"Siskiwit Lake, largest lake on the island; cold, deep, clear, and relatively low in nutrients. Siskiwit Lake contains several islands, including Ryan Island, the largest therein, which itself contains Moose Flats, a seasonal pond, which contains Moose Boulder. When Moose Flats is a pond, Moose Boulder becomes the largest island in the largest lake on the largest island in the largest lake on the largest island in the largest lake in the world."
Re:Islands in lakes in islands in lakes ...
by btilly on Friday August 06, 2010 @12:56PM
(#1581574)
I know this is straight from Wikipedia, but it is incorrect because the Caspian Sea is the largest lake. If you measure by volume, lake Baikal is the largest freshwater lake. If you measure by area, lakes Michigan and Huron are technically one lake, and that lake is larger than Superior.
So there are a lot of reasons to dispute that Superior is the largest lake in the world.
Re:Islands in lakes in islands in lakes ...
by vibragiel on Friday August 06, 2010 @08:23AM
(#1580826)
Somebody should go to Vulcan point in Crater Lake and pee so we could have the largest lake on an island in a lake on an island in a lake on an island :-)
Re:Islands in lakes in islands in lakes ...
by asmosoinio on Friday August 06, 2010 @01:03PM
(#1581592)
The Volcano Lake at Taal is a pretty interesting place -- it is a volcano, with the smallish crater lake, all inside the crater of a bigger volcano. Went there last year, a beautiful place.
Re:Islands in lakes in islands in lakes ...
by colinprince on Friday August 06, 2010 @09:34AM
(#1580946)
In the english speaking world we refer to Australia as a continent, but I just saw a kid's encyclopedia from France which refers to Australia as an island.
There oughtta be 7 continents; without Aust there'd only be 6 :(
Re:Islands in lakes in islands in lakes ...
by NathanKP on Friday August 06, 2010 @09:44AM
(#1580973)
It looks to me like something I would go to Reddit to find. It is interesting and I would upvote it on Reddit, but it is certainly not what I would expect at the top of HN.
Re:Islands in lakes in islands in lakes ...
by davidw on Friday August 06, 2010 @10:11AM
(#1581056)
I can submit 100 stories that'll get people riled up about politics / amazing pics / funny-hah-hah! in the time you can write one article about monads.
Re:Islands in lakes in islands in lakes ...
by davidw on Friday August 06, 2010 @10:23AM
(#1581087)
The point is simple: off-topic content is far easier to submit than good content. There's way more of it, and it's of interest to far more people. It would be very simple, were there no controls, to crowd out "good" content with politics/pics/etc... Which means that doing the opposite: crowding out bad content with good content, is very difficult. It would require a significant amount of work to go find and promote good articles, as compared to "bad" ones.
If anyone actually thinks this isn't so, think about the mental effort and learning required to write a good article about monads vs the effort required to rant about Bush or Obama or post a cool/funny pic.
("good" and "bad" are simplistic. I actually thought this article was kind of interesting; I just don't think it belongs here)
Re:Islands in lakes in islands in lakes ...
by Charuru on Friday August 06, 2010 @01:21PM
(#1581645)
I find it dubious that bad content is actually 'crowding' out good content. Which good real entry is this one higher than? The off-topic is just filling in the dead time between seriousness.
Re:Islands in lakes in islands in lakes ...
by davidw on Saturday August 07, 2010 @02:22AM
(#1583164)
I don't think it is happening right now; it's just something that could happen easily, and is something of a counter-argument to the idea that instead of just complaining, you should try and 'crowd out' the silly articles with good ones: it's not so easy.
Re:Islands in lakes in islands in lakes ...
by mbubb on Friday August 06, 2010 @01:48PM
(#1581735)
Articles in this vein can spur thought which leads to unexpected ideas.
This is perhaps a point of overlap between reddit and HN and really has very little direct relevance to startups, hacking, programming.
The piece in question here was not particularly deep but made for pleasant lunchtime thoughts about recursion and that fun little Linux fractal viewer that I havent played with in ages (xaos). I wondered how the guy figured this out and whether or not the Capian Sea were really the largest lake... Then when I looked at the comments I saw a few good points and this metacomment.
Not terribly deep thoughts. But I am not so sure that articles like this are irrelevant. It is good to have ludic content that generates seemingly random thoughts.
I used to follow a site called everything2.com - which i imagine lots of people remember (or still use).a simple Perl driven site that if I remember well was related to the slashdot engine(slashcode).
Spending an hour on the site following tangential entries could be really fun but beyond that could be a way to get unstuck when in a mental rut.
HN has that ability at times. In recent months articles on airplane safety; playing GTA with one's 4 yr old; pneumatic brass tubes at Stanford; Feynman on Science and religion have had that affect. None of these articles were particularly 'relevant'. But I am glad to have stumbled across them.
Re:Islands in lakes in islands in lakes ...
by chromatic on Friday August 06, 2010 @03:04PM
(#1582010)
The Everything Engine which runs E2 wasn't much related to Slashcode at all. It did come from the same company, but it was completely different code. A fork of that still runs PerlMonks today.
Re:Islands in lakes in islands in lakes ...
by Jun8 on Friday August 06, 2010 @11:12AM
(#1581229)
Oh, for Pete's sake: relax! People thought it's interesting and it is interesting (I had no idea you could go that deep). Hey, maybe if your elevator pitch doesn't work you can try to impress a VC with this tidbit, I bet this would get more attention than a lot of pitches.
Re:Islands in lakes in islands in lakes ...
by DrJokepu on Friday August 06, 2010 @10:00AM
(#1581016)
Those people can upvote other stories they think are more relevant or interesting. The "newest" page at http://news.ycombinator.com/newest always has interesting submissions waiting to be upvoted.
Re:Islands in lakes in islands in lakes ...
by paulgb on Friday August 06, 2010 @09:44AM
(#1580972)
Not all users can flag, and flagging is more to deal with spam and trolling. (The guidelines mention offtopic posts as well, but community consensus is that flagging is not downvoting.)
Re:Islands in lakes in islands in lakes ...
by chc on Friday August 06, 2010 @11:51AM
(#1581348)
Flagging is not downvoting, but it is the sanctioned way to register your opinion that some content does not belong on the site. If your efforts to combat off-topic posts are limited to ranting in the comments after they're posted, it's too late.
Re:Islands in lakes in islands in lakes ...
by Jun8 on Friday August 06, 2010 @11:14AM
(#1581235)
Well, then you have an issue not directly with this story but the way HN is designed. Start a submission of your own, citing this example, about this issue and get the discussion rolling, if you feel passionately about this.
Re:Islands in lakes in islands in lakes ...
by Mz on Friday August 06, 2010 @08:53AM
(#1580876)
My first thought when reading the question was "Ooh, shiny!". But I didn't think anyone would get it and it would get downvoted as smart-assed. More eloquently: I think it falls under "anything engaging" (or whatever that phrase is in the guidelines).
Re:Islands in lakes in islands in lakes ...
by CountHackulus on Friday August 06, 2010 @10:35AM
(#1581117)
I can't believe that no one's tried to make an Xzibit joke yet. This either shows that HNers are 2 years behind in internet memes, or have the common sense to not use them everywhere.
"Siskiwit Lake, largest lake on the island; cold, deep, clear, and relatively low in nutrients. Siskiwit Lake contains several islands, including Ryan Island, the largest therein, which itself contains Moose Flats, a seasonal pond, which contains Moose Boulder. When Moose Flats is a pond, Moose Boulder becomes the largest island in the largest lake on the largest island in the largest lake on the largest island in the largest lake in the world."
So there are a lot of reasons to dispute that Superior is the largest lake in the world.
All the rest is true though. :-)
I put a piece of dust on yo drop.
It's also interesting that even on a planet as big (or objectively as small) as ours, you can only go a few levels deep with this kind of research.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dymaxion_map_unfolded.png
http://teczno.com/faumaxion-II/
There oughtta be 7 continents; without Aust there'd only be 6 :(
http://xkcd.com/224/
http://www.fourmilab.ch/images/Romanesco/
If you want relevant content, write it and submit it.
If anyone actually thinks this isn't so, think about the mental effort and learning required to write a good article about monads vs the effort required to rant about Bush or Obama or post a cool/funny pic.
("good" and "bad" are simplistic. I actually thought this article was kind of interesting; I just don't think it belongs here)
Not that I want HN to become a joke-a-day site but accidental-hacker-humor like this is a unusual enough find that I can deal with the rare exception.
This is perhaps a point of overlap between reddit and HN and really has very little direct relevance to startups, hacking, programming.
The piece in question here was not particularly deep but made for pleasant lunchtime thoughts about recursion and that fun little Linux fractal viewer that I havent played with in ages (xaos). I wondered how the guy figured this out and whether or not the Capian Sea were really the largest lake... Then when I looked at the comments I saw a few good points and this metacomment.
Not terribly deep thoughts. But I am not so sure that articles like this are irrelevant. It is good to have ludic content that generates seemingly random thoughts.
I used to follow a site called everything2.com - which i imagine lots of people remember (or still use).a simple Perl driven site that if I remember well was related to the slashdot engine(slashcode).
Spending an hour on the site following tangential entries could be really fun but beyond that could be a way to get unstuck when in a mental rut.
HN has that ability at times. In recent months articles on airplane safety; playing GTA with one's 4 yr old; pneumatic brass tubes at Stanford; Feynman on Science and religion have had that affect. None of these articles were particularly 'relevant'. But I am glad to have stumbled across them.
--- Ugh, look what you've made me do.