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0 pointstodsul13y ago0 comments

Hey mseebach,

We had a few issues in the beginning defining these border countries and decided to allow Istanbul as Europe, but will definitely group it for Asia in future.

We had a handful of difficult decisions, but luckily the winning entry visited all continents without contention.

Guam was the tough one for us. Would you say Oceania?

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6 comments · 2 top-level

mseebach13y ago· 4 in thread

For the winning intinerary, it's a moot point as both Europe and Asia are represented at different stops.

Istanbul Atatürk (TAV) airport is Europe, Sabiha Gökçen (SAW) is in Asia. The border is the straight of Bosporus.

Continents are a rather vague concept[1]. Any definition is going to be arbitrary. For the purposes of your contest, I think the spirit would be to have gone to the continents "proper", i.e. I wouldn't count Guam at all, but say the continents are the mainlands of: NA, SA, Africa, Europe, Asia, Australia, Antarctica. I'd be inclined to allow New Zealand as part of Australia as the only exception.

1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uBcq1x7P34

Someone13y ago

As a bonus, that would make the Brits very happy :-)

Other notable exceptions I can think of are Indonesia, Vancouver island and Manhattan.

I think you should extend each land mass to wherever the sea floor reaches a given depth (100 meters or so?), and then do a transitive closure on those to get continent boundaries.

plasticgun13y ago

> I'd be inclined to allow New Zealand as part of Australia as the only exception.

Sure - why not, there's only a sea between us that you can fit an area the size of California to Nebraska into ... pretty close really.

mseebach13y ago

Allow it as part of the australian continent, despite the water. The alternative is to not recognize it as part of any continent. Just like how California and Nebraska are part of the same continent despite, what, three deserts and two mountain ranges between them.

Did I mention that any definition of continents is arbitrary?

mason5513y ago

Are you saying NZ is its own continent? Or that the continent should be referred to as Oceania?

taligent13y ago

Guam is technically part of Oceania.

Although it isn't really part of the "region" as such.

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