The True Size of Countries • Hacker News Board

Re: The True Size of Countries

#41

Post by jasonjei » Thu, Jan 05, 2017, 6:30 PM UTC

I notice Puerto Rico and possibly some other territories are missing in the United States selection. Is that deliberate since PR is quite different from the US?

Re: The True Size of Countries

#42

Post by pokemongoaway » Thu, Jan 05, 2017, 6:30 PM UTC

This makes me wonder if there's some sort of official world database for how national borders are drawn... -- how often they're redrawn -- how often they're updated -- if there are different/conflicting databases of border data

Surely drawing each line wasn't as straight forward as it appears on maps - in history and in practice.

Re: The True Size of Countries

#43

Post by beojan » Thu, Jan 05, 2017, 6:39 PM UTC

peeters wrote: post #38

thrownblown wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You people are silly. If Australia is an island, then Antarctica wins. 'Nuff said. ANTARCTICA 5,400,000 sq mi AUSTRALIA 2,969,900 sq mi GREENLAND 836,330 sq mi

...I never said it wasn't? I was just objecting to calling North America an island.

He was referring to the fact that Antarctica isn't connected to any other continent either.

Re: The True Size of Countries

#44

Post by champion » Thu, Jan 05, 2017, 6:59 PM UTC

dpierce9 wrote: post #30

From The West Wing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OH1bZ0F3zVU

One of my favorite West Wing moments. So good.

Re: The True Size of Countries

#45

Post by theoh » Thu, Jan 05, 2017, 7:01 PM UTC

pavel_lishin wrote: post #27

manojlds wrote: post #6

It is surprising that a lot of educated folks don't know about this. I always run into folks who think Greenland is the biggest island. Edit: on Australia being continent - now I come across as a fool. But I hope people understood what I meant. Also, I have had to argue against folks who said Greenland should also be a continent since it is bigger than Australia.

> It is surprising that a lot of educated folks don't know about this. I always run into folks who think Greenland is the biggest island. If it's the only projection you've ever seen - and globes aren't all that common - it's a reasonable misconception. Kind of makes you wonder what other projections we're carrying around in our heads.

Well, speaking for myself, definitely not the Futamura projections. Way too high a level of abstraction to remember.

Re: The True Size of Countries

#46

Post by jacobolus » Thu, Jan 05, 2017, 7:13 PM UTC

Makes me want to get back to working on my conformal octahedral butterfly map project: http://i.imgur.com/Y6ki0l9.jpg

Re: The True Size of Countries

#47

Post by alva » Thu, Jan 05, 2017, 7:29 PM UTC

This really blew my mind. Thanks!

Re: The True Size of Countries

#48

Post by moioci » Thu, Jan 05, 2017, 7:30 PM UTC

Just for fun, I laid the UK over the eastern US with London roughly on top of Atlanta. Edinburgh falls very near Indianapolis. Now from Google maps, the straight line distance from Atlanta to Indianapolis is about 429 miles, while London to Edinburgh is 331. This leads me to believe that this tool is not accurately doing what it purports to be.