Google menaces penguins with Street View Antarctica Google has trained its all-seeing Street View eye on the penguins of Antarctica. The web giant has been known to kill penguins. And now it's invading their privacy. In announcing Street View Antartica, Google boasted that its photograph-the-world-and-put-it-on-the-web contraption now covers all seven continents. Today, in …
Yeah, I was thinking that... I didn't think there were many streets down in Antarctica, especially as the few human buildings down there gradually get covered by the white stuff.
Unless they have certain routes they use between scientific bases and the penguin colonies.
Then again, since a certain TV programme once drove to the North Pole, it wouldn't surprise me if the Chocolate Factory doesn't ask them to do it again... but this time with a few hundred kg of computer equipment in the back and an all seeing eye mounted on a pole above the truck.
Just thought... thinking of penguins, have they done Linus' street yet? :)
I still don't see how "Europe" is a continent separate from Asia. I know that geopolitics and history necessitate the mental and political separation, but if we were surveying a new planet that looked like ours today, we would not separate "Europe" and "Asia" into two "continents." The Ural mountains do not a continental division make.
Also: isn’t the “continent” you refer to as “Australia” more properly referred to as Oceania? Seeing as how it would include a whole bunch of these island thingies that share parts of it’s continental shelf? If you throw the political claptrap out the window, then Terra would only seem to have six continents: North America, South America, Eurasia, Africa, Oceania and Antarctica.
Decide for yourself how you would cut up the globe:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/93/Elevation.jpg
Personally, I think of “Europe and Asia” as nothing more than the egotistical trappings of politicians. Geographically it really is one continent…
Arguing that Europe and Asia should be one continent as the split is political not geographical and then saying that Oceania should be a continent is a little mixed up as Oceania is simply a political continent made up of the geographical continents of Australia, Zealandia, various atolls and other minor bits of, mostly submerged, continental shelf.
So you could say that Europe and Asia should be one continent but then you have to allow for Zealandia being one too.
You argument makes sense…excepting that Australia and assorted geological flotsam in that area distinctly share a continental shelf.
New Zealand is distinct enough from a continental shelf point of view that I would accept arguments that it should be considered a completely separate entity. Probably not large enough to be its own continent, but perhaps not part of Oceania. New Guinea OTOH, is clearly part of the same landmass as Australia. I guess it depends on how you want to cut that one up. There are still plenty of other items other than the main landmass of Australia itself however that are clearly part of the same entity.
"So you could say that Europe and Asia should be one continent"
You could also say that North and South America should be one continent for the same reason.
There are many different ways you can split up 'continents' because 'continent' is a somewhat confused concept which brings together politics and things-that-ppke-above-the-waterline-geography in one unholy mess. Depending on your viewpoint there are either 7, 6, 5, or 4 continents (see wiki for details).
Personally I think continent is one of those concepts that will eventually die a death (because it's confused) and you'd be better off talking about the 15 tectonic plates (Eurasia, North America, Filipines, Caribbean, Cocos, Nazca, South America, Africa, Arabia, India, Australia, Antarctica, Pacific, Juan de Fuca, Scotia) because it has some basis in scientific fact.
If we're looking at purely physical continuity, then add Africa to this single Eurasian "lump". Oh, and just a single America, of course.
As for Australia/Oceania - umm, why include islands if physical continuity is your criterion?
I make that four, then - Eurafricasia, America, Australia, Antarctica. And umpty-seven islands. Still, at least the UKIP/anti-EU deniers-of-reality will be happy.
"...Penguins unfortunately don't have thumbs and won't until a nuclear powered merchant ship crashes and mutates them"
The mutant penguins with hands instead of flippers start writing their own code?
Will they then sue Linus Torvalds for "passing off" as a penguin?
I think the legal aspect needs to be examined :-)
Stop applying your contemporary mindset, instead consider in geological timescales.
Europe and Asia are two entirely geophysically different continents.
Seperated by the Ural mountains, (formerly the Tethys/Aeigir ocean bed), uplifted over 250 MYA by the Laurasian collisions of the Baltica, Khazakstania, and Siberian continental plates.
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