481–490 of 540 posts
90% of the world's population and 68% of the land mass being in the northen hemisphere is probably a good enough reason to put north up top on a map.
I wonder if there is a map with a tilted earth that puts the majority of the landmasses in the middle and the oceans at the edges, in order to have the land viewable with the least amount of distortion for the given projection.
For a list of alternative projections
And also this one for a whole deep dive in the topic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map_projection
People have gotten very creative about the topic .. also.. the UN actually uses a north-centered view of the world to compromise on this.. it’s really cool
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2f/Sm...
I wonder if there is a map with a tilted earth that puts the majority of the landmasses in the middle and the oceans at the edges, in order to have the land viewable with the least amount of distortion for the given projection.
It is a novel (I would say amazing) map projection that manages to retain proportional landmass size by using an "ioso-area-mapping" technique. It maps the sphere to a tetrahedron and then slices and unfolds that tetrahedron into a 2d plane.
The method places all of the continents into the map (proportionally!), while also being able to tessellate (so you can move the "viewfinder" to focus on different map subsections without changing the overall map). It's easier to see than describe. The "4" link is an example of modifying the "view" of the tessellated surface to create maps that focus on particular regions.
The downside is that "north" and "south" are rather arbitrary points on the map, instead of being at the top/bottom.
It is still by far my favorite 2D map projection!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Islas Malvinas are Argentinian.
Not in these three fairly important ways: actual control, the wishes of the people who actually live there, de jure recognition by most countries. Otherwise, sure, totally and wholly Argentinian.
You can ask Ireland.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Deciding to put south, or north, at the top of maps is a decision of consequence. Psychologically, we tend to view things nearer the top as ‘good’ and those lower as ‘bad.’ This can influence our interpretation of maps at both global and local scales." There it is, the implication that "North is up" is morally bad. Since it's an implication, it does not need to be read that way, but it's clearly there.
> Psychologically, we tend to view things nearer the top as ‘good’ and those lower as ‘bad.’ The oldest maps in the world and in Europe are oriented North at the top and the essential feature in the middle. For the Babylonians it was the Euphrates and Babylon itself. For the Europeans it was the Mediterranean. The implication that everyone sees up/North as better means that generations of Greek or Roman cartographers…
This isn't true, the oldest maps from the Middle Ages were oriented towards the East. (In fact the very word "orient" refers to the East.) The convention of putting north at the top is only a couple of centuries old.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
First time seeing this and it feels so offensive. I'm somewhat okay with the term developed and developing countries, though not too much [1]. But this just feels discriminatory. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factfulness
Don’t bother trying to learn the new shibboleths. By the time the majority has accepted them, they’ll be outdated and the progressives will have moved onto another set. Before ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ we had ‘first world’ and ‘third world’.
Click on New Zealand and you get a nearly perfect "East is up" map.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Psychologically, we tend to view things nearer the top as ‘good’ and those lower as ‘bad.’ The oldest maps in the world and in Europe are oriented North at the top and the essential feature in the middle. For the Babylonians it was the Euphrates and Babylon itself. For the Europeans it was the Mediterranean. The implication that everyone sees up/North as better means that generations of Greek or Roman cartographers…
> The oldest maps in the world and in Europe are oriented North at the top This isn't true, the oldest maps from the Middle Ages were oriented towards the East. (In fact the very word "orient" refers to the East.) The convention of putting north at the top is only a couple of centuries old.
The oldest known world map is the Babylonian Imago Mundi from around the 6th century BCE which has north at the top. Claudius Ptolemy's Geographia also specified north was at the top in 2nd century.
Historically, the prize position on a world map was not the top, but the center.
