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Western Russia IS part of Europe. And it's not a small part, either. I don't think Hitler's forces ever made it to Asia, but they still conquered millions of square miles of Russia before retreating.

No flat map of the world is more or less accurate than any other.

No flat map of the world is perfectly accurate. But some are more accurate than others.

All of them are wrong.

Just because all are wrong doesn't mean that some aren't more wrong than others. There's a great Isaac Asimov essay on that subject: http://chem.tufts.edu/answersi...

And the north hemisphere is distorted in exactly the same way that the south hemisphere is.

Even there, you're mostly wrong. Grab your dictionary and take a look at the Mercator maps (here, for example, or here): they very rarely have the equator in the middle. The reason they don't is that if the map goes all the way north to show Alaska and Scandanavia, then if they want equally far south, Antarctica becomes absolutely huge on the map.

If you look at this, you can see how the less populous states still have a block large enough to count in an election, if they vote together.

Another person who thinks money goes to bank vaults to breed.

First here is how saving works in a modern economy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Impact of savings on economic growth
http://finance.mapsofworld.com...

You'd be dead right.... if it weren't "opt-in" - You agree to the ToS when you buy the game. No different to getting a drivers licence - When you get one you're suddenly liable for a lot more than you would otherwise have been. If you don't want to have to follow the road rules then - yup - you don't drive, noone is forcing you to. Noone is forcing you to buy a software product and agree to how you use it.
It's common practice to require a signed agreement in order to receive (usually limited) access to something, be it a game, data used in running a business, or anything.
Every other business gets a legal recourse, but because this is 'just a game' they shouldn't have one?

p.s. (not advocating this at all, but I think it's better than the current system blizzard is using)
( snipped from: http://www.mapsofworld.com/spo... )
Punishment for Athletes in ancient Summer Games
In the ancient Summer Games, there were rules for every game contested for. Those who cheated or violated the rules were disqualified from the contest. Along with the contestant, the trainer and the sponsoring city-state were also fined.

Cheaters could be punished by whipping or levying heavy fines on them. The money from these fines was used to construct bronze statues of Zeus. These statues were placed along the tunnel that leads to the stadium. Each statue's inscription told the cautionary tale of the offense. The athletes walked past these statues as a reminder of the importance of obeying the rules.

Right, you'd almost think from the media coverage that Colorado didn't have air taxi service, or helicopter rental generally.

Strange as it may sound, Utah is not in Colorado. It is it's very own state, and has been since 1896. Here is a link to a map of the US, showing all of the states.

And yes, Park City and Sundance have also always been located in Utah, since 1884 and 1969, respectively.

Norway is hardly a socialist hellhole. Matter of fact, it has the highest standard of living in the world, with the USA in fourth.

Everyone treats "socialism" like it's the N word. Socialism is not inherently a bad thing, but like everything else, too much leads to problems.

New Zealand, which has been used in the past by the National Aeronautical and Space Administration, is considered a prime location because rockets launched from that deep in the Southern hemisphere can reach a wide range of Earth orbits

OK New Zealand is 35 to 45 degrees south of the equator, while the USA (contiguous states) range from 25 to 47 degrees north.

Equitorial orbits are certainly best attained from launching near the equator. I'm not sure but I think that even non-equatorial orbits are best attained from a near equator launch to take advantage of the earth's rotational velocity then change the orbital plane. Even if some orbits are easier to attain when launched away from the equator, don't non-equitorial orbits swing as far North and as far South, meaning that New Zealand has no advantage over the USA?

Altogether it loooks like New Zealand is a particularly bad place to launch from, easily bettered by the southern USA or Northern Australia

New Zealand, which has been used in the past by the National Aeronautical and Space Administration, is considered a prime location because rockets launched from that deep in the Southern hemisphere can reach a wide range of Earth orbits

OK New Zealand is 35 to 45 degrees south of the equator, while the USA (contiguous states) range from 25 to 47 degrees north.

Equitorial orbits are certainly best attained from launching near the equator. I'm not sure but I think that even non-equatorial orbits are best attained from a near equator launch to take advantage of the earth's rotational velocity then change the orbital plane. Even if some orbits are easier to attain when launched away from the equator, don't non-equitorial orbits swing as far North and as far South, meaning that New Zealand has no advantage over the USA?

Altogether it loooks like New Zealand is a particularly bad place to launch from, easily bettered by the southern USA or Northern Australia

here's a top ten list of countries to avoid http://www.mapsofworld.com/wor... (USA is not on it)

I hope you're trying to take the piss...I really do.

You do realise that the international dateline (aka. the anti-meridian) is on the opposite side of the word from Greenwich, aka. the prime meridian? Having the international dateline as the prime meridian would result in the international dateline running through...Greenwich, which would then result in strip running through Europe where countries were a day apart. Route it around the west of the British isles and then you result in everything west of the Atlantic coast being a day apart, so Europe and the Americas would be even further apart, time-wise, as opposed to America and Russia/Asia being a day apart as things stand. Might look like it makes sense given the US-centric maps presumably in use over there (i.e. http://gabelli-us.com/WORLD%20...), but there ones centred on the primary landmass makes far more sense to me as it doesn't have to split any land masses: http://www.mapsofworld.com/ima..., which is also one of the reasons why the prime meridian is exactly where it is.

Why, I don't even see Russia on that list.

China has given up on even trying to be agriculturally self-sufficient. They've more than doubled the amount of food they import from the US since 2008.

Meanwhile, we are far and away the world's biggest exporter of food. There's also the little matter of the massive scientific contributions we've made to agricultural output worldwide. Norman Borlaug alone saved over a billion lives with his work. You may want to deny this fact, but India doesn't, which is why they awarded him the Padma Vibhushan in 2006.

Without them, our toys are more expensive.

Without us, they starve to death by the millions.

And you know it.

Now, boy, what was that you were saying about dream worlds?

Most GM farmers know their yields are barely if at all higher than with common prime seeds, it's just the cost of pesticides that gets exchanged for the dearer GM seeds.

Please remember one of the largest (in monetary value) exporters of agricultural produce is The Netherlands, a tiny country compared to the next one up, the USofA.
http://www.mapsofworld.com/world-top-ten/world-top-ten-agricultural-exporters-map.html

All it takes to increase agricultural output is a slight hike in prices and the will to farm instead of leaving land fallow 'for nature', just look at the expanses of hardly farmed land in the eastern EU and you know it.

This is all very interesting if you are Japanese, I suppose, but on a global scale, who cares?

Anyone who sees that Japan has a population of 127 million, a median income that affords most Japanese to buy entertainment electronics?
It's a very attractive market, which is one of the reasons why a majority of the players in the field have Japan as their home base.

http://www.mapsofworld.com/world-top-ten/countries-spending-most-on-console-and-computer-game.html

Sir, you are well named.

My South African friend was sure a particularly evil politician would stay in power in an election we were looking at. He was voted out in a landslide partly because of informed voters. (UN control of voting booths helped a lot too.)

African farmers are increasingly able to make use of modern farming methods. This too is due to the information age. B2B sales of farming equipment and open markets, global competition, and training via the internet have all played their part.

Technology failed to help in the past because it was being wielded by imperialists with agendas. Things in Africa are getting better and will keep getting better.

/.../ Also Africa is about the size of Greenland, as irrefutably proven by this map. /.../

Funky map projection. But that map seem to (roughly) show Scandinavia in the right proportions vis-à-vis Great Britain, the West and Central Europe, and N. Americas. When I try to explain how fucking large my home country (Sweden, the third largest country on the European continent) is compared to the other puny European countries (except Russia and Spain), nobody believes me, because Sweden looks very small in most world map projections.

World maps are all evil, go buy a terrestrial globe.

Wrong side of the continent...

What? Did you think the US was the only thing in the universe with two coasts?

Yeah, but Africa is so small. Only 6 letters. Also Africa is about the size of Greenland, as irrefutably proven by this map. And Greenland has only about 50k people. That's how small Africa is, and so stuff like "which coast" is rather irrelevant.

Let's check the map. Here's an easy one: http://www.mapsofworld.com/images/middle-east-map.jpg
Don't forget Egypt - they are just off the edge there, but certainly a significent player in the politics of the region. So what do we see?

First off, you see Saudi Arabia. It's huge. It's massive. It dominates the map. Ok, it's largely desert, but it's still a bloody big country by middle-eastern standards. If you want to talk human rights issues, Saudi Arabia is the very definition of an oppressive islamic theocracy. That's a country where it's not just illegal for a woman to go to school, it's illegal for her to so much as leave her house without permission from the man in charge of her life. A country which, once a year, starts throwing anyone who sells red items in jail - just to make sure that the Christian tradition of valantines day doesn't get imported. Nor is just just religious - they are almost as good at political oppression.
Next up? Iran, second largest. In terms of oppression, they aren't *quite* up there with Saudi Arabia, but the are in the same league. Plus they also have semi-open ambitions of getting nuclear weaponry too, whereas Saudi Arabia is content to fight through the comparatively peaceful means of economics and propaganda.
Third in the importance rankings, and we've got Iraq. You can't really rank them right now, as they are in the process of regaining control of their own country and prior to that were under the total control of one person. It wouldn't be fair to pass judgement. It certainly isn't looking hopeful though, with their new constitution already making it quite clear that women are to be considered one level above property.
We're down to the bit-players now. Syria, Jordan, Yemen, Oman. In human rights terms? Better. But still not good. Gender quality is still a distant prospect, non-Muslims face severe discrimination. The UAE does fair a little better - they actually have achieved a fairly decent standard of gender equality, religious freedom, etc. It didn't come easy, and they really don't have any power in the region beyond the massive economic clout that their oil reserves give.

So inconclusion: There are Good states in the middle east, and there are Bad states... but all the big ones are very, very Bad.

Well, yes they do, though net migration is inward, as in many richer nations.

But the US advertises itself to the whole world as the "other side", while no-one really advertises the same to the US. The US is the place to go if you're poor enough to make a good wage slave or clever enough to make a killing, with a visa lottery system to scoop up the former (you won't find e.g. a British citizen allowed to enter on the lottery scheme).

I hate to do a double post, but I figured I'd explain why I blew you off with a quick (though accurate) response. As soon as you start claiming that Israel is committing genocide, you lose all credibility. The population growth rate of Palestine is 2.2%. The population growth rate of Israel is 1.8%. Furthermore, the growth rate for Israeli Arabs is 2.6%, while the population growth rate for Israeli Jews is 1.7%. Therefore the are two possible conclusions here: either the Israelis are the most incompetent mass-murderers in history, or you're a fucking moron.

Here's some more stats on Palestine for you:

http://www.mapsofworld.com/palestine/information/population.html

and some more:

http://www.fafo.no/pub/rapp/433/index.htm

and yet more:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_economy

There's some really fun bits, like this:

"In the wake of Israel's unilateral disengagement from Gaza, there were shortages of bread and basic supplies due to closure of the al Mentar/Karni border-crossing into Israel. Israel's offer to open other crossings was turned down by the Hamas-run Palestinian authority.[11]"

and this:

"Life expectancy is 73.4, placing the territories 77th in the world, compared with a life expectancy of 72.5 in Jordan, and 71.8 in Turkey.[15]"

Given the 90%+ literacy rate, the higher life expectancy as compared to other Arab neighbors, the millions of cellphones and hundreds of thousands of homes with internet access, and the abundance of vehicles, TV's, and all manner of electronic gizmos, I'm going to have to go with the "you're a fucking moron" conclusion on all aspects of your "argument".

Have materially lower living standards (like Ireland)

Would you mind clarifying exactly what you mean by that comment? According to this, Ireland is in the top ten places in the world in terms of standard of living, and was selected as the happiest place on earth by the Economist Intelligence Unit in 2005.

No. Google it. India is in South Asia:

http://www.mapsofworld.com/south-asia-political-map.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Asia

And "Middle East" is not the same as Central Asia.

Yeah we are terrible. What with being the number one donator of foreign aid in the world.

This has boondoggle written all over it.

Oddly enough, a rail line already exists in tuscon. they just need to cut a link down to that line from Phoenix.

Frankly, I think the better idea is to simply abandon all of those cities. They are completely dependent on resources outside themselves they really don't stand much of a long term chance at their present size. But if that isn't going to happen, then they need to leverage their present infrastructure in such a way that they can get food, clothing, water, and similar goods to these cities in an efficient manner.

Solar power is a good idea, even for trains, but building all new lines is stupid. The future of mass transport is electric trains. Getting them across the desert will be a challenge, but not impossible.

RS

Remember e.g. that the USSR stood for Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

Also remember that Congo is the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Cuba is the Democratic Republic of Cuba.

Just because (or perhaps especially because) a government says it's something, doesn't mean that it is.

Oh, and you might be interested to to know that Seven of the top 10 countries with the highest standard of living are socialist.

In -37 C, you just don't go outside much.

That's what I think of -5C! (People from Canada/USA/Scandinavia/Eastern Europe just laugh. They laughed at all the English people making a big deal out of "not much" snow, too.)

It does tend to be damp and cold though, which is less pleasant than dry and cold.

I had never studied London's climate (nor have I had the opportunity to visit, unfortunately), but that does seem mild. Even though we've had -15 F here in the winter, NY summer days can hit 90-100 F (32-37 C) with ease. A bit more extreme than your spot, I guess.

Ocean currents bring water from the tropics (Gulf of Mexico) to western Europe. That warms western Europe in the winter, and cools it in the summer. The same happens (to a lesser extent) around Vancouver.
It's predicted that if the Earth warms too much, this current will move, and the warm water will go to Greenland instead of Europe (so Europe will freeze, but it won't matter because the land will flood anyway because of Greenland's ice melting).

Here's a map of average January temperatures, you can see western Europe is warm for its latitude: http://www.mapsofworld.com/world-maps/currents-and-temperature-jan-enlarge-map.html

"War is all about over crowding and mal distribution of wealth. It will be with us for a while."

War is simply a way to violently impose the will of one government/nation upon another. Or the extension of diplomacy as Machiavelli wrote.

I do not agree that mal distribution of wealth is one of the main reasons for war. At least I haven't heard of many poor countries attacking richer countries to rob their wealth in recent times.

I also fail to see the link to over crowding (although not to fast population growth). If over crowding was really an issue you would expect countries like the Netherlands and Japan to be extremely aggressive (see link). In fact most conflicts are happening between countries that are not densely populated.

http://www.mapsofworld.com/world-population-density.htm

Historically major conflicts have arisen when a new regional or global power arises. At present the West is losing power while assertive powers like China, India, and various Islamic countries are rapidly gaining power. This is a recipe for conflict.

"Robo cars have great potential for us but limiting war is not part of the deal. As a matter of fact robo cars and robo weapons will make war far easier for the wealthier nations. No wounded troops to upset our side pacifies the public."

I agree, that assertion is simply naive. Alfred Nobel (inventor of dynamite) once stated: "My factories may make an end of war sooner than your congresses. The day when two army corps can annihilate each other in one second, all civilized nations, it is to be hoped, will recoil from war and discharge their troops."

1) RADAR can see more than 100 yards. Several miles, actually, in the flat and almost baren plains where you are likely to encounter herds of large animals. This, plus the other sensor technologies used, means you would have little trouble avoiding them.

Maintaining a fence along the tracks is pretty trivial compared to maintaining the track itself. How much does a 4' high chain-link fence cost? Nothing compared to the rest of the system.

What about the existing rail systems that stretch across the country? It's not like this country isn't already wrapped in steel ribbon. In fact, unlike most of the metro rails on the coasts, most of the trans-continental rails can likely be upgraded, being mostly straight and in the middle of nowhere. That also solves your land acquisition problem.

2) What do you think they do now? They bus/taxi/drive their car to a local airport, take a plane to a major airport, then to their destination city (or nearest major airport and another connecting flight) then taxi/bus/rental car to their ultimate destination. The idea is to eliminate plane rides, not have a train stop in every neighborhood in the country.

You would also have multiple lines servicing different areas, much like you currently have multiple hops on some flights even within the country. For example, one line running up the eastern coast, one up the western coast, and one, maybe two running between them. Traditional rail systems can fill in the gaps between outlaying cities and central hubs. There's plenty of them.

3) Well apparently they had no trouble in Europe making said overpasses. 3.5 to 4% slopes too, which is better than most slower trains. Work out the physics, you say? For what? How steep an incline it can have before it jumps the tracks? 4% (0.5 inches per foot) isn't gonna do shit.

Let's use a 2% slope. Let's say to need 20 feet elevation difference to safely pass. 20 feet divided by 0.02 = 1000 feet. Up and down for 2000 feet of ramp which is a little over 1/3rd of a mile. Whoopty do.

Traveling at 300MPH (440 feet/sec) you'll cover that 1000 feet in 2.27 seconds. 2.27 seconds to travel up 20 feet gives 8.8 feet per second vertical velocity (up AND down on either side). Acceleration due to gravity is 32 feet/sec^2 - four times what the profile of the ramp physically allows - so the train isn't going to leave the tracks. For reference, that's about as fast as a passenger elevator in a ten story building. Give the overpass some nice transitions, make it a half-mile total length, and it'll be barely noticeable.

There. Physics done.
=Smidge=

I really should have used this map

>>> Are users really that dumb?

Yes, and in this order






Think about it.

Consider over farming. Using artificial means to contunire growing food
on land that SHOULD have been allowed to lay fallow for many years.

Well, I don't know about that, but I do know the position the Netherlands holds in this list is pretty much due to a much higher productivity in agriculture being possible then is achieved almost anywhere else in the world. (Note that this productivity is achieved on a small part of a tiny and quite densely populated country, and by approx 60000 people (4% of the population of that country)).

In other words, a very dramatic increase of productivity is quite possible in agriculture, and happens where there is a real need or motive for it. I somehow doubt also that this is the end of such development.

Could you please tell me what good Sweden is doing? AFAIK if Sweden was a state in USA it would be the poorest. Also please do a comparison of the wages between [whatever you call your black population today] and the Swedes. You will be surprised.

Sweden may be doing well compared to even more socialist countries but not compared to USA or Hong Kong.

Can I have some from whatever you are smoking?

Just some assorted sources, google has many more.

http://www.mapsofworld.com/world-top-ten/world-top -ten-quality-of-life-map.html
http://quinnell.us/politics/kangas/standardliving. html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_of_living_in _the_United_States

"Well, that's great and all, but please check your geography. Mesoamerican is not the same as North-American."

Check your geography indeed. Mesoamerican is the "same as" North American as French is the "same as" European. It is a subset relationship: Mesoamerica is merely the southern part of the continent of North America. Everything Mesoamerican is North American, but not everything North American is Mesoamerican. Never press the geography nazi.

Unthinking nationalism is another way in which the U.S. controls it's citizens. Americans need to really think about by what measures the U.S. is "the best we have come up with as a species thus far". For most of those measures you'll find other countries ahead of you. The Japanese are healthier, the French get more action, the Venezualans are prettier, Denmark is happier, Luxembourg is richer, Finland is clearner, Canada is more libertarian, more educated and has a higher quality of life, China has more people, Russia is bigger, and Kuwait is safer.

The U.S. does have the largest christian population, one of the highest teenage pregnancy rates, one of the highest divorce rates, one of the highest prison population rates, but that's nothing to be proud of.

Yes ( http://www.mapsofworld.com/world-top-ten/world-top -ten-military-spending-countries-map.html ) but, on the other hand, they spend about as much every year as the U.S. spends in 5 weeks. This works out to about half the per-capita military expenditures; $1000 / person / year in the U.S. versus $500 / person / year in France.

(1) "The 24-page bill is a far-reaching medley of different proposals cobbled together. One would, for instance, create a new federal crime of just trying to commit copyright infringement. Such willful attempts at piracy, even if they fail, could be punished by up to 10 years in prison."

(2) "Jessica Litman, who teaches copyright law at Wayne State University, views the DMCA expansion as more than just a minor change. "If Sony had decided to stand on its rights and either McAfee or Norton Antivirus had tried to remove the rootkit from my hard drive, we'd all be violating this expanded definition," Litman said."

(3) "copyright holders can impound "records documenting the manufacture, sale or receipt of items involved in" infringements"

(4) "boosts criminal penalties for copyright infringement originally created by the No Electronic Theft Act of 1997 from five years to 10 years (and 10 years to 20 years for subsequent offenses). The NET Act targets noncommercial piracy including posting copyrighted photos, videos or news articles on a Web site if the value exceeds $1,000"

Well ... this starts to look like the laws in good old England last century. Where paupers could be sentenced to things like banishment to the Colonies (or an extensive jail time) for something like stealing an apple.

ad (1) It does seem a bit over the top punishment-wise.

ad (2) Just what we need! Congress has surely got its ear to the ground on this one.

ad (3) Makes sense ... just think of all those weblogs that ISP's are so loath to give up. Grabbing the weblogs and suing people wholesale on basis of it may yet become an important source of revenue for copyright holders.

ad (4) What are the going rates for manslaughter? And for aggravated assault? And for murder? Repeated copyright violation in excess of 1000$ is apparently the moral equivalent of murder and is rated higher than manslaughter or aggravated assault. Interesting point of view. First the War on Drugs and now this. We're going from strength to strength.

Watch the good old US of A wage War on Crime. Copyright violations are so bad for society that they merit firm jail sentences. Bad news perhaps for teenagers who use p2p software, but the good news is that this might be just what's needed to secure our lead in people jailed per 1000 (see http://www.mapsofworld.com/world-top-ten/countries -by-highest-prison-population-rates.html) which is now only threatened by Russia and a few banana republics. We lead the world inthis area (except perhaps for countries that don't release statistics such as North Korea).

Just a thought ... those jails we have are awfully expensive per inmate. Wouldn't it be an idea to give offenders a choice: jail time or a tour of service in Afghanistan or Iraq? To err ... atone for their misdemeanour? Just a thought.

There are roughly298,488,666 people in the U.S.A. with 574/1000 people having a P.C. so thats around ( 298,488,666 * .57) 170138540 P.C.'s.

At $25/10,000, that's $425,346.35 to own all the P.C.'s in the U.S.A.. Anyone want to pitch in?

(Yes, there were a lot of assumptions made. So many, I will
not list them)

I found some data which compared Japan, Europe, and the US in patents.

The USPTO issues 53% of patents to Americans, 20% to japanese, and 17% to Europena.s

The European PTO issues 25% of patents to Americans, 19% to Japanese, and 53% to Europeans.

The Japanese PTO issues 5% of patents to Americans, 90% to Japanese, and 4% to Europeans.

So yeah, that's not much of an indicator.

Regarding patents granted per capita worldwide, Japan and South Korea are way ahead, followed by the US, Sweden, Germany, and France.

Still, as you look at your screen, keep in mind that Ethernet was developed in the U.S., the commercial Internet as we know it was developed mainly in the US (with US routers from Cisco), and your CPU was developed (mainly) in the US. My OS was developed mainly in the US, but I'm sure many others have an OS developed by a guy who lived overseas, but for some crazy reason decided to move to the US...

What about decoding the human genome (mostly done in the US)? GPS (first done by US)? Space Shuttle (first done by US)?

I am trying hard to think of an interesting recent technology not mainly developed in the US...can you think of one? Perhaps animal cloning, but that has been rapidly commercialized in the US.

We will have to keep this in mind the next time we are asked for help. Since we are no longer trusted in the international community, make sure you reject any Philanthropic efforts by the United States such as:

this
this
this
this
and especially this

Run that last one as a summary of all countries and it is especially telling. I am pretty sick and tired of the hypocrisy, especially in much of Europe, tha berates the United States as xenophobic and untrustworthy yet has no qualms about accepting our assistance (and even asking for more).

If we really should be shunned, then fine. We will stop helping providing assistance to other countries as well. Let's see France, Germany, Russia, or China pony up like the US has. The US already contributes more than all these countries combined. Never happen.

our overcrowded Earth

Right, except that with the majority of our earth at well below 50 people per square kilometer, we're hardly falling over each other.

Over populated might be a better word; sure, we're doing a great job of stripping our earth's resources bare at such a rate you'd think future generations are going to think we thought it was just a funny thing to do.

Sorry, it's just I find any talk of "terraforming" a pathetically distant rock, let alone mars, utterly utterly so beyond stupid it makes me think what you've all been smoking.

If we can't even maintain an environment that was _already set up for us_ what hope in HELL do we have of starting from scratch in any remotely usable form? If it's so goddamn easy to terraform a planet, jesus, why don't we just terraform earth back to how it should be?

Hah.

Forgive me if I don't remember the theorem correctly, but the article links to the to a statement of the theorem that says

"The four color theorem states that every possible geographical map can be colored with at most four colors in such a way that no two adjacent regions receive the same colour. Two regions are called adjacent if they share a border segment, not just a point."

Well if you look at this political map of the United States it seems to me that Wyoming (or one of its surrounding states) would necessitate a fifth color.

So did the computer prove something true that isn't or is the theorem in the link provided simply stated wrong?

...the Bush administration is alienating canada like no other administration in US history..

Oh, I bet Mr. Madison has the first prize in that department. And check out who the VP was :)

Canada is larger than the US, yes, and it is better connected, yes. But most of Canada is empty space and the space taht isn't empty is more densely populated. Take a look at this map Population Density of Canada and then at this map Population Density of the USA Sorry that they are slightly different kinds of maps, but it's pretty easy to see that the majority of Canadians live in two densely populated areas (though they are large areas) and that Americans live in a much higher number of densely populated areas. Because of this it is easier for Canada to be better connected.