The capitals of the two Congos (Kinshasa and Brazzaville) are separated by the mile-wide Congo river. No fixed crossings - you can take a boat (read about the Customs and bribe procedures: Brazzaville to Kinshasa River Crossing - 7 Easy Steps ) - or you can fly. You’re in the air for less than 10 minutes - but there are only three flights a week. Otherwise - it’s a several-hour flight involving connections in Kenya or Ethiopia.
The Congo River (2,720 miles long) has exactly one bridge capable of carrying vehicles - over 200 miles from the two capitals. There are several (domestic) ferry crossings for vehicles.
If you have time, the podcast is worth a listen, they interview an OED researcher and there’s a pretty cool surprise in the story I don’t want to ruin.
I only lived here all my life, and I didn’t know that. I was so suspicious of this (sorry) that I checked it out using Glasgow and Dundee* as examples (and this web site) and yes, pretty much bang on 180 degrees.
Why 180 degrees when the bodies of water are so close? Is it because the centers of mass (as it were) of the two seas/oceans are distant?
Of course there’s a woman selling fake yellow fever booklets. And I’m willing to bet the staff at the DRC side know this and take a cut of the money to turn a blind eye to it. I somehow managed to make it into the DRC without cheating but I think I must’ve been the exception.
I’ll join in with Dewey_Finn in asking to just spoil the surprise for us. I just now opened the transcript and did a text search for “surprise” and the first hit was this paragraph:
To me, all those "like"s makes even skimming this one paragraph insufferable. I wouldn’t be able to stomach reading the whole transcript for a surprise I’m only mildly interested in discovering.
Listening to someone say that paragraph out loud would be akin to cruel and unusual punishment. Listening to the entire podcast is in the “wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy” camp.
I understand that many people really enjoy podcasts but this one random sampling paragraph (practically my first ever exposure to the actual content of any podcast) makes me wonder how and why. I’ll stick with the professional broadcasters.
EDIT: For the vast majority who won’t read that entire quoted paragraph to the end, it really ramps up the agony at the end:
Michael Crichton, who got an M.D. from Harvard Medical School and wrote hard-SF thrillers like The Andromeda Strain and Jurassic Park, was a serious believer in all kinds of woo and occult stuff and frequently hung out with psychics.
I first learned of the gömböc from a webcomic about a roleplaying game; one of the players had a custom-made d20 in the shape of one, that was guaranteed to always roll a 1.
I’m afraid I have no idea. Tides are weird and the rules seem to be mostly exceptions. While digging around online for information, I found out that
Most of the Gulf Coast of the US and Mexico only gets one (very weak) tide a day, as does the Sea of Okhotsk, parts of Indonesia and part of Western Australia
Tokyo has two tides a day but they have completely different amplitudes, so the second low water is closer to the high water than it is to the first low water
In Madagascar and New Zealand, the tides rotate around the islands
The British Isles don’t work like this - the tides rotate about various points in the Atlantic, North Sea and Norway, but I can’t tell you why they synch up the way they do, or why the North Sea (which is small, shallow and mostly enclosed) has such a strong tidal system while the Mediterranean, the Gulf of Mexico and the Sea of Japan have almost none.
This isn’t something I stumbled across recently, but something in the back of my head that I was reminded of posting in another topic about knife steels.
The general definition that steel is is an alloy of iron requiring the presence of carbon, really hasn’t been true in a while. For example, there are steels such as Nitrobe 77 that have all the impressive qualities of top steels, and also have nearly unparalleled corrosion resistance, that have nearly all the normal carbon replaced by nitrogen, and the created carbides by nitrides.
When I retire I think I’ll enroll in a program to get a PhD in tide behavior. Living on Puget Sound, it really puzzles me. The ability of forecasters to tell me years in advance that 7/2/2043 high tide will be at 4:36 a.m. and exactly 9.35 feet, boggles the mind. The high tide the next morning will be 8.76 feet. The real low tides in the winter seem to be at night, while they are in the afternoon in the summer. Why?
I recently watched a couple of episode of Fantasy Island (hey, they were free). I gave up when an episode featured as a plot point a cave that was flooded by the tide… which only happens once a day. I gave up* on it, because it couldn’t even get that one fact right?
But apparently it can be like that. I wonder if we could identify where Fantasy Island could be.** Has to get only one tide, but high enough to flood a cave that is walkable during most of the time.
*really, it was because it was generally bad. I think most of what Mr. Rourke did was dose people with hallucinogens and guide their hallucinations.
** just kidding, I know its just offshore from Springfield
I’ve heard the exact same quote about Phil Keaggy (not hard to believe…). And at least one other guy, I seem to recall.
Apparently, Mr. Jimi just walked down the street pointing at people: “Better guitarist than I am… better guitarist… better guitarist… better guitarist than I am. Somebody making note of these?”
The first time a million people assembled for one purpose on the continent of Australia was on 9 May 1927 for a royal visit. At the time, the population of Australia was six million.
Also, the Jewish Motorcycle Alliance is a thing. They have a website and seem to have distinctive club colors.
