M&D Deep Duck 4-6: Equator

[Mark Kohut]

The Protestant Ethic was forged by the Northern Bad Shit countries dominating nature and the preterite countries. So to extrapolate. 

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> On Jan 20, 2015, at 2:09 PM, <kelber at mindspring.com> <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:
> 
> A boundary ordained by the stars, by Mother Earth (slightly tubby in the waistline, despite - because of! - all that spinning). It's a border, but no war has ever been fought over it (though, certainly, many have been fought across it).
> 
> But implicit in it are some of the things Joseph and others have been discussing: colonialism and slavery, in particular -- the general European colonialist attitude towards the darker people who lived "down" there as somewhat lesser, for living at the "bottom" rather than the "top." Is there a homoerotic metaphor here? The mapmakers make the decisions, but when did it become ingrained in the popular consciousness that South = Down? John Bailey, chime in, please: Isn't it specifically white Australians who decided to get defensively cute in bragging about living Down Under - to lure tourists across the equator?
> 
> It's odd, in a way, that the European colonialists who imposed borders on the indigenous peoples of Africa and South America never thought to use the Equator as an official national border. A nice straight line, but no Masons or Dixons up to the task of hacking through such remote wilderness to draw it. Still, you'd think they could at least pick a spot and call it the Equator. Who was going to argue with them if it was a couple of kilometers off?
> 
> By the way, here's a list of the countries the Equator passes through: Ecuador [Equator - someone at least took note!], Colombia, Brazil, Sao Tome & Principe, Gabon, Republic of the Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, Kenya, Somalia, Maldives, Indonesia and Kiribati. Note that Equatorial Guinea is not among them.
> 
> Ecuador actually has a tourist spot with an official line drawn to show where the Equator is. Only problem is, it's off by a few hundred feet. No one cares, but M&D would be appalled.
> 
> http://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/much-ado-about-nothing-at-the-equator-8514125/?no-ist
> 
> Laura
> 
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