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Still on the Shark Cafe story arc, Sherman's Lagoon strip by Jim Toomey, this time with a joke about California's budget woes (which have since largely been resolved... kinda.

GPS-in-law

A classic mother-in-law joke from Sherman's Lagoon strip by Jim Toomey.

Census of Marine Life

 

A few years ago there began a monumental mapping/taxonomic project called the Census of Marine Life to identify the thousands upon thousands of types of oceanic life not yet explored... as well as the few humans have explored.  Sherman's Lagoon decided to play along.  The COML is still going.  And, on top of that, if you want to get involved, over at the citizen-scientist site Zooniverse there is a Sea Floor Explorer project where every-day people can help comb through thousands of photos of the ocean floor identifying all the crazy stuff that can be found there. 

Underwater Millennium Falcon

About once a year the gang from Sherman's Lagoon strip by Jim Toomey go on a global adventure that often involves a map of some sort.  This time they decided to go looking for a UFO that was found at the bottom of the ocean.  

This idea is ripped from actual headlines.  Earlier this year CNN reported that a team of shipwreck hunters found a strange shape at the bottom of the Baltic Sea that actually looks a lot like the outline of the Millennium Falcon.  It's anybody's guess as to what that thing could be:

Tracking the sea-doggies

If we can count tracking as a kind of mapping (a bit of a stretch maybe) then here's a funny take on that concept underwater from Sherman's Lagoon strip by Jim Toomey

Faithful

In this Sherman's Lagoon strip by Jim Toomey from September of 2005 our friendly sea creatures are  contemplating another road trip... using a folding map with fins... at the bottom of the sea...Comics!

The coolest of the four Carolinas

This example from Jim Toomey's Sherman's Lagoon strip from November of 2009 makes fun of Sherman's abysmal geographic education... or his abysmal education in general.

It's also the first time South Carolina gets a mention in this blog, so that puts us at a total of 23 states specifically mentioned in the blog.

Lots of swimming

Here we have another strip from Jim Toomey's Sherman's Lagoon from last July. In this one we have another potential clue as to the whereabouts of Sherman's Lagoon.  It is apparently 8,681 miles away from The Gulf of Mexico.  The fastest route from Sherman's Lagoon to the Gulf of Mexico would be a "straight line" Great Circle route... unfortunately there aren't any 8,681-mile-long "straight line" Great Circle routes to the Gulf of Mexico that originate in any oceans.  If they don't take a straight-line route then Sherman's Lagoon is still unlikely to be in the Atlantic Ocean since the Gulf of Mexico can be reached from almost any part of the Atlantic Ocean in less than 8,681 miles. Most geographical candidates for being 8,681 miles away from The Gulf of Mexico lie in the West Pacific or the Indian Ocean side of South Africa.  However, the very next day in this story arc the team arrives at the "West Entrance" of the Panama Canal in order to arrive at the Gulf of Mexico via the Caribbean Sea (even though the entrances to the Panama Canal are actually mostly north and south of each other):

So that means that the environs around New Zealand are actually a prime candidate for the location of Sherman's Lagoon.

There have been clues like this before as to the location of Sherman's Lagoon, but they've all come to naught.

Water, water everywhere

Let's start the year with Jim Toomey's Sherman's Lagoon.  For some reason the mindless tossing of the Earth ball in this strip makes me happy, even if the joke in the comic is mean.

Navigating to Walden Pond

Sherman's Lagoon by Jim Toomey starting off another globe-trotting adventure.  This time to Walden Pond... for Christmas.... for some reason.  The last panel gets it a place in this blog.We've seen Sherman's suitcase before.


Did you know Jim Toomey did a TED Talk?

Portable GPS

Sherman's Lagoon by Jim Toomey is no stranger to mapping cartoons. This one is practically begging to be posted.

Mapquest Lagoon

This isn't the first time Sherman and Hawthorne the crab have headed north. They did it before in the summer of 2007 when Hawthorne found an alaskan king she-crab on the internet and fell in love. They went to visit her, but when he found out that she was massively huge he beat a hasty retreat. What I don't understand is how the north pole is only 11,473 miles away, but the Bering Strait is 14,326 miles away. What sort of tropical lagoon could possibly match those directions? But a bigger problem is that 11,473 miles south of the North Pole is... Antarctica. The only clear, straight-shot oceanic path from the south to the North Pole goes through the Bering Strait. So, a ring skirting around the southern continent that would place Sherman's Lagoon somewhere in the Ross Sea, a the edge of the Ross Ice Shelf (or what's left of it). No wonder Thornton the polar bear (perpetually "hibernating" in Sherman's Lagoon) feels so at home there. But THAT's not even the biggest problem...

Nowhere is 14,326 miles due south of the Bering Strait. The maximum South to North distance, from the South Pole to the North Pole, is 12,430 miles. After that one would be traveling south again.
So those Mapquest directions don't work at all, much less for trying to triangulate the actual location of Sherman's Lagoon.

.... also, there is no "I-70 North".  US interstates are given even numbers when they run North-South and even numbers when they run East-West. I-70 runs East-West, so there isn't an "I-70 North"... well at least not in the US.  There is one in Columbia, but it's an entirely land-locked road.   And the I-70 in the US has one terminus in the middle of nowhere in Utah, and the other end in Baltimore, MD, which I suppose counts as a coastal town with a lagoon.... but it's not tropical and doesn't sport the palm trees that are often depicted.  

Flat Lagoon

This is the Sherman's Lagoon take on the Climate Change debate. It connects to the flat earth temes explored in some earlier posts. And in this one by Steve Sack:

Adapting Lagoon

As the story continues Sherman looks in on his perpetually vacationing polar bear buddy, Thornton, who hasn't seen the North Pole in forever:

So this would be a good place for a global warming cartoon that involves maps. Let's see... How about this:

Google Lagoon

So the real reason I'm doing two-fers this week is that there was a recent series of map references in a story arc in "Sherman's Lagoon" by Jim Toomey. The title character Sherman the shark occasionally goes on world-tour adventures with various buddies. This time they head to the North Pole to check out Global Warming for themselves. Let's ahve a look, shall we:

This of course isn't the first time the Sherman's Lagoon crew has Google-Earth'd themselves: