How on earth (no pun intended) did you manage to invent an entire island?
Correct me if I’m wrong, but you have ridiculously powerful satellites that can take pictures of things from space. They can see the Great Wall of China from hundreds of miles up, they’re that powerful. They can probably even see me waving to them now if they squint hard enough.
So if a satellite can see the earth in that much detail from so far away, how did you not notice this island isn’t actually there? It was named and everything – Sandy Island. So I assume it also had a capital, and a flag, and a GDP, and all the other “official” stuff that comes with being an actual place.
And if it was named, people must have been living on it, too – where did they go? Did they emigrate when times got tough? (On second thought they probably came to Britain – everyone else bloody well does.) It must have had animals too – maybe a species of gibbon previously unknown to the human race, with cancer curing properties? Did they think of that?
A Google spokesman told the BBC (you can see for yourself here) that “the world is a constantly changing place, and keeping on top of these changes is a never-ending endeavour.”
Apart from obviously being a fan of tongue twisters, this guy must not know what a day’s hard graft looks like. According to some very reliable scientific research (a Google search – they are useful for something), the continental plates move at around 1cm per year.
Now, I’m not going to be totally dense here. I’m imagining that small islands (the one in question seems to be around 25 miles long – OK, small in comparison) move faster than that, say 2cm or 3cm per year. That’s still not much. You’d have to be seriously lazy to miss it.
Even if you left it 50 years before going back to check it’s still there, it’s only going to have moved about a metre. I imagine the resulting conversation would go something like, “Shit – that island we thought was here isn’t here!” … “Oh, wait – it’s over there.”
There are only four possible reasons I see for this.
- The island is wearing an invisibility cloak.
- The people who went looking for it had had a few too many cans of Fosters (yes, they were Australian. Yes, I am stereotyping.)
- The island sank, and is now known as ‘Sandy Atlantis’ to the locals, who have developed gills.
- The people who “discovered” it in the first place had had a few too many of whatever their national alcoholic beverage is.
I look forward to hearing your own suggestions/excuses.
Much love, not too much admiration
Ellie
Words, etc. 