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Major suburban roads in southeastern Pennsylvania (for reasons I don't understand) run more or less at 45 degree angles to the cardinal compass directions, at least true directions. I can't belive that magnetic variation was ever that severe, so there must be another reason for it. I'm sure midwesterers must find it odd...I know Gwennie (from Chicagoland) does. But Gwennie's used to *flat* land too.
In the stairwell of our house are the largest flat walls in the place; I keep them papered with maps, taped together at matching boundaries: areonautical charts and also topographic quadrangles representing a significant chunck of the local area. Standing back a few feet this pattern of roads is very clear.
I remeber the first time I flew an airplane far west enough that everything was laid out along north/south section lines; suddenly all the sketches from the flying textbook that looked like the airplane was flying over flat terrain--crosshatched like a holodeck floor--made sense.
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"Neither can his Mind be thought to be in Tune,whose words do jarre; nor his reason In frame, whose sentence is preposterous..."
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02-25-2002, 11:43 PM
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