Some of you have had the pleasure of getting to hear one of my enraged rants on this topic before. But for those of you who have been in micronationalism less than four years, let me tell you the story of the greatest failure of the MCS.

Erik and myself founded the MCS in 2000, and by 2001 the two of us, along with a few other people, had drawn up the full shape of the continents of Micras. We designed it to look realistic, to have just the right amount of land mass of each sort, and so on. And we made an IRONCLAD UNBREAKABLE RULE that no new land could be added, because otherwise every new country would want its own continent and the idea of a consistent geography of Micras would become a mockery.

Then Ryan got control of the MCS. He did a lot of good things and was a decent cartographer, but he also made one extremely stupid move. When some countries wanted more land, instead of telling them to shrivel and die, he gave in and added a whole lot of poorly drawn unbalanced ugly continents and islands into odd corners of the map where they didn't belong.

For the past four years, I (and I think Erik also) have been trying to get rid of these. The MCS has so far refused, both because they don't like change and because there were countries inhabiting these islands that would have to be removed.

Right now, with Jess' generous gift to Shireroth, one of the four offending territories has fallen under Shirerithian control. The island of Leng (the Amokolian territory of Marisco), way in the north, will soon be ours. I think we should celebrate Amokolia's long and glorious history, as well as Jess' generousity, by blowing it up, going one quarter of the way to restoring the MCS Map to its pristine unsullied state.

Let me go on to explain exactly the reasons why the island of Leng is an offense against God and nature:

I: It is too cold for anyone to live there. It's about 500 miles north of Hyperborea. I've always maintained that the northern part of Hyperborea is basically uninhabited because it's too cold to survive there. Even the far south of Hyperborea has a climate similar to Greenland, and its people live in igloos for a good portion of the year. The latitude of Leng on Micras corresponds to the latitude of far northern Greenland on Earth. Except for maybe a few research stations, it's completely uninhabitable. Yet every single country that's claimed land there has given it large cities. During some eras, entire countries have been based on Leng, capital and all. Unless the theme of your country is "domed far-future settlement", any sort of habitation in Leng whatsoever is absurd.

II: The size of Leng on the MCS Map is so misleading as to make it useless. On most map projections, the sizes of objects near the pole are hugely skewed. This is why Greenland usually looks so big on most Earth maps (it's actually only about the size of Mexico). A the length of a degree of longitude near the poles can be determined by multiplying the length of a degree at the equator by the cosine of the latitude. Leng's at around 85 degrees latitude; the cosine of 85 less than .1. That means Leng is in fact a bit smaller than the average island in the Khaz Modan region. Below, I have placed an image of Leng as depicted at 85 degrees north, and Leng as it would appear if it were at the same latitude as Khaz Modan. Leng is not an island, it's a rock.



III: Leng is completely covered by ice. Not in the sense that Greenland is covered by ice. In the sense of "no one could possibly notice it was there without advanced sensing equipment." If we take the ice coverage on the map to be some sort of maximal area of ice in winter, some areas like Hyperborea or Vesteralen in Stormark might be frozen in in the winter. But Leng ought to be constantly and completely covered by the ice sheet. There are islands on Earth covered by the ice sheet that are still being discovered - no one even knew they were there until someone aimed a radar at the ice and found readings consistent with land instead of water.

Leng is an uninhabitable and undetectable tiny rock completely covered by ice. However, its inclusion on the MCS Map encourages countries to claim it as a center of civilization. Stormark had a colony there a long time ago. On the 10 series of maps, the Kingdom of Calundy was a complete Leng-based civilization, complete with capital Marisco City. On the 12 series of maps, it's been a whole province of Amokolia, with two different cities on it (one of which is classified as "large"). The Amokolian city of Danish was located on an outlying "island" all of one-fiftieth of a square mile in area. As long as Leng remains on the map, these sorts of mistakes will continue to be made.

Shireroth has always been one of the strongest supporters of high quality MCS cartography. I ask the Landsraad and Kaiser to petition the MCS to remove Leng from the map completely, under the argument that it is too small to be worth depicting and completely underneath the ice sheet and therefore invisible.

Let us restore the map to its original pristine non-Leng-having state. ONLY THEN WILL THE GODS BE APPEASED!!!!!!!!!

NO! http://micras.org/maps/pole_north.png

That image displays the size. And also, we have decided that Oleslaad-Svensland will have Marisco and Lokistaad. They are our communist provinces...

I think really this is because Scott wants Hyperborea to be the most northerly of the inhabited zones of Micras, however I have always hated the implausable polar islands where no allowance is made by the claim holder for the totally inhospitable conditions (an honourable exception for Hyperborea). Therefore MoMA is wholly in favour of either testing a weapon of INSANELY EXCESSIVE DESTRUCTION (Patents pending, MOMA/SAVAK) or creating a vast reserve for the warlike polar bears who once ate an entire team of New Britannian arctic explorers, and declaring it to be human free (either through evacuation or merely letting the polar bears eat the misguided colonists).

Why not? From a Shirerithian point of view, coolies.

Good luck getting the Council to accept this. I mean, given it'll be our land, the usual argument you give will not be valid - but Micras *is* slowly filling up and Pete is aware of this.

Edit: Scott, I know you can argue that they should just reduce inactive nations and such - but the counter-argument is "Okay, let's do that, but why not keep the island anyway? Every little helps."

Or make it the Shirithian equivalent of the salt mines.

Polar bears, salt mines, MoMa base, refrigerator, and by all means, give it to Hyperborea. I'm loth to destroy entire islands. I remember once when Hyperborea itself was melted into the sea, and had to be re-envisioned or something.

Do note there are debates in Gralus about the constitutionality of Amokolia giving half it's land to Shireroth ... and which half ... (I actually like the island on the grounds of it's resources ...). If it makes you happy, we can drag in a small magically powered sun ... it's been done before ...

Why dont you like Leng...I mean there is a whole football team there!

Noted. The idea of Amokolia ceding its land to Shireroth should go to the Landsraad. This is not something which should be taken lightly. There are a number of variables here that must be considered including how permanent this is, who gets what, the issue of the Island, the interests of our allies etc.. If a Duke could bring this before the Landsraad we can make a decision properly and carefully.

Um ... first the idea of Amokolia ceding land to Shireroth at all and what parts needs to run through Gralus ... or Amokolia officially post leave of leaving the union ...

@Jess: That image also shows Marisco as being very very small. The difference is shapes is probably based on what projection we're assuming the original map to be, but they both agree that Marisco's tiny and covered in ice.

@Ben: If Shireroth (or Gralus) is occupying the island, it's not going to be available for new countries anyway. Besides, if they cared that much about having lots of land left, they wouldn't keep granting expansions to Shireroth.

@Andreas: One thing I respect about Gralus is that, although it uses magic, it does so in a reasonable way instead of just throwing an absurd "magic" solution at every problem. Don't ruin that by figuring out some ad hoc ultra-powerful magic spell that can allow you to access otherwise inaccessible resources. If you're going to take that route, you might as well just magic those resources into existence without using the island at all.

I respect that comment . Just better not mention New Myzoria then ... but it's more the constitutional stuff I'm worried about than aught else. The constitution most certainly does not allow giving away of lands ad hoc, but it does allow nations to retain control of their lands ... but it doesn't specify if this includes after they die ...
Ah well, as long as the Triumvirate and Jess agree it should all be fine whichever way you read the constitution. Just Shireroth shouldn't count their chickens before they hatch, even if they are planning to smash the egg
Most likely scenario at this stage is for Gralus to keep Leng as part of it's share, but as a citizen in Oleslaad Svensland I'll try and make sure that the island is inhabited in a reasonable manner ... eco domes and the like.

Though remember too that not all MCS nations are totally worried about realism (if they were, they'd be on GSO), and some are more interested in approximately squaring with reality but otherwise using the land as I like ... so approximately counting it as fairly northern greenland/Antartica may not be out of the question ... even if true realists would like to say it's further than that ...

Lets just agree to call Leng "Puffin Island".

I'm staying out of this...

Leng was never intended to be a habitable island. In the real world we have a lot of islands that are similar. Look at the islands populating the northern regions of Canada. I always stressed climatic limitations wherever they were applicable. Yet people always seemed to find ways around those limitations, and trying to put anything down as written rules was like pulling teeth without anesthetic. And, I might add, they often cited Shirerithian examples as reasons to avoid climatic limitations. Flying islands? Hyperborean civilization? Future technology? Magic? There's a hundred excuses.

If anything, all that needs to be done is for the MCS to launch a climatic commission to study and map seasonal climates, temperatures and zones so people can properly assess the environmental limitations of their claims. I should have done this years ago, but alas, I wasn't as knowledgeable in environmental science as I am now.

You should have expected reason to be ignored.. Land is land to people...

No matter how small in reality! *looks at Scott's map*

Small but perfectly formed as Jeremy might say/

Hey... small but perfectly formed is alright by me...

would it be acceptable if the islands were shifted from the pack ice to open sea - I like the shapes of Sypyr and Hypernostria

Islands don't move..... That would make even less sense than them just appearing as they did..

Ice caps can move though ... wasn't there talk of global warming on MCS at some point?

Uh oh!

NO NO NO NO Please, in the name of all that is sane on three planets, NO.

Supposed global warming rules the media an earth, where I spend most of my time (RL and all). It has become the Right of Passage for all of Science to pledge allegiance to the Mighty Gore and His Revealed Word, or be banished to No Funding, Osctracism, and weird web pages.

No global warming on Micras, please. I'll help Scott nuke the island first, which can then bring on nuclear winter! (Remember Nuclear winter? That was the previous thing that was going to KILL US ALL!)

Arrgghhhhhhhh!

Yeah but Nuclear Winter was supposed to be brought on by El Nino's predecessor phenomenon, Red Soviets.

It's global climate change anyways...

You could budge them up a little each update until they were about halfway in and halfway out of the ice, that would be a sensible location for them.

However, I agree that having islands only one pixel away from the South pole is a bit silly.