{Quick lunchtime copy/paste from an email – be back later}

This thread is about 2 topics seen in other threads yesterday.

In one dsharrow was answering questions about Alaskan time zones. While in yet another thread dsharrow and Morgan were exchanging comments about how far south Morgan lives

Don’t mean to pick on you, dsharrow, but you are MUCH further north than Morgan is south!   I couldn’t help laughing that most of Morgan’s nearest southern neighbors are probably whales and penguins but Antarctica is a long way south from her.  Also, given Alaska’s population density your neighbors to the north would probably be mostly polar bears, moose and caribou with a light sprinkling of people among the wildlife.

It also struck me as funny that she alluded to “being in your future” when parts of Alaska actually DO share a longitude marker with New Zealand (NZ).  Anyway, I thought these posts about north and south extremes were so interesting I did a little research last night and came back with a data table for anyone else who might be interested…  

NZ actually lies on the same longitude as the westernmost Aleutian Island in Alaska.  So western Alaska should be in the same time zone as NZ, however, the US lobbied to have all US territories kept in the same date zone.  Thus, several strange doglegs deviate from latitude 180 which (usually) marks the international dateline.  Alaska’s very large deviation for The Aleutians is just the most northern one.  

Also note that the most northern and southern latitudes for NZ would be approximately equivalent to from Los Angeles to Portland.  NZ latitudes do not go anywhere near as far south as Alaska goes north.  If a globe will help anyone put these data points in perspective (or if you want to check my accuracy) the website I used to get latitudes and longitudes is: http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/features/ ... r/map.aspx
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New Zealand, (South Island)
LAT     LONG       LOCATION                      
46S      168E           Invercargill        (most southern point on South Island)                  
42S      172E           Christchurch                      

New Zealand, (North Island)
LAT     LONG       LOCATION                      
41S      175E           Wellington                        
36S      174E           Whangarei         (most northern point on North Island)                

USA (Alaska)
LAT     LONG       LOCATION  
61N      150W          Anchorage         (on southern Alaska coast)
58N      134W          Juneau               (on southern Alaska coast)
53N      173E           Aleutian Islands (westernmost point of USA)

USA (Continental)
LAT     LONG       LOCATION                      
46N      122W          Portland, Oregon
34N       119W         Los Angeles, CA            

45N        69W          Bangor, Maine
35N        77W          Greenville, North Carolina  
           

All data points rounded to nearest whole degree

Hi Barbie-Que!  Are you by any chance related to Steven Kaplan?  Because this is sure like something he'd come up with?  
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:rofl4:
I think I can sum up the comments on North & South and maybe put them in perspective

I live in the one state that is the most northern, eastern and western.  (People in Maine are 'southerners' to us.)
I live in a state that is so large it is the equivalent of 1/3 the land mass of the continental US.  (That also means that if we split in half Texas would be the third largest state in the union .... sorry Keith.)
I can probably ramble on like the travel channel about my state having been born here when it was still a territory.  I have to tell people, when they ask me what state I was born in, that I wasn't!

I never was comparing degrees of lattitude with Morgan.  She simply seemed to be the southernmost person I've seen posting and I the northernmost.  She also lives further south than my brother who lives on NZ's north island.

My wife and I plan on eventually moving to a state, most probably TN, as we are tired of the long winters and want to be closer to relatives.

Ya know I didnt even look at who wrote this thread, I really did just assume it was Kappy It does sound like something he would start huh?