…or at least a lesson on how to use any of the internet maps.
The Daily Mail has an article up on the arrest of some idiot who seems to have been stalking Sarah Palin. The guy was arrested in Anchorage, Alaska “50 miles from [Palin’s] home town of Wasilla.”
This is the map that accompanies the article:
The reader is invited to check his or her preferred internet source for maps and directions to learn that 50 miles is a reasonable approximation of the distance between Anchorage and Wasilla. You will also learn that on a map of the scale shown above, the distance between the two locations is just about 1/8 of an inch (at least on my monitor.…your mileage may vary).
The best part is that the map does show a scale of what length 200 kilometers is. By that scale, the map shows Anchorage and Wasilla to be about 170 miles apart (a very rough estimate on my part).
Alaska is over twice the size of Texas. 50 miles is next door.