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The decision to say Michigan borders Minnesota and Illinois is weird to me. They have borders that are in the water and none on land.
by cowsandmilk 6y ago
The decision to say Michigan borders Minnesota and Illinois is weird to me. They have borders that are in the water and none on land.
- pmiller2 6y agoSo? The political boundaries between the states lie inside Lake Superior and Lake Michigan, respectively.
- willcipriano 6y agoPA is similarly disconnected from NJ via the Delaware river, would you also say they don't border each other? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delaware_River#/media/File:Delaware_river_basin_map.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delaware_River#/media/File:Del...
- cowsandmilk 6y agoLake Superior is the largest freshwater body of water in the world. Claiming there isn’t a material difference between that and the Delaware River is weird. When we are looking at a map of the US, they don’t draw the Delaware River. They do draw the Great Lakes.
- mbeex 6y ago> freshwater body This implies volume. Baikal doubles LS in this respect.
- jrockway 6y agoI think it implies surface area.
- fennecfoxen 6y agoLake Michigan-Huron is hydrologically just one lake and outsizes Lake Superior.
- Retric 6y agoSo in your mind Alaska borders Texas?
- Quai 6y agoYour comment is a good example of a strawman.
- Retric 6y agoNo, it’s a serious question as topologically they do border each other. So, are they arguing being able to sail from A to B is enough or must they be sailing across freshwater etc. Borders do get drawn across bodies of water all the time, but deciding if France and the UK border each other but Spain and Italy don’t is arbitrary.
- function_seven 6y agoIt's not arbitrary. You can get from France to UK without entering international waters, and without crossing waters controlled by another entity. I don't think you can do that with Spain and Italy? To get from one to the other you'd have to go through French or Algerian waters I think. And I might be agreeing with you; not sure here. Conversation went from rivers to lakes to "a coffee cup is the same as a donut" pretty quickly :)
- Retric 6y agoSpain is the closest country to some parts of Italy. So, they limit each others economic exclusion zones. That said it’s close to 400 miles between them across open ocean. Further economic exclusion zones are a fairly recent and thus an arbitrary thing.
- Someone 6y agoMinorca and Sardinia give you a path that avoids other countries’ waters, it seems (https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-Hypothetical-200nm-limit-in-the-Mediterranean-Sea_fig2_259962312 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-Hypothetical-200nm-l...)
- hirsin 6y agoAdding bodies of water (great lakes, gulf, 2 oceans) may help fix the Rhode island issue and this one. Or perhaps make it worse (my expectation is they'd act as anchors of a sort)
- mantap 6y agoWe are talking about a political map. So the essential question is: Are the Great Lakes managed by the federal government or by the states?
- maxerickson 6y agoThe answer to the question is yes.
- coldtea 6y ago>They have borders that are in the water and none on land. So? They still have borders. Borders are a geopolitical construct (that is, decided by treates and politics), not a geographical. They are merely informed/influenced by geography.
- siltpotato 6y agoAh, then the post should have gone farther: every coastal state, including Alaska and Hawaii, should have been bordered by each other.
- coldtea 6y ago> Ah, then the post should have gone farther: every coastal state, including Alaska and Hawaii, should have been bordered by each other. That's not how geopolitical borders work. A country's segments (e.g. states) could have borders between them, but that doesn't mean that each has border with each other. They just all belong to the same entity (e.g. here, the US). (And state borders != country borders).
- alisonkisk 6y agoWhat does that mean? What is the difference between "borders" and "border"?
- SAI_Peregrinus 6y agoSufficiently far out from land (IIRC 10 miles) the ocean becomes "international waters", and no country legally controls it. There's a border between the territorial waters of a given country and these international waters along the coast. There's also noun/verb confusion. A state has borders (noun). A state can border another (verb). State A has a border, state B has a border, and A borders B. California has a border with International Waters. Hawaii is directly surrounded by International Waters. California does not border Hawaii, though both have borders and border International Waters.
- coldtea 6y ago
- zeckalpha 6y agoMany states have borders in the middle of a river. Just pretend the lakes are wide rivers, topologically.
- OskarS 6y agoWhat about California and Hawaii or Alaska then? Where do you draw the line?
- greggyb 6y agoInternational borders? There is not-US between each of Hawaii and Alaska and any other part of the country. There is no not-US between Michigan and Minnesota.
- macintux 6y ago> There is not-US between each of Hawaii and Alaska and any other part of the country. What's the not-US between Hawaii and California? Update: oops, I get it. The ocean itself. Never mind, move along, nothing to see here.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- raldi 6y agoState territories, which include the waters of the Great Lakes but not the entirety of the Pacific Ocean
- Lammy 6y agoI would draw the line when I could stand on one shore and not visually see the other side.