Tag: world

The ends of the road

The ends of the road

Here is a nice idea with a good execution:

A village at the end of the road, near Sund, Norway

I spent some time recently in Google Maps, finding the edges of their Street View image coverage. I’ve always been drawn to the end of the road, to the edges of where one might be allowed to travel, whether blocked by geographic features, international borders, or simply the lack of any further road.

Via kottke.

Friendship of nations through notable statues

This heavily edited image found its way into my Facebook stream (sorry, don’t know who’s the author of the image):

friendship of nations

 

These are, of course, three iconic statues photoshopped together (left to right): The Motherland Calls, Christ the Redeemer, and the Statue of Liberty.  Each one has interesting stories and unique value to the nation of its people.

My interest was more in the relative sizes of one to another.  On the edited images, all three appear somewhat the same.  But is it true in real life?  Wikipedia (links above) shows that they are not.

  • The Motherland Calls was the tallest statue at the time of construction, in 1967.  It measures 87 meters from the tip of the sword to the base of the platform on which it stands.
  • The Statue of Liberty was constructed in 1886 and measures 46 meters.  It does appear much higher, because of the pedestal on which it stands.  With the one it goes as high as 93 meters.
  • Christ the Redeemer was built in 1931 and is only 30 meters tall.  Together with the pedestal it’s 38 meters high.

There is another metric that escaped the generalization – The Motherland Calls’ sword is 33 meters long.  Look at the numbers above.  It’s actually longer than the whole statue of Christ the Redeemer (without the pedestal).  Wow!  That’s a lot of scaling for the image of friendship.

While reading up on these statues, I found another image, which actually puts them together on a scale.

Height comparison of notable statues

 

Oops!  So much for the friendship of nations.  There’s a the Spring Temple Buddha, built in 2002, rising up 128 meters.  I guess nobody wants to be friends with him.  Or any of those smaller statues to the right of Jesus the Redeemer.