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Here's a great illustration of why it's bad to rely on metadata alone.
There's a nice project out there called GeoURL. Bloggers figure out what their coordinates are, and include that information in a META tag in their weblog. This information consists of a latitude/longitude pair.
Students of Murphy's Law will instantly see the potential for mayhem. If you look at a map of the 5000 weblogs with GeoURL data, you'll see there's a curious cluster around the East Horn of Africa. Is this some new phenomenon sweeping the blogosphere? A blog craze in Yemen? Fishermen blogging from the Indian Ocean? Somalis moblogging from Mogadishu?
Nope - it's hapless Czechs and Germans who got their latitude and longitude transposed. If you don't believe me, look it up!
Can anybody find other such bogus clusters?
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Eating the happiest cows in the world
Scott and Scurvy
Why did 19th century explorers forget the simple cure for scurvy?
No Evidence of Disease
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Controlled Tango Into Terrain
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Dabblers and Blowhards
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Attacked By Thugs
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Dating Without Kundera
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A Rocket To Nowhere
A Space Shuttle rant
Best Practices For Time Travelers
The story of John Titor, visitor from the future
100 Years Of Turbulence
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Every Damn Thing
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Maciej Cegłowski
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