Psycho geography

tkb reminds us of the Alternative Structure of the Union, Douglas Hofstadter's analogy in Gödel, Escher, Bach for the background knowledge humans must share in order to communicate. The ASU is the USA in your head, but which you must navigate using a map of the real USA. Everyone's ASUs differ from the real USA, and from each other; but not only will all of them show New York, it will usually be possible to agree on a correspondence between my Tennessee and your Tennessee.

Another itch Hofstadter scratches, at book length, is 'What is the X of Y?' Who is the President of the United Kingdom: The Queen or Tony Blair? Why?

I flew on the London Eye this morning with my friend Lynsey, failing to catch a dusting of the snow that didn't settle. She told me about the Wheel of Birmingham and its recorded commentary relating to Paris. [Non-metropolitan readers, forgive me for being two months late with this news.]

So, she asked, is the Champs-Élysées of Birmingham the Gas Street Basin?