Yesterday's xkcd comic dragged up memories of a small fence line discussion last year:
The latest team of surveyors in my neighborhood had used the 1988 local declination value and neglected to adjust for the changes over the intervening 35 years. This amounted to about 3.5 degrees, which put the buildings, sidewalks, and even city streets at considerable odds with their new maps. Double check figures? Nah. Why bother, the magic computer box on the instrument sed whut it sed. All of those century-old buildings and two-century old streets were clearly in error. So the new property lines ran through buildings, carving off a few feet here and there to new owners.
Glad that I had a 65 year old survey map of my place, back when people did math and double-checked it. Strange how that map was in agreement with, well, reality.
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