 2004 9:14 pm Post subject: |
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7. Simply, 7.
Shaman |
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