Friday, December 6, 2013

A Flag for Antipode Areas - from One End of the Earth unto the Other



The colours of the Antipode Areas Flag are based upon the official flag for The National Geographic Society which uses the colours green, white, light blue and brown.  The Yin and Yang symbol reflects the fact that at this particular point within a country, it is 'directly underneath' another country on the oppose side of the Earth, or vice verse.  

The old saying goes, if you dig down deep enough you'll reach China.  But this is not true, rather if you dig down from the United States you'll end up in the Indian Ocean, unless you're in Hawaii.  Directly straight down underneath Hawaii is the southern tip of Africa.  Thus all of Hawaii can fly this flag. Likewise the small parts of Botswana and Namibia antipodal to Hawaii can fly this flag.  However the flag should be flipped when flown in the Southern Hemisphere, so that the fly is white and the hoist is green. Also note the tilt of the blue stripe matches the Earth's tilt relative to its orbit around the sun at about 23 degrees.  Coincidentally about 23 percent of the land on Earth is antipodal. Besides Hawaii, a small slice of Alaska and Montana can fly this flag.  Alaska is underneath Antarctica while a northern nibble of Montana is underneath the Kerguelen.


Wholly Antipodal countries that can fly this flag anywhere across their lands include: the Philippines, Brunei, Sarawak, and Taiwan.  Nations that are mostly Antiopdal include: Chile, Argentina, Cambodia, Greenland and Indonesia.  And nations with a good part of the area Antipodal include: New Zealand's North Island, Ecuador, South Vietnam, and Peru.

 
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Map Credit:  21:42, 8 November 2010 (UTC)
( (original upload date))kwami (talk). Original uploader was Kwamikagami at en.wikipedia CC-BY-SA-3.0; Released under the GNU Free Documentation License.


1 comment:

  1. The various antipodal flags presented this week are primarily teaching tools for geography. Additionally the flags presented so far can be used as special ethnic-earth elemental flags for persons who have parents from two different nations. Example being, a person who is Anglo-English and Han-Chinese is entitled to fly the UK-China Antipode Flag. Capisce?

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