Thus it was written in the epistle of Wirt Atmar,
>
> I think we need to enroll a sizeable portion of this group in a basic
> navigation & cartography class :-).

I'll sign up :-).  I've wanted to study cartography for a long time.  As far as
the previous discussion goes, it reminds me of the old joke about the chopper
pilot who got lost in the fog up in the Seattle area, asked a person in a
building which appeared out of the fog "where am I?" and upon receiving the
answer "in a helicopter" could know the exact bearing to SeaTac.  The reason
being that the answer was exactly correct and of no use whatsoever and thus
allegedly from Micro$oft customer support.

The question was:

What states are the farthest North, South, East, and West in the United States?

East is a fundemental direction of this world.  It has to do with which
direction the sun is upon coming up in the morning.  Defining "farthest east"
as the first thing on the other side of the 180th degree line from here allows
people who accept that definition to laugh at people who don't* (much like the
portion of the population who was so busy being right about the real start of
the millenium that they missed the excitement last January--and no, that
doesn't include you Stan, as you said you were going to celebrate twice :-).

Go to Attu island sometime.  Get to know the natives.  Ask them which direction
Unimak is from there.  Watch which direction they point.  East.  Go to Unimak.
Ask the folks there which direciton Sand Point is.  East.  Continue this
process until you fall into the Atlantic.  Have a good swim.  Go home and
write your memoirs.

Ted

* An interesting article can be found at
    http://www.judaicseminar.org/halakhot/Dateline.htm
--
Ted Ashton ([log in to unmask]), Info Sys, Southern Adventist University
          ==========================================================
As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain;
and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
                                        -- Einstein, Albert (1879-1955)
          ==========================================================
         Deep thoughts to be found at http://www.southern.edu/~ashted