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Comment by air7 | Hacker News Reader

I love counter-intuitive facts. They are a helpful reminder that things are more complicated than I think they are, and I don't understand the world as well I think I do.

"Gravity has a very strong effect. So what happens when an ice sheet melts is sea level falls in the vicinity of the melting ice sheet. That is counterintuitive. The question is, how far from the ice sheet do you have to go before the effects of diminished gravity and uplifting crust are small enough that you start to raise sea level? That’s also counterintuitive. It’s 2,000 kilometers away from the ice sheet. "

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Also Simpson's paradox is so counterintutive. [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox#UC_Berkele...

Yes, it sure is, took me a while to get it. I don't have any paradoxes but here are my two favourite surprising facts.

1: NY city on the East coast of N. America lies further west than Santiago the capital of Chile on the West coast of S. America

2: The Atlantic opening of the Panama canal lies further west than the Pacific opening.

One that always surprises me, Edmonton (Canada's most northern city) is about the same latitude as Manchester in the UK.

Or that the most northerly French-speaking town in the world is Dunkirk in France and not somewhere in Quebec.

I did wonder about Belgium but it looks like most of Belgium (and all of the French speaking parts) are further south than Dunkirk.

This is not true. The town of Radisson was built in the 70s during work on the James Bay Project and is still mainly francophone. It's about 2° north of Dunkirk.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radisson,_Quebec

Interesting but I'm not sure I'm buying it ;-) Radisson is a small unconstituted locality so whether it qualifies as a town is questionable. It also has a population small enough to fit in two or three buses.

How about Fermont in Quebec, then? http://www.toponymie.gouv.qc.ca/ct/ToposWeb/fiche.aspx?no_se...

It is predominantly French speaking, is 1° further north than Dunkirk, is incorporated as Ville de Fermont, has a population of about 2400.

It also has a Wikipedia page that claims "Fermont is arguably the world's northernmost Francophone settlement of any considerable size": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermont.

It's much cooler that Dunkirk should hold this distinction, isn't it, so can we agree please that these rather undistinguished places in Canada don't count? Anyway Dunkirk is a proper town/city (91K people, interesting history) not like this awful sounding place where everyone lives in a single building because it's like the moon there or something.

Here's another one: the majority of Canada's population actually lives south of the 49 parallel, which for the most part is the US border.

The reason is most of the population is in Ontario and Quebec, and the majority of that population is south of the 49th. The southernmost part of Canada at Niagara falls is actually at the same latitude as northern California. Which is why it is a big wine growing region.

As a native to the US west coast, I was very surprised to realize that Toronto, Ontario is further south than Portland, Oregon.

I always refer to my Toronto colleagues ( I am in Seattle ) as Southerners...

Distortions of the Mercator Projection...

I'm not sure how that would affect perceptions of relative latitude.

Here’s one of my favorites: What state in the US is closest to Africa?

That's a really good one (I googled the answer), never would have expected it.

Wow so I looked at a map: Portland, Oregon is north of Portland, Maine? Maine?! That is surprising.

And I was the nerd in high school pointing out Rome is north of NYC.

Your recollection is not quite correct here. The border between California and Oregon is at the 42nd parallel, while Niagara falls is at the 43rd. The southernmost part of Canada is Essex County, near Detroit, which does cross the 42nd parallel. The Niagara region is a big wine growing region primarily because of the moderating effect of the Great Lakes on the climate and the shelter provided by the Niagara escarpment.

In general latitude comparisons between Europe and the USA are always surprising to me because of the very different climates. New York is to the south of Marseille for instance. Florida lines up with the southern (disputed) regions of Morocco.

There's also the odd fact that the lands to the east and the west of Greenland aren't ice covered while Greenland is (Google maps satellite view).

Where I grew up in Southern Scotland (some years get no snow) is at the same latitude as places Polar Bears live in Canada.

Some of these mysteries clear up when you understand inland climate vs coastal climate.

The ocean changes temperature very slowly. In summer it's colder than land, and in winter it's warmer. This acts to keep land temperature semi stable over the seasons.

Inland there are no such dampeners. Summers get real hot and winters are very cold.

Which is why Edmonton probably (I haven't checked) has much colder winters than northern Norway.

Also very importantly Europe gets the Gulf stream to keep it mild

I have heard that's a myth, and it's really just that the North Atlantic is big and the prevailing winds go east.

I haven't done the deep research to confirm that, so just take this a me spreading a rumor.

Well that would be a turn up for the books because one of the often mentioned bad consequences of global warming is a loss of the North Atlantic Drift (gulf stream) from Europe and us ending up with a climate similar to what the same latitude of Canada has.

We should rename North-America to North-West-America and South-America to South-East-America.

I opened google maps to check #2 and stared for a while trying to understand what you meant... Then I zoomed out!

A few more:

* The US state closest to Africa is Maine.

* New York City is south of Rome.

* Los Angeles, California is east of Reno, Nevada.

Whoa! That’s cool.

Another one (somewhat more obvious) is that the southernmost point in the USA is on the Big Island of Hawaii.

My favorite example of Simpson's paradox: On average, in the United States, houses without central AC cost more than houses with central AC.

When you break it down by state it turns out this is almost entirely due to lots of expensive houses without central AC in California. In every single state houses with central AC are more expensive than houses without, but California with its high real estate prices and temperate climate skews the national averages.

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