Ok, it's not really a problem with America, just a problem with the perception of straight lines like the USA-Canada border. It's roughly the latitude line 49 degrees north. A line that goes East-West, on a straight line. Except that latitude lines aren't straight - except the equator. Just look on a globe and you'll see what I ...

SQL Server 2008 has spatial types which are very useful for all kinds of applications. I thought it would be nice to produce one of those charts like you get in maps, telling you the distance between cities. So I start by populating the data. This uses the geography data type, which understands about the spherical nature of the world. The data is ...