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Dave. E, Seattle WA — Tue, 15 May 2007 21:20:04 GMT

The bullied teen story is sad... but what's really sad is that the mom knew about the bullying and still thinks it is all the schools' fault. Why didn't she pull the kid and put him in a different school? Why does she let him play videogames all day in his room? He should be seeing a therapist.

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Roger Asher — Tue, 15 May 2007 21:24:40 GMT

Hey Will, The talk by Charlie Stross was the best thing I've read in a good while - great fun and very provocative. Also, I (sadly) just bult a new computer. I put it in a box instead of an aquarium. It's things like these that keep me coming back. Thanks. Roger

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Mnementh, Callahan FL — Wed, 16 May 2007 12:02:40 GMT

Interesting. I used a.placebetween.us to look for a hotel between my house in FL and my parent's house in PA. Number one response? A hotel in Costa Rica. I think I'll take my chances finding something in North Carolina...

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Meg, Hartford, CT — Wed, 16 May 2007 12:30:55 GMT

Are the Google Earth animal pictures real? They look like they're artificially pasted in, given how clear they are compared to the surrounding areas.

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Patrick, Chicago, IL — Wed, 16 May 2007 15:11:27 GMT

Costa Rica came up for me as well? The marker doesn't show that. Is that just a google ad at the top?

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John doe, Seattle, Wash. — Wed, 16 May 2007 16:12:00 GMT

Mnementh, Same here. I put in two close locations and the first place was Italy.

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LV — Wed, 16 May 2007 16:54:06 GMT

I'm taking a vacation to Maine and Canada later this year, so I looked for somewhere to have dinner between Portland and Halifax. It dumped me smack into the middle of the Bay of Fundy. I like to fish and all, but...

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Lydia, Chicago — Wed, 16 May 2007 17:00:15 GMT

I really like the idea of schools being held financially responsible for not doing enough to stop bullying on their property, if we had laws like this in America it would be a good way to have schools reduce or eliminate bullying.

Unless you live in an urban area, there is likely not another school to transfer to, and home school is not always adequate to allow some students to learn and would require a tutor, which of course is not affordable for every family. Sometimes kids are stuck in a school where they are bullied and physically attacked by other children because there is no other school within an hour's drive to go to, and even in the cases where a bullied kid can transfer to another school, sometimes they have already suffered permanent emotional damage from the bullying they encountered. Bullying should not be tolerated, especially when it involves physical attacks. Schools should stop emotional bullying by punishing bullies for each incident or removing them from the school, and schools should report physical bullying incidents to the police so that kids disturbed enough to physically harm others can be dealt with by the judicial system.

None of that is an unfair thing to ask for, that bullies be punished or removed for mentally torturing other children, or that bullies be criminally punished for physically hurting other children, but most schools in our country do not want to help get rid of bullies because they already have plenty of problems to worry about with funding, staffing, and supplies. As in the article, this is usually dealt with by telling bullied children and their parents "deal with it" "bullying builds character" "you win some you lose some" "go somewhere else" instead of putting an end to the bully who will just find more children to pick on once his target is gone. Not stopping a bully will never fix the problem.

If schools found it financially undesirable to not make efforts to stop bullying, bullies would not be so prevalent, and there would probably not be so many disturbed children that are terrified to go to school, disturbed children who want to commit suicide, or disturbed children who want to kill their bullies in order to feel safe again. Think of how many millions or billions of dollars our country would save on psychiatric care by treating a root cause of problems (bullies) instead of having to treat people with psychiatric problems caused by being bullied - there are much fewer bullies than there are people who have been bullied, the savings would be immense.

Sorry for the long discourse, I think the bully liability for schools is an important thing that our country and our society needs to integrate. I also wanted to thank you, Will, for all the interesting articles you're always sharing with us!

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Will Femia — Wed, 16 May 2007 17:47:43 GMT

I'm not sure why you guys are getting those results. I just did New York City to Daytona, Florida and got a North Carolina marker. And I checked the midpoint from my Brooklyn neighborhood to Lower Manhattan and it correctly gave me a spot on the Lower East Side. Maybe there are some areas that aren't mapped correctly?

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Will Femia — Wed, 16 May 2007 18:02:17 GMT

Meg, I think they're real, but I think Google didn't bother collecting detailed satellite imagery from the surrounding areas. I don't know where those items came from so it could be part of some other project or exercise.

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John Doe, Seattle, Wash. — Wed, 16 May 2007 21:11:23 GMT

Will, maybe it's what you type in the third box that matters the most. For my first try between two towns within 30 minutes of each other, I typed "pizza" and the first response was Pizza, a company in Italy. I tried NYC to Daytona, FL using Italian and the first link was El Italian in Tabasco, Mexico. So, maybe it searches for a business with that name before searching the area.

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Thu, 17 May 2007 16:19:21 GMT

If bullying really is going on, then it definitely needs to be dealt with. The problem from a parent's standpoint of the supposed "bully" is that often the thing that has upset the other parent/child is minor and becomes blown out of proportion. Then your child who is really doing normal little kid things lets say, gets suspended by over zealous schools for something ridiculous. My 6 yr old son made a gun out of his fingers on the playground and was playing cowboys with other boys on the playground. A little girl on the playground decided it was "threatening" and my son got detention for this. Apparantly although most of us did these things when we were children, they are now horrible threats because of Columbine and Virginia Tech. Sometimes it's just kids being kids and schools are too over zealous now about every little thing. I don't need to be fined or sued for stuff like this, which is what would happen.

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Paul McFarland, Guy, Arkansas — Fri, 18 May 2007 12:46:34 GMT

I am sorry but the story on the bullied child sticks me as the nanny state run mad. I, as an RN, have worked with kids with problems for much of my practice. This child is a result of multiple causative agents. To assign all blame and a financial burden to the school system is simplistic and wrongheaded.

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AmericanMuslimahConvert — Fri, 18 May 2007 18:14:17 GMT

The last item on the list is debatable. Should the schools be responsible for a student's actions? Knowing how difficult it is to make my own children behave themselves on little stuff, I can't imagine how difficult it would be for teachers and school faculty to monitor groups of 30 and more students, and control each and every one of them from saying hateful things. Being harassed in school for me was the norm. It didn't make it right, but I didn't go on a shooting rampage either, and I certainly wouldn't consider suing the school or any of the student's I attended with. Unfortunately the world only gets worse from high school. If you can't deal with people your age making cracks about stupid infantile things, how are you going to handle when people start calling you down because of your religious or political views? Or how are you going to deal with the pressures of a career and marriage? Some of these kids need to get a clue... and so do their parents. Protecting your children from unnecessary harm is one thing. Coddling them and giving them the notion that they will never have to face anything hard in life without getting compensation for it is quite another.

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Charles Scercy — Fri, 18 May 2007 22:29:11 GMT

http://geek.videosift.com/video/Secret-Places-of-Google-Earth This may be old news to you but a cool video of those links you posted