Dragging a dead body through the mud
In America, 43 states have at least one Grand Canyon. Seventy three nations boast a Grand Canyon or two. There are Grand Canyons in the bottoms of oceans, too. Nevertheless, only a small number of the world’s Grand Canyons are recognized by agencies of geographic nomenclature, such as the U.S. Board of Geographic Names and the National Imagery and Mapping Agency. This still did not stop a few geographically challenged writers and bureaucrats from misplacing Arizona’s canyon altogether, calling it the “Grand Canyon of New Mexico,” “Nevada’s Grand Canyon,” and “Colorado’s Grand Canyon.” The Colorado transplant was sensationally replicated by the U.S. Postal Service in 1999 when they produced a full run of postage stamps portraying “Grand Canyon, Colorado.” All 100 million stamps were then destroyed. […]
In fact, the size of Arizona’s Grand Canyon was only an educated guess when the Smithsonian Institution first mentioned the place in 1857. It was called “Big Canyon” then. […]
Canyonicity is all about depth; the deeper the better. But surprisingly, a canyon’s “depth” has been redefined. It was and still is measured from top to bottom. However, canyons that have no rims per se (deep declivities in mountain ranges, for example) are measured relative to the tops of nearby mountain peaks. Even the National Geographic Society embraces this method of determining depth, and to this end the Society has identified and promoted the idea that there are “deeper” and “grander” canyons than Arizona’s famous chasm. This is geological nonsense.
{ Is the Grand Canyon a Fake? | PDF | via Improbable }
art { Marcel Duchamp, To Have the Apprentice in the Sun (Cyclist), 1914 }
