geoh
there are too many questions here to answer all at once
& more mistaken assumptions about us
with all due respect
than may ever be corrected
but i will start to just nibble around the edges & see what happens
since you evidently want to take this further as well
to begin with & i think most importantly
please understand once & for all
we only used to be something
but are no longer anything
we used to be a multipointing society
this was clear & succinct in the beginning
& somewhat discernible even for several years
but our group description you refer to has actually been repeatedly
altered beyond recognition & coherency
several sets of quotation marks have even had to be added to who we are
since very few of us indeed could claim to be what the words say we are
more inserted below
--- In BoundaryPoint@yahoogroups.com, "geoh88" <geoh88@y...> wrote:
> Starting as least as far back as message 11645 (I didn't go back
> farther) and continuing right up to the past few days, there has
> been discussion of proper tripoints and proper countries and
> sovereignty and ISO diglyphs and such.
perhaps pinpointing what you are talking about in each case would help
since it is hard to respond to all this in the abstract
for example
our multipointing diglyphs are only partially based on iso digraphs
& only when it is convenient & sensible to do so
so far as we multipointers have ever been concerned
there is nothing sacred or definitive about iso digraphs per se
until we employ & combine them into our multipointing hieroglyphics
> With all due respect, I think you're missing the forest for the
> trees. The focus seems to be so much on the hierarchy.
that has only been fortuitous & never rigorous because the hierarchies
vary from country to country & often even within countries
> By the description on the home page, the focus is on "geopolitical
> boundary points" and "general boundary issues".
this description of course is not really a focus at all
but the opposite of a focus
& an abandonment of focus
& an elaborate series of excuses for no longer having a focus
the focus here today is in fact whatever you want it to be
> By general agreement the top level game involves "countries". This
> is virtually universal in any of these types of games. The Travelers
> Century Club finagles their list of 330+ to suit the tastes of the
> travel agent who runs it, and they call them countries. The AARL has
> the DXCC program for the ham radio operators, and they use their
> criteria for their 330+ countries. Although the total number is very
> close, there are close to 100 differences between the two. Why?
> Because they are playing a different game.
>
> The BP game should be focused on boundaries. So, how can we use
> boundaries to help refine our pursuit?
just notice where they are & where they converge to form a multipoint
nothing esoteric there really
it has just gotten all mixed together with enormous irrelevancy in the
meantime because everyone likes to yak about whatever they like
& then they like to think they are being relevant for having done so
there is great energy here in our pursuit of multidimensional realities
& participation in this is naturally very attractive but misunderstood
& of course there is so much that could be & has been brought to bear
to trash this simply elegant construction in every way imaginable
& your following analysis does risk diffusing & confounding it further
as i will try to explain
> There are 3 kinds of independent countries:
> 1. landlocked
> 2. continental coastal
> 3. island
>
> Using the 191 UN members as a starting point:
i believe we have also been recognizing taiwan & the holy see as
sovereign states
for a grand total starting point of 193
while stumbling over what to do with western sahara
> 1. 41 landlocked (pretty obvious)
> 2. 104 continental coastal (33 in America, 70 in Africa/Eurasia,
> plus Australia)
> 3. 46 island (including Bahrain and Singapore which are bridged to
> the Asian continental mainland, and also including the UKGB&NI which
> is both connected to Europe by tunnel and has this Gibraltar thing).
>
> One other thing to start. By my rules each country has to be
> completely surrounded by a boundary, which usually is composed of
> two or more boundary segments.
but sometimes boundaries are missing too
or peculiar in other ways
& facts like this can only be ignored at some expense of verisimilitude
> This is again obvious for many landlocked countries. Lesotho has
> just one segment, because it's an enclave of South Africa. Andorra
> and Mongolia each is a "sandwich" because the two tripoints are with
> the same neighbors. Most landlocked have 3 or more boundary segments
> with normal different tripoints. The one complicating issue is
> exclaves/enclaves; more on this later.
>
> The basic rule for continental costal countries is that their
> boundary continues into the sea until it completes the polygon.
most of these so called polygons are actually open ended in point of
legal fact
& only theoretical at best
a very few are fully completed
> Using the high seas as "everybody's land" allows for the tripoints.
> Brazil is an easy example. The maritime boundaries with Uruguay and
> French Guiana continue out to the 200nm tripoints, and then the
> 200nm boundary of Brazil complete the boundary segment.
this is actually a bit more complicated
the sovereign maritime territory ends no more than 12nm beyond coastal
baselines
the extra 188nm of eez beyond that
plus protruding continental shelves etc
confer sovereign rights but dont actually extend the national
sovereignty or territory
of course we have struggled over which of these setups to recognize
& in the end both are true & coexistent
so take your pick of one or the other or both
i think it is the messiest & most truly arguable aspect of the game
but fortunately it can remain optional
at least until we have exhausted dry land
It also
> objectively defines which islands are contained within "Brazil"
> itself (like Fernando de Noronha), and which are not (Trindade and
> Martin Vaz).
>
> For island countries it's the same basic process.
>
> What is the value here?
perhaps i dont understand the question
> Take Kaliningrad. It does not have an ISO 3166-1 diglyph.
as mentioned
this is irrelevant
> Who cares? There are international boundaries on the continental
> mainland of Europe and in the Baltic Sea. By using the tripoints to
> define the polygon of Kalingingrad both wet and dry, you've got a
> country.
if the polygons were really complete
you would have a complete exclave there
but not a complete country
the complete country is still russia
& this btw is true whether its borders are complete or not
> Now for those whose priority in life is making hierarchies, well
> have at it. Put Kaliningrad as a subsidiary of Russia.
>
> The fact that that ltplru is a tripoint of Kaliningrad, not
> of "Russia", means that for purposes of this game it should not be
> ltplru; we should have own own diglyphs for the geographically
> separate portions outside the BOUNDARIES of the parent.
i dont see why such a complication is needed
& besides
if you adopt it
then for consistency
you would have to make up lots of new glyphs
for everywhere else that there is an exclave tripoint
even in a case like french guiana which has its own iso digraph
the simple fact
& most natural hexaglyph
of its tripoint
are brfrsr
while brgfsr is tolerable & understandable & even occasionally used
it is neither necessary nor a sensible precedent to have to follow
> Focus on the geography, not the politics.
of course
but as you see
everybody would like to change the focus at every opportunity
& even when there really isnt any opportunity they invent one
> Look, I've got a lot more to say about a lot of this, and I'll read
> your replies to see if you're interested or not.
>
> Let me close by pointing back to the Subject of this message:
> Tripoints and Tripointers and Tripointees.
>
> You are the Tripointers.
aye but theres the rub
few of us really are tripointers
dont you see
indeed it seems few of us ever leave the house
& most couldnt care less what happens to this site
> We all know what a tripoint is.
> I believe you've neglected to give the proper attention to the
> tripointees: the actual countries that are surrounded by the
> boundaries and the tripoints.
but you just said focus on the geography & not the politics
so you may have to make up your mind if you are really trying to wrap
it around the multipointing here
otherwise all these questions are of course just pouring from the empty
into the void
the multidimensional realities however really do exist
& still beckon
& still wait
& the unique opportunity bp identified for getting at them still lives
even if its uniqueness is no longer honored on our home page
& even if our group as such is no longer actually devoted to it