I was looking for people on myspace who live in far away and exotic places to add to my map, and I am disappointed most of you people who say you live in Greenland or Antarctica or Madagascar or the South Georgia Islands don't actually live there...if you know anyone who does, tell em to view my profile so I can get a dot from there.
According to Myspace there are 2308 inhabitants of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands between ages 18 and 100. I find that interesting considering that the South Georgia Islands and South Sandwich Islands (SGSSI) (further to the south-east) are a UK overseas territory see website. Continuous UK administration has been in place since 1908. At the height of the whaling period some 2,000 people lived on the island. Now there no permanent residents - but there are two British Antarctic Research Stations (Bird Island and King Edward Point), two Museum Curators and a Marine Officer and his wife.
Here is what it looks like ...
The Heard and McDonald Islands are also very far south... see website
If you are one of the 2039 estimated myspace residents of these places, you are just demonstrative of everything wrong with american culture. it's not an island so you can make a joke about big macs... currently there is no permanent resident population, and there are no ports or harbors... here is what really happened there: In the five years following the discovery of Heard Island in 1853, and of its reporting in newspapers around the world, more than 50 visits were made to land gangs on the island to kill elephant seals and render their oil.
Doesn't sound so cool anymore does it....
The killing and rendering of elephant seals at Heard Island commenced in 1854/55 and oil production peaked in 1857/58.
Following the near destruction of seals on the island by 1859, oil production continued until 1877. Up to this time more than 40 vessels, almost all from the north-eastern United States of America, had made over 100 voyages to the island.
The poor weather conditions at Heard Island and the lack of sheltered harbours along its coast meant that many vessels ran aground at the island, occasionally sinking in view of the sealing gangs that awaited their return.
There are few details of brief, sporadic visits to Heard Island by sealers and whalers in the early 20th century, and no records of sealing activities occurring on the McDonald Islands.
Now here is a little information about Christmas Island for the more than 3000 myspace residents of that Island who think it is a joke to say they are santa and live on Christmas Island (courtesy of wikipedia)
Since the late 1980s or early 1990s Christmas Island periodically received boatloads of refugees, mostly from Indonesia. These, and the occasional illegal fishing boat, were never a large issue, often welcomed by locals who looked forward to the exploding of the boats once the "boat people" had been processed. During 2001, Christmas Island received a large number of asylum seekers travelling by boat, most of them from the Middle East and intending to apply for asylum in Australia. The arrival of the Norwegian cargo vessel MV Tampa, which had rescued people from the sinking Indonesian fishing-boat Palapa in international waters nearby, precipitated a diplomatic standoff between Australia, Norway, and Indonesia. The vessel held 420 asylum seekers from Afghanistan, 13 from Sri Lanka, and five from Indonesia. The standoff eventually led to the asylum seekers being transported to Nauru for processing. Another boatload of asylum seekers was taken from Christmas Island to Papua New Guinea for processing, after it was claimed that many of the adult asylum seekers threw their children into the water, apparently in protest at being turned away. This was later proven to be false.
John Howard, the Australian Prime Minister, later passed legislation through the Australian Parliament which excised Christmas Island from Australia's migration zone, meaning that asylum seekers arriving there could not automatically apply for refugee status, allowing the Australian navy to relocate them to other countries as part of the Pacific Solution. As of 2005, the Department of Immigration has begun construction of an "Immigration Reception and Processing Centre", due for completion in late 2006. The facility is estimated to cost $210 million, and will contain 800 beds.
I don't think that's very cool.
As for the 1801 myspace residents of the Marshall Islands, I can only wonder why they want to live on a nuclear testing site.
Did you know that as of Dec 31 2005 there were more than 1.3 million US military personnel deployed in more than 100 countries? When you compare that to the estimated 10 million undocumented persons living in the US, I think it is silly to say for the US to say that there is a problem with undocumented people. I mean, for every armed American who is prepared to die to defend freedom and our way of life, there are 10 people who are living peacefully and just going about their business, living free in the USA. What's wrong with that? Just give em citizenship. Heck, give the whole world US citizenship. Why not. Whoever wants it should be able to get it, whoever doesn't want it doesn't have to have it.
I mean, seriously, if people on myspace can live wherever they want what's the big deal with a few immigrants?
Besides, most of the stuff we use in the USA is made somewhere else...
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