11–20 of 351 posts
The cool thing is that you can pan the map in the different projections, which isn't possible with most maps: most tend to be static images.
There are certainly some good reasons to put yourself there. Most planning for your civilization that calls for a map is going to use “home” as a starting point and you’ll go “out” from there.
But it’s still a fun observation.
I liked the talk so much I set it to music and listen to it at the gym:
Unfortunately I'm not entirely sure how to get Google Maps to always start up in the 3d sphere mode. Half the time in firefox it just reverts back to a flat map.
Obligatory xkcd, with on-topic alt-text: https://xkcd.com/977/ For a more distorted way to see the world, try: http://andersk.mit.edu/euler-spiral-projection/
There was a memorable scene from "The West Wing" on the biases imposed by most map projections, in particular, how Mercator makes North America look huge: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLqC3FNNOaI
Obligatory xkcd, with on-topic alt-text: https://xkcd.com/977/ For a more distorted way to see the world, try: http://andersk.mit.edu/euler-spiral-projection/
My parents have a map of bird migrations and there are some birds that have migratory routes that feel "disjoint" when looking at other projections.
Another example is World map of prehistoric human migrations https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:World_map_of_prehist...
Every kid should have a globe to understand countries and distortion better.
