The Geography Blog focusing on all things geography: human, physical, technical, space, news, and geopolitics. Also known as Geographic Travels with Catholicgauze!
Written by a former National Geographic employee who also proudly served in Iraq and Afghanistan.
After a discussion about monuments and landscape I decided to investigate the largest statues in the world. Surprisingly, familiar sites like the Statue of Liberty, Spinx, and Christ the Redeemer are not even on the list of the world's largest statues. Instead, I only knew of one of the top twenty even existed.
Seventeen of the largest statues of the world are in Asia. The non-Asian ones are two in Russia and one in Ukraine. The largest statue is the Spring Temple Buddha at a whopping 420 feet (128 meters). For reference the Statue of Liberty is only 151 feet (46 meters) without the pedestal and 305 feet (93 meters) with its pedestal.
Most of the monuments are less than fifteen years old and Buddhist. In fact, sixteen of the top twenty are Buddhist. The large Asian economies are paying their divine back by stamping it on the landscape. Even officially atheist People's Republic of China has allowed massive Buddhist statues to be built.
The country breakdown of the twenty largest statues is
The Statue of Liberty comes in at twenty-six when not counting the pedestal. It is the second largest statue in the Western Hemisphere. The largest is two feet (less than a meter) higher and in Venezuela. It is the Virgin of Peace in Venezuela.
The Western Hemisphere in general and the United States in particular may one day lay claim to the largest statue in the World. The Crazy Horse Memorial in the Black Hills of South Dakota is planned to be 563 feet (172 meters) high. However, the project is completely self-funded and going very slowly as it was started in 1948.
If the earth's gravity alone was responsible for creating a new geography, the huge bulge of oceanic water—which is now about 8 km high at the equator—would migrate to where a stationary earth's gravity would be the strongest. This bulge is attributed to the centrifugal effect of earth's spinning with a linear speed of 1,667 km/hour at the equator. The existing equatorial water bulge also inflates the ellipsoidal shape of the globe itself.
and
If the earth stood still, the oceans would gradually migrate toward the poles and cause land in the equatorial region to emerge. This would eventually result in a huge equatorial megacontinent and two large polar oceans. The line that delineates the areas that hydrologically contribute to one or the other ocean would follow the equator if the earth was a perfect ellipsoid. However, due to the significant relief of both the continents and the ocean floor, the hypothetical global divide between the areas that hydrologically contribute to one or another ocean deviates from the equator significantly. Analogous to the well-known U.S. Continental Divide, this would be the border separating two giant hemispherical watersheds of the new circumpolar oceans.
Reader Canada has written a guest post about the recent earthquakes in eastern Canada
Ontario residents speak of the June 23rd earthquake as if it were as if they are very rare. No one thinks living in the Great Lakes St. Lawrence lowlands to be a big earthquake zone. http://earthquakescanada.nrcan.gc.ca/zones/eastcan-eng.php
Even as a geographer in the region I seldom give local earthquake probability much thought.
Natural Resources Canada's page states:
"This region has a low to moderate level of seismicity when compared to the more active seismic zones to the east, along the Ottawa River and in Quebec. Over the past 30 years, on average, 2 to 3 magnitude 2.5 or larger earthquakes have been recorded in the southern Great Lakes region. By comparison, over the same time period, the smaller region of Western Quebec experienced 15 magnitude 2.5 or greater earthquakes per year."
Due to the due to the resonance of the Canadian shield rocks which our area of Eastern North America sits on, we may feel the quake a longer distance away form the epicenter thanpeople on North America's West Coast do.
I am very disappointed I have never felt an earthquake in the region. This time I was driving and didn't feel anything move. I didn't expect any aftershocks to be significant, and rather resigned that I missed by chance for about anotherdecade in the region. I was eager to read about a bigger earthquake close to home on the US Geological survey site
People were even posting this on their facebook pages
"Picture of the devastation after earthquake in Toronto" and drawing many comments.
Another friend posted as a status update
"Well folks I guess it finally happened. Quebec is finally separating. Earthquake"
Even a day later, the earthquake was a hot topic about "where were you and how did it feel". (We haven't had this much where were when talk you since the blackout in summer of 2003) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_Blackout_of_2003
I confess that I remain slightly jealous of those who did have the experience to feel it.
Friends of mine wrote:
"Shook our house (rural Paris) . . . thought I was hallucinating, either that or a very large truck hit the side of the house. No damage but it was an unearthly feeling".
"suddenly the house was shaking and I said to myself why is my house shaking. I got up and looked out the window and everything seemed normal. It was kind of cool as no damage done"
"just survived earthquake number 2 in my life! first one was worse... 6.5 on the rictor so this one was a piece of cake! lol."
"it was a scary experience.I heard a loud rumble outside. I thought perhaps my air conditioning was giving up the ghost and I stood up to shut it off. As I rose to my feet I started feeling dizzy, lightheaded and off balance. The rumbling noise increased, my dog started growling and mirrors on my wall started shaking. My wine glass collection hanging under my cupboard started clanging together, and I exclaimed out loud a word I will not repeat and realized we were having an earthquake. It was 30 seconds I am not soon to forget."
One friend went further and thought of Haiti and blogged:
"Soon the quake here will become a distant memory, and news about the G8 and G20 summits will fill up the news wires and twitter lines. But in other parts of the world, like Haiti, the earthquake is still around them every moment of everyday.
The smells, the sights, the loss, they are tangible and real.
I am still praying for Haiti, still donating and still being reminded to work out my faith with an ever present reminder of the people and places that are worlds away"
Now that is a great connection of physical geography, human geography and cultural geography!
How easily we forget about the physical geography and geology around us, and once the cultural and human geography passes out of the media spotlight... we forget too.
My friend urges people to keep donating to Haiti as do I.
Here is a link to my previous blog contribution re the Haiti Earthquake
Blogger, reader, and friend Catlin of the GIS Lounge. In this post she writes about her wedding in the Portuguese-American community in New Jersey. If you wish to submit an article about your culture/country's wedding traditions just comment below and we will make it its own post!
My husband and I were married back in his hometown of Newark, New Jersey in a heavily immigrant section called the Ironbound. The area gets its name from the railroad tracks that surround the neighborhood and is home to many Portuguese immigrants. It’s estimated that about 50-75% of the area is Portuguese. The area is densely packed with Portugese shops and restaurants, particularly along Ferry Street. Every summer, a huge festival called "Dia de Portugal" (Portugal Day) attracts over half a million people to the community.
Both sides of my husband’s family emigrated from Portugal to the Ironbound in the 1960s so it was only fitting to celebrate with a Portuguese wedding. Our wedding Mass was celebrated in the Our Lady of Fatima Catholic Church in Newark. Our Lady of Fatima was built in 1955 and was one of the first churches built in the United States to serve the Portuguese immigrant population. The Mass was celebrated in both English and Portuguese.
Our wedding reception was held at Iberia Peninsula Restaurant on Ferry Street, one of the main Portuguese restaurants in Newark. One of the most important things when hosting in the Portuguese culture is to make sure your guests are NEVER hungry. That means food, and lots of it. At the reception was a table called the “Mesa Típica”. This is a table set up that holds the old traditional food of Portugal such as salted cod (Bacalhau). Eating from that table is more for the hard core Portuguese and is more intended as an homage to the old days than for actual eating. For the guests, there were multiple courses with enough food to feed five times the number of people actually at the reception. Note the leitão (suckiling pig) in the photo - a must have offer at all major Portuguese gatherings.
The night of celebration was capped off with lively dancing. Once of the popular dances at a Portuguese wedding is a group dance called “Bate o pé”, which means “Stomp your foot”. Everyone gathers in a circle and dances to this song:
Bate o pé, bate o pé, bate o pé, faça assim como eu. Bate o pé, bate o pé, bate o pé, foi assim como a minha amor me prendeu.
Stomp your foot, stomp your foot, stomp your foot, and do it like me.
Stomp your foot, stomp your foot, stomp your foot, that's how my love got me.
In Nova Scotia, Canada there is a mystery on Oak Island. In the late 1700s two youths set out for buried treasure on the island. They began to dig a hole that is yet to be finished despite over two hundred years of exploration. The background of the story is explained in the two videos below from the 1970s television show In Search Of...
For those who did not watch the videos here is a brief review: the hole is called the money pit. The pit has several layers of logs which slow digging. Further, at a certain depth the pit floods in with water despite having being a fair amount away from shore. Dye tests showed how dye poured into the pit end up in the ocean giving the idea that there may be tunnels that flood the pit thus acting like a defense mechanism. Finally, there is an alleged stone that says there is buried treasure (but the stone cannot be found). A short two minute movie below is a 3D diagram of the money pit along with the geography and geology of the island.
Now the mystery of Oak Island may be pirate treasure but it also could be physical geography. Geologist Robert Dunfield did not find a flood tunnel during his investigation. In fact, the underlying limestone is full of water-filled natural caves. It is possible that tide pressure could move the water around in the caves. The underground water could periodically fill the money pit because of this tidal pressure. The constant ebb and flow of the tides could force dye from the pit to the ocean. As for the timbers, natural sinkholes in that area of Canada have been known to have layers of timber at periodic distances. These sink hole will suck in debris like fibers and timer and be recapped by sand and dirt. This repeatable geographic cycle could replicate the money pit.
So is Oak Island a treasure island or are is it just natural? The money pit is probably just a natural geographic feature that was misinterpreted (if it was treasure it is the most complex vault ever with no equal). None the less it is a fascinating romantic story of history and geography.
The Catholicgauze/Catholicgauzette wedding post is coming. But now it is time for long-time reader Canada to write about how diverse Canada is when it comes to weddings. If you wish to submit an article about your culture/country's wedding traditions just comment below and we will make it its own post!
The most common and noticeable observation in Canadian cultural geography is that Canada prides itself on being a cultural mosaic.
Diversity and expressions of traditions and cultures is welcomed here in your neighbour to the north.
We see this most in times of celebrations such as holiday festivals or weddings.
Some Canadians bring together their cultures of the families in terms of dress, ceremonial tradition and of course food. It is not uncommon to have 2 different wedding ceremonies reflecting different cultures.
In Canada, wedding photos happen in scenic outdoor locations, even sometimes in winter. This happens whether the wedding has been at a Church of city hall.
Some Canadians opt for the cottage wedding of going to some place a few gours outside of town and doing a more casual atmosphere in dress and celebration.
So in the Canadian culture of weddings, cultural diversity rules.
Reader Rybu has started his own geography blog entitled World Geography Blog. The blog will "run the gamut from google earth to maps, general geography and did you knows, how to's and new technology." So far there have been several good posts on unrecognizedstates, African travel, and the value of maps.
A great video featured on the blog is actually an ad for the Discovery Channel. However, the ad shows just how wonderful our world, and everything we can study on it, is. The video is below:
One day it could be the largest
