Subject: reverse fictionary asides

From: James Kushner <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 12 Sep 2005 16:40:50 -0400

Hello all!
 Two asides regarding the reverse-fictionary game:
 
1. I personally thought that the proper definition for "esquivalience" was 
"the degree to which a piece of music resembles Latin-flavored orchestral 
pop music of the late 1950s and 1960s." (See 
http://www.spaceagepop.com/esquivel.htm for more info.)

 2. For that matter, I seem to have taken it into my head that 
"cartographer's fraud" is a universally understood term, but it apparently 
appears in no dictionary. How ironic. Does anyone know if there is a 
universally-recognized term that fits the definition (the practice of 
deliberately introducing errors into published maps for purposes of 
establishing and defending its copyright)?
 Later,
James

---

From: Pierre Abbat <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 13 Sep 2005 00:36:13 -0400

> establishing and defending its copyright)?

I googled "esquivalience" and found a Wikipedia page about deleting the 
article, which led me to [[Nihilartikel]], which has the terms "trap street" 
and "mountweazel". However, when I've seen such a thing on a map, it wasn't a 
street. There was a map of Ohio with both Circleville and Scircleville, and I 
guess one was a mountweazel.

phma

---

From: James Kushner <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 13 Sep 2005 13:57:28 -0400

Hi all!

> guess one was a mountweazel.

 Funny that you mentioned Ohio... Nova and I once (in 1991) spent a good 
hour or so driving around southwestern Ohio looking for a town called 
Knockemstiff. It's in the Rand-McNally road atlas, in Ross County, about six 
or seven miles southwest of Chillicothe. It's on other maps, too; Mapquest 
shows it, and there are other references to it on the web now. However, no 
one we encountered in the area had ever heard of it, and it has no listing 
in the U.S. Census. Is this a mountweazel of long standing, or just a real 
(albeit obscure) place with a funny name?
 (It wouldn't surprise me if it were a phony; Ohio and Michigan maps are 
often ripe with mountweazels, as cartographers tweak each other over their 
football rivalry. One Michigan map listed towns called Goblu and Beatosu. I 
believe this map was reprinted in Mark Monmonier's _How to Lie with Maps_, 
which I really must get a copy of...)
 --James