![[0606] The Ideal World](/comics/2014-08-11-0606-the-ideal-world.png "[0606] The Ideal World")
There is an alternative version of this strip which shows Sandra’s world map as it was originally drawn by Powree. The different shapes of the continents certainly give it a more realistic look, but I rather wanted something that looks like an engineer drew it. Therefore, I created a new map which is supposed to represent an earth-like world with optimal living conditions for a wide range of species.
![Sandra and Woo: [0606] The Ideal World - Alternative version](/images/comics/2014-08-11-0606-the-ideal-world-alternative.png "Sandra and Woo: [0606] The Ideal World - Alternative version")
I think Sandra’s drawing raises a lot of interesting questions how an “ideal” world for humans and animals would look like. If you think about it, earth’s continents certainly don’t have the perfect shape. But is there enough water in Sandra’s world to make the climate pleasant in summer and winter? How diverse would the flora and fauna be on the 18 continents resp. 3 super continents? What would be the significance of the land bridges? Would the climate zones indeed follow such a rigid pattern?
Maybe there’s a biologist or geologist among our readers who can give us some insight in the comment section.
I had several ideas for the teacher’s dialog in the last panel. I liked this one the most. If you have a funny idea yourself, I would love to see it (in the comment section).
- Sign: Parent-Teacher Discussion
- Art teacher: Your daughter either lacks imagination or has too much of it. I haven’t decided which yet.
- Richard: That’s my daughter!
- T-shirt: TEAM P == NP
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The answer is simple:
It’s both!
looks like ‘settlers of cataan’
The ideal world for me is one where we all care about it.
The land is very well distributed, but you forget the random variables that came with planets, like earthquakes, storms, volcano eruptions etc etc.
Sandra dream will soon be shattered if one of those tropical mountain erupted, or there’s a diagonal huge thunderstorm.
Unless this is a plan for a space colony? Maybe a modified O’Neill Cylinder.
So, what happened to the dictator-teacher lady???
@ Jumtrev:
I’m pretty sure she is trying out these “interesting career opportunities for teachers in Saudi Arabia”
Sandra’s ideal world reminds me of the guy that managed to “win” at Simcity3000 by creating the perfect city. The citizens average lifespan was only 50 years, but it was the most efficient city possible. Maybe that is Sandra’s next Project- to fill the perfect globe with perfect cities.
Long live the Empress. Northia prevails.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtB2ZfVuLhY
I’d say the pictures above Sandra lack even more imagination. I mean, a castle with deers and a rainbow in the sky? Playing Halo with a robot maid and a swimming pool in the backyard? Who hasn’t thought of that before?
@ Jumtrev:
She went *poof*. And then she was gone.
Looking at Sandra’s work, it brings to mind the old Phantasy Star videogames from the days of the Sega Genesis.
@Jacob and Landbark and Mr_Nabby
Jacob wrote:
Or Battle of Wesnoth:
http://wesnoth.org/start/1.10/images/start-1-full.jpg
I have to say nice work Frank Pizza, sexy robot maids and video games!
Nice t-shirt!
If only math problems could be solved that simply…
Too Much I’ll say.
that Idle world is Great
Larisa’s picture: A whole world on fire, except for a heavily-insulated residence with Cloud and herself in it.
Cloud’s picture: A world where tyrants and oppressors are sent to a remote island to live with his sister.
Woo’s picture: A world made of food!!!
Teacher: I don’t recall this “Woo” being a student here. Oh well, I’ll give it a B anyway.
>:=)>
@ Jumtrev:
She was “removed” by the strips resident enforcer/terrorist.
What does Steam “P==NP” mean?
Sissel North wrote:
It’s a reference one of the famous unsolved problems in computer science. It means that Richard believes that it is possible to search an exponential-sized solution space in polynomial time.
Search “P vs NP”.
@ Sissel North:
It seems to be “Team P==NP”, as if Richard is rooting for that unsolved maths problem to be resolved with those two classes of algorithms being identical.
Reminds me of how I used to build maps in civ ii.
This concept wouldn’t work as well on a planet with tectonics, but it might be ideal for the inner space of a Dyson Sphere.
jy3 wrote:
I’m with team P != NP. Because if P == NP, all our asymmetric encryption algorithms are useless, right?
Regarding climate, I’d be interested to see how the land distribution depicted would affect the formation of atmospheric circulation cells, as well as ocean circulation. Having a band of islands located on the ITCZ would be bad for weather conditions, but with this distribution would there even be an ITCZ?
The revised world map looks like the game “Slay”. Excellent strategy game. One of my favorites. :-p I suppose Sandra WOULD enjoy Slay.
That ideal world would really be rather bad for ocean life, what with there being no oceans to speak of.
A: …bit odd for middle school, isn’t it?
B: Really, Richard? That’s one step from “Team Reptoid”…
Since the poles are enclosed, Ice would likely fill both poles (Assuming the atmosphere and orbit are similar to Earth’s). This could cause the polar regions to extend further than shown, and likely freeze a lot of those more enclosed seas, especially during winter.
Also, the dryer, paler sides of the mountains in the temperate regions are west of the mountains in the north and east in the south. This shows that winds likely blow east to west in the temperate north (the opposite of Earth), and since rotation decides which way winds blow (Coriolis effect) Sandra’s Perfect World would rotate in the opposite direction of Earth…. Or the map has the southern pole on the top (Flipping my monitor shows that would do it).
So the previous strip was a one-shot?
You would get horrific currents, assuming tidal forces are as the real Earth. This would lead to pretty strange weather and climactic conditions.
well, the climate thru the year would also depend very much on the axial tilt and the presence of natural satellites with powerful gravity fields.
Too much axial tilt and ice caps would form during log periods going without the sun’s warmth. The seas would flow north-south semi-annually, thanks to the land bridges not allowing east-west flow.
Not enough axial tilt and there would be permanent ice in both axial poles. this would cause the sea to be permanently isolated. Land migration and sea migration would be almost entirely north-south.
In either case , I would prefer living as close to the equator as possible.
no wii u love here. 🙁
Me thinks Sandra has been playing too much Minecraft lol.
@ Spikes:
I was thinking Civ 5.
@ AckAckAck:
Well keep in mind, this is an “Ideal” world. In an ideal world, those random variables would factor in a much less chaotic way and actually help in the maintenance of the geography. For instance, there would be a volcano at the center of each landmass, but the eruptions would not be very violent and would lead to occasional expansion of landmass to counteract the effects of earthquakes (the ideal fault lines would be near the shores), erosion and the general loss of landmass. And since volcanic soil is some of the most fertile land in the world it would have all manner of plant life growing around it based on the climate.
To make a long story short (too late), I like to over analyze things.
@ Greenwood Goat:
You misspelled Landon.
What immediately strikes me is the way the ocean currents would be affected by the continents.
Not only are their more blockages of currents that would flow around the globe, it also appears that thermal conveyors would be disrupted.
@ Michael:
Yeah, having both a PS and an Xbox is rather redundant. After all, its not a perfect world with LoZ 🙂
God, I want that P==NP T-shirt!G
Has anyone ever played a boardgame called “The Settlers of Catan” ? Sandra’s Ideal World looks like many game configurations……played that a lot
@ Ajedi32:
And here I was thinking it was a “Player does-not-equal NonPlayer” kinda thing. 🙂
@ Raen:
I was thinking “SimEarth” myself.
Been awhile since I played it, but I seem to recall being able to build a world similar to that and then the program could factor in the various variables (within the limits of the program).
@ Ajedi32:
… it’s worse than that. You can actually prove a polynomial reduction from AES to an NP-Complete problem, which means that AES is in NP, which means that even our current symmetric encryption algorithms would be nullified.
For our asymmetric encryption, generalized quantum computing already invalidates them, because it solves both the factoring and discrete log problems.
Now, mind you, we appear to be anywhere from 10 to 50 years away from generalized quantum computers (we have quantum computers with _very_ low qubits right now), and we have proven that we can make asymmetric encryption algorithms that don’t rely on problems that quantum computers can solve efficiently (mostly NP-complete problems). So, this situation is not catastrophic.
If P=NP, though, the situation *is* catastrophic and one-time pads are the only thing we have left.
It puts me in mind of the geography of the Well World from Jack L. Chalker’s Well of Souls series. Each hex simulated the environment of a different world, ones suited for organic life in the southern hemisphere, inorganic life in the north. It was created by a race of sufficiently advanced aliens that grew bored with their existence and decided to recreate themselves as lower life forms. The Well World’s hexes served as testbed for trying out different life forms and world types before putting them into full scale existence. It also was a supercomputer so powerful that the entire universe as we know it is just the main program running on it, sometimes a reset becomes necessary.
I want this as a Civ 5 map…
She needs channels in the land bridges. Shipping would be terribly inefficient on this map.
A better question is how all of the pokemon are located. I need to know the best place to find a trapinch
Teacher: I feel your daughter plays too much Civ V
Richard: BLASPHEMY!
Well she dose tackle that since her world is probably going to be a sphere, the hexes in the middle will be more elongatedeast and West, where as the ones by the poles will be elongated North& South if it were a cylinders like in halo, it would not be weird, but I think she thinks it will be a sphere
For a moment, I thought she drew out a map from Pokemon.
I want to start by looking from a cartographer’s perspective (though I am not extremely familiar on the subject). What type of map projection is Sandra using to map out this ideal world. In other words what would this world look like if it were in it’s original spherical form.
Also the question could be raised is this even a spherical world, elliptical, or even other shapes. maybe the world is as mapped and is, flat like Narnia. Just some food for thought.
I think one of the problems with that world will be that it doesn’t have as much water, which means that it won’t have as much thermal stability (water has more heat capacity than rock, so it regulates the temperature, and on a global scale, the climate.) Northworld seems to be about 50-60% land (not sure about the projection type) However, the continents are much smaller than most of Earth’s, and I’m not sure how that would affect climate.
Also, she may want some solid ground at the poles.