Rey-k-javík
The big test was would come at the end of May. Sixth grade and we had to identify countries and their capitals on a world map. That meant spelling everything correctly and adding some countries not on the list for extra credit. I wasn't good at spelling then and it seems to have gone downhill since, but the unit was fun as our teacher had been around Europe and was a good story teller. She also wanted to make the point that maps lie - that various projections color our impressions and even doing something simple like measuring an area on a Mercator projection was difficult. A few weeks later the question came that I kept visiting for a few decades.
How is the area of a country measured? Is it considered a flat surface, or do you measure it on a sphere (I didn't know about the shape of the Earth then), or what about uneven ground? What do you do about tides? Shared lakes (like some of the Great Lakes)? How do you measure a coastline?
My parents tolerated this for awhile and then it was off to the library. There wasn't much on this, but visits to libraries are never wasted.
Over the years bits and pieces came when I wasn't looking. I first encountered fractals in Scientific American and followed up with Mandelbrot's paper . The measure of a coastline became finally became clear. There was an inherent fuzziness and you had to choose a scale. And he had developed some beautiful mathematics that got at the heart of the matter - what is a fractional dimension?
A countries area is usually defined as the outline of the country projected onto the Earth's geoid or ellipsoid (there isn't standardization, but using the ellipsoid is probably good enough). In other words the so-of spherical nature of the Earth is used. High tide marks boundaries, interior bodies of water are included in the area, but uneven terrain isn't accounted for. The terrain bit made me want to see what the impact would be. About ten years ago I found a dataset of terrain altitudes for the planet on a 100 meter grid. I used these with some detailed country outline data and looked at a few countries. The Netherlands only gains a tiny bit of area. The US grows by almost two percent, but Switzerland was slightly more than seven percent larger. That's big enough to make Switzerland larger than Denmark and the Netherlands. I didn't have good data for places like Nepal and Bhutan - they'd be spectacular. And imagine looking at Manhattan with a one meter grid... Its area would grow enormously.
One of those questions a kid can wonder about that gets quite involved and requires standards be set.
_________
Simple Summer Pasta and Tomatoes
For many of us this is peak tomato season. In late August years ago I had a very simple tomato and pasta dish. The tomatoes were in chucks and not really cooked. It would only work if they were perfect so I gave it a try. Here is about what I did. This would be enough for two hungry people or four people if served as a side course. It's more of a narration than a conventional recipe.
Two really amazingly blimpishly ripe tomatoes that are going to have great flavor. If you can, go with heirloom tomatoes as the new ones have so much goodness bred out of them. My guess is I had maybe about one and a half pounds of tomato. Chop these into half inch pieces and scape them into a bowl making sure to recover some of the juice left on the cutting board.
Pour to glugs of a good extra virgin olive oil over the tomatoes. Sprinkle on a good finishing salt (Malden is great) and freshly ground pepper before gently stirring to mix. Set the bowl aside.
Start some water boiling for the pasta and throw some salt in. Cheap salt of course
Now chop a strong red onion into slivers. Maybe about a quarter cup
Chop a handful of good arugula
Cook about a half pound of pasta (I like a quality thick spaghetti for this, but pick your favorite) and try to stay away from the marinating tomatoes
Layer the onions on top of the tomatoes and then make a layer of arugula choppings
Dump the cooked pasta onto the layered mixture in the bowl and give it two or three minutes to heat up a bit. To deal with the frustration grate some parmesan for a topping. (I prefer it cheeseless, but most people probably want it). The heat from the pasta is slightly cooking the ingredients beneath, just barely, but perfectly enough.
Gently mix and serve.
Comments