221–230 of 324 posts
Decades ago, when I was a child, I viewed the Mercator projection as old fashioned and stupid. In fact, I rarely saw it. Most maps were Robinson's projection ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robinson_projection ). It baffles me that anyone still uses Mercator projection for any serious purpose.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This was also exactly what I was taught in school when I was 10 years old. We also saw examples of other maps from other parts in the world that put their location front and center. That this map is a derivative of "a decolonization map", should be clear to anyone that this is just political posturing and not anything of actual use.
At least they're not renaming any lakes.
As the article says, all protections have some distortions and it's just a matter of which ones you chose. It's totally reasonable and rational for the African association of cartographer to push for this change - it makes their continent look bigger. At the margin, their children can look at the map and feel more significant. On the flip side, this particular map makes Europe look smaller. So it means that at the ma…
Why does the size of a county's territory matter so much? Russia is much bigger than the US or China, is it more important? Australia has about three quarters of the land area of the US, is it as significant?
Weird title. Cargography constantly challenged itself. Look at some of the possible projections at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map_projections They all compromise on something to enhance something else. You simply can't map the surface of a 3d shere (approximation of the earths globe) onto a 2d flat surface. And so we have projections galore. And anyway was (and is) always free to use whatever fits best.
This would be an easier problem to solve if Flat Earthers were right. (semi-/s)
Weird title. Cargography constantly challenged itself. Look at some of the possible projections at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map_projections They all compromise on something to enhance something else. You simply can't map the surface of a 3d shere (approximation of the earths globe) onto a 2d flat surface. And so we have projections galore. And anyway was (and is) always free to use whatever fits best.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This was also exactly what I was taught in school when I was 10 years old. We also saw examples of other maps from other parts in the world that put their location front and center. That this map is a derivative of "a decolonization map", should be clear to anyone that this is just political posturing and not anything of actual use.
I mean it also accurately depicts relative land mass sizes? For the purposes of the UN that seems fairly relevant compared to Mercator which is a good map if you're actually navigating a coast line but atrocious if you're trying to gauge how big the territory you're talking about actually is.
Decades ago, when I was a child, I viewed the Mercator projection as old fashioned and stupid. In fact, I rarely saw it. Most maps were Robinson's projection ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robinson_projection ). It baffles me that anyone still uses Mercator projection for any serious purpose.
The article is just strawmaning our past, as is fashionable. Ironically the same author published an article warning against misinformation just a week prior: https://www.not-ship.com/normalize-debunking-each-other/
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why does the size of a county's territory matter so much? Russia is much bigger than the US or China, is it more important? Australia has about three quarters of the land area of the US, is it as significant?
If it doesn't matter why did Africa make such a push for this projection?
Time to rename Mercator the “Map of America”.