Thursday, August 17, 2006

So I learned about a new ocean today. Well I guess it’s not really new, just a different name than what I’m used to. Back in my early days I learned about the world’s five oceans: The Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, Arctic and Antarctic Oceans. It turns out that back in 2000, the International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) decided that it would rename the Antarctic Ocean to the now present Southern Ocean. The funny thing about this change is that I found out about it while navigating thru Google Maps. Okay, so I got bored at work today and decided to cruise the world. There in the ocean surrounding Antarctica was the Southern Ocean. I though to myself, "What the flip!" So my next train of thought took me to WikiPedia where I investigated and found what actually happened. Did all the giant pull down school maps change by the way? It makes me wonder how much more stuff I learned back in grade school is no longer accurate. I think we need a newsletter of some sort to keep us all up-to-date. Next week’s letter might entail the 3 new planets we’ll be adding to the solar system (read about the here). So much for the infamous My Very Exhausted Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas phrase. Maybe I’ll get the ball rolling and state this: My Very Exhausted Mother Cannot Justify Secretly Uniting Navy Prisoners Carrying Xylophones.

4 comments:

Moose said...

Seriously, five oceans? Where did you go to school. When I went to school there were only 4 oceans. Since you can't trust anything you read on wikipedia, I followed one of the links on the southern ocean page. This page says that the fifth ocean was created (not renamed) in 2000.

Although, reading about it, I would say that the International Hydrographic Organization is worthless. Really, making a new ocean for their silly ecological research.

I still vote for there only being four oceans.

Michael said...

Change the pull-down maps in school? Are you kidding me? In my school, nobody has yet to explore inner-Africa and the oceans still have pictures of giant sea creatures.

And this is completely off the topic, but I really hate people who mix up the words "Pacific" and "specific". I know it must be hard changing the "a" to an "e" and adding that tricky "s" to the beginning, but come on people.

Lisa said...

I remember learning about the Antarctic Ocean, but I may as well have forgotten! For the record, I think the Southern Ocean is a stupid name. My vote would have been for the Really Cold Ocean... Thanks for the update. Maybe that newsletter isn't a bad idea.

Andy said...

Sorry, no more extra planets. Now we're down to just 8.