91–100 of 119 posts
This reminds me of the Peters Projection, one of the weirder attempts to map the oblate spheroid nature of the earth to a 2D plane. http://www.petersmap.com/
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Mercator distortion has nothing to do with the anecdote in the parent post. There the allegation was of deliberate inaccuracy, which renders a map non-functional for most purposes. All 2D map projections produce either distortion or discontinuity. Neither of these affects a map's functionality in the way that outright inaccuracy does.
Oh yes, I agree that this is an example of purely the geometry, not a political attempt. But I know people who , upon seeing the distortion, were surprised at how many maps were "wrong". This shows that you can't rely on the market to weed out inaccurate maps. After all, a map that had the south at the top (rather than the bottom) would be viewed as "wrong" and would be penalized with poor sales. The idea that the ma…
As an aside, I have often wondered at the way North=up became, and remains, completely universal. An upside-down globe "looks" as wrong to me as an upside-down portrait. Obviously there's no reason this must be so; it's nothing more than familiarity with the shapes of the continents from a particular perspective.
Some day, I'd like to have a globe or a big mercator-type map with South at the top (i.e. with the written labels upside-down from normal), and see how long it would take to become accustomed to it.
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> "There's China" I said. "And there's Taiwan." You knew her disposition. (You were her friend). What was the goal of that comment, to incent a fruitless political discussion? Edit: Whoa there. Why the downvotes? I am genuinely curious why the parent decided it was a good idea to stoke that discussion. I have friends whose political views are far from mine, and there are just DMZ topics that I don't dare bring up. Fo…
Facts as concrete as physical dimensions are not really open to political debate.
There are a lot of topics I'd love to say aren't open to political debate, because I personally consider them axioms of basic sanity, but the existence of people who disagree unfortunately leaves the debate open.
There's a couple of regulations for selling GPS enabled devices in China (I am a software guy on a major PND manufacturer with products being sold in China). - The map data is scrambled (GPS coordinates are encrypted). - To correlate a GPS position with the map data, you plug the HW position through an encryption library (which you have to compile in a specific government building in Beijing). - Border drawing is str…
I'm sure there are thousands of Chinese engineers with careers transforming map coordinates. You don't want to put these people out of a job, do you?
Humans are funny.
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It is also worth noting, and easily forgotten, that part of 'historical' Tibet is in India. Already been one war fought along that border.
> that part of 'historical' Tibet is in India. It's also worth noticing that India was never an integral country in the past.
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It is also worth noting, and easily forgotten, that part of 'historical' Tibet is in India. Already been one war fought along that border.
> that part of 'historical' Tibet is in India. It's also worth noticing that India was never an integral country in the past.
Here's a completely anecdotal, "a friend of a friend.." story, but I think it's a cool yi and you'll enjoy it: A friend of a friend is a cartographer who works in DC. According to this person, the official subway map of DC distorts the true geography of the city -- and the subway lines -- as much for security purposes as it does graphic design purposes. The red line, in particular, apparently is drawn with a complete…
Orange and Blue lines go under the Mall: this is reflected on the map. IIRC there is one stop at the Mall, several close. There aren't any Red line stops near the Mall.
several important government buildings
It's D.C. You can't shake a stick without hitting an important government building.
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AFAIK, military maps are still secret in most places. This is because they contain information that cannot be easily derived from hi-res satellite imagery. Stuff like "how much weight can this bridge support", "how deep is this ford", etc. This is important if you are trying to, say, drive tanks through unfamiliar terrain.
But the thing is that most bridges which has a weight limit on them has that limit on a sign next to them. And if you want to know the depth of a ford, well you can go and measure it. So I really don't get why they would make them secret.
It's helpful to know the ford depths of a river crossing before you get there with your tanks.
Take a fanciful example. One could not, say, send a U.S. Army survey team to measure the depth of the Orne before the allies landed in Normandy. The Germans would really object to that kind of thing.
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Here is my perspective on Taiwan grossly simplified. A bunch of Han Chinese moved to the island. The Dutch established a small colony there. Japan took over. Post-WW2 they were given independence from Japan. The pre-communist leader of China moved to Taiwan and took over politically. The KMT party ruled until recently, when Taiwan peacefully transitioned to a democracy and now has two main parties. There is nothing i…
You don't understand the problem at all. Both PRC and ROC say that Taiwan is entirely under Chinese control, that there's only one China, and that they govern all of its territory.
Taiwan is a democracy, and one of the major parties firmly opposes any concept of Chinese rule and seeks recognition of Taiwan. The other party leans towards being the sole leader of all of China. However in practice (being currently elected) they just improve economic ties with China while opposing unification or formal recognition of Taiwan.
The PRC sees Taiwan as a province of China that they should rule, as you mentioned.
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But the thing is that most bridges which has a weight limit on them has that limit on a sign next to them. And if you want to know the depth of a ford, well you can go and measure it. So I really don't get why they would make them secret.
So I really don't get why they would make them secret. It's helpful to know the ford depths of a river crossing before you get there with your tanks. Take a fanciful example. One could not, say, send a U.S. Army survey team to measure the depth of the Orne before the allies landed in Normandy. The Germans would really object to that kind of thing.