Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Before there was GPS

There was the compass.
  Could actually be quite useful in exploring Boston where the "grid" was laid out by livestock.  Drunken livestock with no sense of direction.

5 comments:

  1. If it's night, steer by the stars. If it's day, steer by the sun.

    OTOH, yer not gonna go anywhere while that U lock is in place!

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  2. I have one too!! but for tokyo, where no one ever considered a grid, they were just trying to create a labyrinth to confuse the ninja. I always know which way is north, but that doesn't actually mean I know where I am or where I am going.

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  3. "Could actually be quite useful in exploring Boston where the "grid" was laid out by livestock. Drunken livestock with no sense of direction."

    ... and was then dug up and redrawn by senators in between three martini lunches.

    dokinchan -- the addressing schemes of Japan were confounding for us as well. It's as if entire cities were designed by roulette wheel.

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  4. Boston's street network was laid out logically to the original shorelines, hills, and direct paths to the water. As the hills were flattened and land made through filling the shoreline, what logic there was to the street layout became less and less perceptible. All the streets which once jogged the shoreline or hillside don't make much sense once that shoreline or hillside no longer exist!

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  5. I recently discovered the wonder of cities laid out on a grid...awesome, ours was laid out by pure chance... or the continental congress not sure which!

    About to discover the joys of Boston, will a compass really help?

    Aaron

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