----- Original Message -----

From: Jesper Nielsen

To: BoundaryPoint@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Sunday, February 23, 2003 10:49 AM

Subject: [BoundaryPoint] Continent border

We have previously discussed land continent borders. The obvious one if offcourse ASEU.

But what about ASOC?

This atlas http://www.worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/au.htm

shows IDPG as a land continent border, and I have seen others as well.

Interesting you should ask that now because I was just wondering about tripoints on the islands of Borneo and New Guinea a few days earlier and was disappointed to see that Brunei and Indonesia don't border and also that I was mistaken about how many countries there are on New Guinea. I thought there were three, but I think I may have been confused about two different divisions in PNG. Thus it is not where three separate countries meet.

I personally don't see IDPG as a continental boundary. I personally prefer the boundaries for continents to be based on geological features (rivers, mountains, isthmuses, oceans) rather than arbitrary political lines. Even cultural ones. IDPG is not a geological continental boundary nor even geographical, AISI.

One of my favorite newsgroups, alt.usage.english discussed whether Oceania is in fact a continent http://tinyurl.com/6d4f (http://groups.google.com/groups?dq=&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&threadm=omfW6.94128%24%25i7.67923790%40news1.rdc1.sfba.home.com&rnum=1&prev=/groups%3Fq%3Dg:thl4003900116d%26dq%3D%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26ie%3DUTF-8%26oe%3DUTF-8%26selm%3DomfW6.94128%2524%2525i7.67923790%2540news1.rdc1.sfba.home.com). See messages 38 and following. Apparently, Americans are more likely to be taught that Australia is a continent, while in Europe, it is Oceania. I don't regard Oceania as a continent. (Thought, the Olympics do. Then again, they would exclude a lot of people if they didn't.)