Driving on I-29 between Kansas City and Fargo ND over the weekend, I saw a road sign in either southern ND or northern SD that said simply “Continental Divide”. Which made no sense to me… we were a long way from the Rockies.
Apparently the sign marks the Laurentian Divide, which separates the watersheds of the Atlantic Ocean and Hudson Bay. According to Wikipedia, “the divide traverses very flat terrain, especially in North Dakota, causing many travelers to believe the sign marking the divide is a joke.”
Well do I recall doing the same thing in Wyoming once, and I was excited to go over some big mountain pass, since I’d crossed before in Colorado. Big letdown. This is what the divide looked like: windswept flatness and scrub.
Jacob Steinmetz has been drafted by the Arizona Diamondbacks. (In the third round, at number 77 overall.) He is said to be the first Orthodox Jewish player ever drafted.
“Crossing the great dividing range” was historically a big deal hear in Australia, like crossing the the Rockies in the USA. Until I took a road trip to Sydney, that seemed kind of strange to me. Because on the inland side of Melbourne, the “Great Dividing Range” is some rising ground with hills.
Although not flat like Wyoming, you know you are ‘crossing the range’ at the watershed divide only because a sign tells you so.
The United States Department of Defense is one of the largest single consumers of energy in the world, responsible for 93% of all US government fuel consumption in 2007 (Air Force: 52%; Navy: 33%; Army: 7%. Other DoD: 1%).[1] In FY 2006, the DoD used almost 30,000 gigawatt hours (GWH) of electricity, at a cost of almost $2.2 billion. The DoD’s electricity use would supply enough electricity to power more than 2.3 million average American homes. In electricity consumption, if it were a country, the DoD would rank 58th in the world, using slightly less than Denmark and slightly more than Syria (CIA World Factbook, 2006).[1] The Department of Defense uses 4,600,000,000 US gallons (1.7×1010 L) of fuel annually, an average of 12,600,000 US gallons (48,000,000 L) of fuel per day. A large Army division may use about 6,000 US gallons (23,000 L) per day. According to the 2005 CIA World Factbook, if it were a country, the DoD would rank 34th in the world in average daily oil use, coming in just behind Iraq and just ahead of Sweden.[1]
If the DoD was a U.S. state it would rank 36th out of 51, based on 2006 numbers. 30,000 GWH is more than Nevada’s 2006 electricity sales (consumption; 27,276 GWH), but less than Connecticut’s (31,677 GWH).
Does this strike anyone as an incredibly convoluted way of conveying information? Seems to me that if they gave each lamppost a designation in the form of an (approximate) address, you would know exactly where you were. For example, if a lampost read “109 W. 78th street” you would know you’re standing at the latitude of W. 78th street and a little bit west of Sixth Avenue.–no need for this arcane system of decoding required at all.
I’ve never been in the habit of looking for deep meaning - or indeed any meaning, really - in Abba songs. So it came as a shock to me that a line that I always took as pretty meaningless actually has a very specific meaning. From Super Trouper:
Super Trouper beams are gonna blind me
But I won’t feel blue
Like I always do
'Cause somewhere in the crowd there’s you…
Well, here’s the piece of information I had been missing:
Who knew?
(If you did know, there’s no need to answer that, thanks. BTW, the only reason I know is that cycling commentator Carlton Kirby used the phrase and explained that it was “a theatrical light”.)
I’ve lived in places where the utility poles and streetlight poles are numbered, so if I needed to report a non-working streetlight, I just had to provide the number. Seems simpler.
I used Super Troupers in high school, in Band Lighting Crew. The very bright light comes from an electric arc between a pair of copper-coated carbon electrodes, each about the size of a pencil. The arc, with a chimney above it, sits in front of a curved mirror, and the light is focused by a series of lenses. The whole thing is about 6 feet long.
