Anton the Penguin's ruminations 4/24: Islands

Why is Greenland an island? Seriously, it's huge, and yet they call it an 'island'...and then New Guinea, Madagscar, Honshu, Luzon, Sumatra, Borneo, Baffin Island, Victoria Island, Cuba, UK, Ireland, Sri Lanka, Sicily, New Zealand, Hokkaido, Celebes, Ellesmere Island, Tasmania, Java, Hispaniola, Crete, Cyprus, Newfoundland, Corsica, Iceland, Jamaica...

..why are these islands? For those who have been on any of them, they are not small...compared to continents, yes, but islands are typically your average small little single-palmed island in the sea, yet for those on them, they stretch out for ages, and you cannot safely call them sea-surrounded 'islands'. I live on a huge 'island', New Zealands North Island, and it is huge for me, I've travelled right across and there's HEAPS of land...so what is it like on a CONTINENT, maybe Asia, or North America, where land stretches for ages, like there is no sea...how does such a thing work?

My point is, I have been ruminating and have thought about it, and these are NOT your typical islands! They are huge for a human being! So why do they call them islands? Does "island" have a new meaning all of a sudden? An island can be like Haulashore Island, which is a tiny little bit of land off the coast of Nelson (NZ), or an island could be Kapiti Island, a bigger, but still small, piece of land off the coast of Paekakariki (NZ), but how could you call Madagascar an "island"?

Your thoughts on islands...and who lives on one? I know a few here are from the Phillipines, and some are from Sicily, some from the UK, some from Ireland, some probably from Japan.

So please...ISLANDS?

-Penguin

An island is a mass of land surrounded by water on all sides; not connected to another body of land. That is why Manhattan is an island, and Hawaii, which is a series of tiny islands, as well as Ireland and Great Britain (the British Isles) and all the other gigantic ones that stretch for miles, preventing it's inhabitants to see the water.

As the saying goes - size doesn't matter.

Apple
I am a Rock; I am an Island

Yes and No. There is a whole scientific school of thought that differs from this. A continent, even surrounded by water, is considered a continent if it has its own flora/fauna, has geological/tectonic independence and has it owns culture SEPARATE from the closest continent to it. Greenland is too much like North America hence it is an island, Australia is separate from any other continent based on the above criteria so is it is considered a continent. Those Brits are too much like the rest of Europe.

As always, there are exceptions to this rule.

hehe, funny but again YES and NO. A small penis may be able to compensate for its lack of depth with other knowledge. But in many cases a small penis is just that, deficient. Oh wait--you are talking about ISLANDS.

When it comes to Australia, it is not officially a continent. It has to be joined with Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands and then it becomes Oceania (Australasia is Aussie, NZ, and PNG). I'm not sure how it all works, but trust me; New Zealand has different flora, fauna, AND animals (we have a flightless ground-burrowing parrot ) from the rest of the world. We're not a continent because we are not big enough. The official continents are:

North America
South America
Europe
Asia
Africa
Oceania
Antarctica

-Penguin

It is ONLY "official" depending on WHO you ask my young Anton. Usually Australia is considered both since it is too small for one, too large for the other.

Ask a geologist or a geographer, and I know many here, or ask the inhabitants of the land in question and they will say differently. Nice thing about the physical/social/biological sciences there IS no definitive answer. That is why I give those frustrating "Yes and No" answers all the time.

Hmmmm. Paul Simon might protest for not getting credit.

BTW didn't some other famous writer say, No Man is an Island.

So you see Anton an island is all in the figment of the beholder. Don't forget language is only a means of communicating. The depth and nuances of meaning are only relevant to psuedo-intellectuals.

Oceania is NOT a continent, Anton. I don't know what book you've been reading, but there are only 7 continents and they are:

North America
South America
Europe
Asia
Africa
Australia
Anarctica

Actually, Oceania is a continent and Australia is a country in the continent of Oceania.
There is some controversy about Antartica: should we consider it a continent, even if there's few or no life on it?

I always tought that North and South America were a sole continent. Then, what happened to Central America?

Giorgio Luigi Gambino

As a famous philosopher once said....."No man is an island...unless his name is Madagascar!"

(Actually it was in a beer advert shown in the UK)

P.S. Sorry to lower the intellectual tone of this thread!

Not at all, because according to the criteria I listed first Madagascar would be considered a continent. I wanted to list it as an exception but felt I was getting too long winded.

Isn't that where all the cute lemurs are?

They are joined, yes, but like Africa to Asia, they spawn off into their own huge land masses. So they are seperate continents.

Central America is part of North America.

ShortCake, I have, at least, been reading.

Frankie, that was a great quote.

-Penguin