Comparing Alaska, Australia and the Continental USA

What triggered this story for me was the fact that I am currently playing in an online game with people that reside in these geographical locations and I happen to live in Canada. I certainly did not know that much about the relative geographical numbers but was equally amazed that neither did the other players in our “family”. So, as per usual, I start to google like crazy and get the research going on these because it peaks my curiosity and I always learn some really interesting “water cooler” conversation.

The continental USA is sometimes referred to as the lower 48 and thus does not include Alaska and Hawaii in that grouping. Turns out that Australia will just fit inside that region if you could actually do that. Alaska is roughly 1/5^th the size of either of those land masses (which totally surprised me, I thought it was smaller).  And Alaska actually has a larger coastline than the entire lower 48. Canada is about 25% larger than Australia or the lower 48. Populations (2013) are .735M (Alaska), 315 M (lower 48), 23M (Australia) and 35M (Canada). Try comparing Great Britain in size to the lower 48 if you want a big surprise.

And we were sharing current weather forecasts for the day in each of our countries. One of the other players lives in Alabama, one in Alaska, one in New South Wales, Australia and me in Ontario, Canada. It happens to be early in October and 81, 40, 81, and 63 are going to be the highs for the next day, Monday. It is of course early fall for the three North American locations and early spring for the Australian location. And each country has the pattern of 4 seasons but they are less extreme in Alabama and NSW but these two have much hotter summers, for example.

But what is more important in all of this, is our passion for having fun in our new “family” and even if we could hear all the different accents and fully understand the cultural differences, none of this really mattered much, other than having fun. The Internet is bringing people all over the world much closer to each other and if we focused more on having fun with each other than slamming all of our differences in tabloid and paparazzi or shock value photos, well the world would indeed be a better place. It is very hard to battle with people you really like. Eventually, you become even closer friends as one pair of folks has done so in the “game” after one was pummelling the other constantly.

I actually had a tough time finding the right spelling for paparazzi. Even googling “assholes who take pictures of celebrities in private conditions” didn’t work but I guess google just does not like to deal with brutal honesty.

I just call them as I see them and would like to take pictures of them and post them to tabloid media just to show them what it is like. I guess you can’t see much when your head is stuck inside where the son doesn’t shine. 

I think the laws need to change there much like threatening someone with a loaded gun since they both do a lot of damage if uncontrolled in the hands of a dumbazz. The camera or gun is not capable of harm until that character puts his/her hands on it, so camera or gun control is not the answer but dumbazzes in government don’t get it.

Apparently, they have the same viewing point as the paparazzi and must not have any sense of smell either.

Anyone for Dumbazz Control?? Not likely to happen because that is called self-control and the paparazzi and government seem to think they are beyond that.