Great Circle Mapper - cool site

Excerpts from Patrick Smith's "Ask the Pilot" column -

===========================


My new favorite Web site is the Great Circle Mapper
(http://gc.kls2.com). I've yet to find a source that more adroitly
illustrates the shortcomings and fallacies of the average wall map or
atlas. Never again will I sigh and stammer when presented with the
question, "Why does my flight from Chicago to Hong Kong fly over
Siberia?" Go to the Paths box and type in ORD-HKG. Hit the Display
button, and behold.

In fact, freeze right there, gazing down upon the Arctic (note also
the more correctly rendered Greenland, as compared to the monsterized
version presented by Mercator et al.). Without touching another key,
locate California and France. Notice the shortest path between San
Francisco and Paris takes you above the southern tip of Greenland.
Return to the Paths box and enter SFO-CDG to see the actual tracing.

This may help avoid incidents like the one a year ago when a group of
Paris-bound passengers, watching their route unfold on the bulkhead
progress screen, were induced to near panic in belief their flight had
been hijacked. It took an announcement from the captain to explain why
the aircraft seemed headed for the North Pole instead of Charles de
Gaulle airport.

Other goodies are available on the site. One of the most intriguing
is the Locations feature that automatically determines the most
distant earthly airport from a chosen point. If I feed my hometown BOS
into the Locations box (followed by a double click on the resulting
data), I'm informed that Margaret River, Western Australia, is the
farthest airport I can possibly fly to.

Once you're feeling comfortable, or addiction is setting in, have a
look at SVO-SCL. Presently there's no direct service from Moscow to
Santiago, Chile, but notice the way this imaginary flight traces two
great circles, mirrored arcs on either side of the equator evinced
through a delicate figure-S. Yes, the bottom of the world is no less
round than the top.

Try typing GIG-SYD (Rio de Janeiro-Sydney) to view one of the more
dramatic southerly crossings. Note the passage over Antarctica on a
trip from South America to Australia.

http://www.salon.com/tech/col/smith/...askthepilot126

The people fear of being hijacked because they have been terrorized by
the information they received.

Remember, you can't terrorize dead people, only live ones. Terror
networks like C.N.N., B.B.C., and so on do a lot of terrorizing,.

And of course, you can only terrorize or manipulate people who are
educated. That certainly illustrate one of the many points of the
dangers of education.