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Historical precedent and agreement make the choice no less arbitrary - 0 degrees could have been anywhere, there is no technical reason that Greenwich was chose
by Aloha 13y ago
Historical precedent and agreement make the choice no less arbitrary - 0 degrees could have been anywhere, there is no technical reason that Greenwich was chosen.
- joezydeco 13y agoIt says so right in the article. Choosing Greenwich as 0-longitude meant that the International Date Line would be located in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, avoiding a situation where it could be two dates in the same country simultaneously.
- Aloha 13y agoHave you looked at the map for the IDL? http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/61/International_Date_Line.png http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/61/Internati... That not jiggered by politics at all.
- joezydeco 13y agoI thought we were talking about the "arbitrary" choice of Longitude 0. What's the political (and not economic) basis for the later IDL modifications?
- Aloha 13y agoThat fails to make the first choice any less arbitrary - the choice was made to line up with existing sea charts - which of course used the Greenwich as 0 - but Greenwich as 0 was an arbitrary choice in the first place - not all arbitrary choices are bad ones, that was the crux of my argument in the first place.