USS Clueless              Voyages of a restless mind

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Stardate 20010905.0855 (On Screen): It's possible to construct sentences which are syntactically correct but nonsensical: "What color is the sound of a violin?" Sometimes sentences can sound plausible but actually make no sense: "Who wins? the irresistible force or the immovable object?" (Tbey can't coexist; if there exists in any universe an immovable object then by definition that universe can't contain an irresistible force, and vice versa. Thus since they cannot both exist at the same time in a given universe, they can never meet.) In response one time to such a question, an exasperated philosopher responded, "That question is a meaningless noise."

I just read this BBC article and had that reaction to it, though what I was actually experiencing was culture shock. It is talking about how they're going to limit the ability of people to buy second homes in cities inside the National Parks, so as to make sure that the local residents aren't priced out of the market and prevented from themselves continuing to live there. That all makes sense in the microscopic, but my first reaction was "Cities in National Parks?"

But I guess, upon further consideration, that it does make sense. England has been settled for a long time; it's been civilized, more or less, since Emperor Claudius. To me, a "National Park" means Yellowstone or the Everglades or Banff: large areas of wilderness preserved for the future. But that really isn't possible in England. There isn't any virgin wilderness left there. (Heck; there isn't any virgin wilderness left in Massachusetts, and that's been "civilized" a heck of a lot less time than England.)

In the Canadian Rockies, there are four contiguous National Parks: Jasper, Yoho, Kootenay and Banff. From the northern tip of Jasper to the southern tip of Banff is a distance of about 420 kilometers. Starting from the center of London, that would take you to the Scottish border (at the Solway Firth). Between them they cover more than 20,000 square km. That's 8% of the total land area of the UK (and would probably approach a quarter of England proper). It's obvious that a park complex like that simply isn't possible in England. So if you want to have a reasonable sized National Park there, either you're going to have to gerrymander like mad (like Acadia), or you're you're going to have to accept that there will be cities in it, which is apparently what the the pragmatic Brits seem to have done.

That then raises the question of what the role of the city is within the Park; is it an intruder or actually part of the ambience? Do you regulate it to preserve the life of that city in pristine condition? What a strange concept! What a meaningless noise! (discussion in progress)