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The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

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Re: The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

#251

Post by bentley »

XorNot wrote: post #185
c048 wrote: post #143

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.

> I mean it also accurately depicts relative land mass sizes?

At the cost of distorting shapes and distances.

> compared to Mercator

The UN resolution compared Equal Earth to Mercator, a comparison Equal Earth easily wins in many circumstances. But the comparison should not be to Mercator, but to other widely used projections that do a better job of minimizing distortions generally, such as Winkel Tripel.

The UN resolution is explicit that Equal Earth was chosen specifically for “social justice”–type reasons.

Re: The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

#252

Post by [deleted] »

globular-toast wrote: post #166
gumby wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a while, France had its own prime meridian with 0 degrees passing of course through Paris: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_meridian

It still does. I have one going through my house too. The problem is nobody else knows or cares about those meridians. It's quite fortunate the US didn't invent its own, what with its zeal for being different. We're quite lucky to still have just the one.

[deleted]

Re: The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

#254

Post by GJim »

WelkinFolk wrote: post #244
flohofwoe wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but does the Indian education system actually use Mercator projection on their wall maps and geography learning material? E.g. how much is the average Indian citizen actually confronted with highly distorted map projections in their daily life (unless their professional job is involved with navigating ships of course where Mercator projections makes sense). From my side of the world (Europe), this whole "Mercato…

At least from my own experience, the map used the most throughout school was the Mercator projection. When I first discovered that Greenland and Canada were not really that big during one of my many wikipedia tours as a kid, I was incredibly disappointed.

Are you saying that as a kid, you never had a globe in your geography classroom?

Seriously?

Re: The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

#255

Post by GJim »

bentley wrote: post #246
skew-aberration wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get why people say this / focus on Africa in this conversation. I've never thought Africa was small and was taught about the Berlin Conference, etc in school. All the large continents are near the equator and hence the relative size of Africa, Australia, North/South America, Asia is not affected much by the projection. Antarctica is big too, even though wildly exaggerated by Mercator. If anything, it makes mo…

> I don't get why people say this / focus on Africa in this conversation. Because the resolution specifically talks about the supposed injustice Mercator has perpetrated upon Africa over the centuries, and loudly trumpets that adopting Equal Earth is an act of reparation toward Africa. “ Noting the proclamation by the African Union of 2025 as the year of “Justice for Africans and people of African descent through rep…

> the supposed injustice Mercator has perpetrated upon Africa over the centuries

Centuries of injustice!

Good god. I simply fail to understand such a choice of words.

Re: The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

#256

Post by tekla »

skew-aberration wrote: post #241
structwafel wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://openknowledge.fao.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/b35... Figure 10 shows that Africa has more Arable land than North America. And I wouldn't call 29.6 21.3 a little smaller, Africa is 39% bigger than North America.

Downvotes? Just drag South America or Australia onto Africa and tell me it changed more than a few percent in size. Barely perceptible. North America is not 21.3 but 24.7e^6 m^3 according to google, so the ratio is 4:3. Asia to Africa is 3:2 Arable in your stats just means cultivated , it isn't a measure of the natural productivity. People in Africa work poorer lands due to necessity. North America has more non-deser…

No its just people lying. I remember being told 30 years ago that a flat map and a globe make countries look different since a kid asked why continenents looked different when we were looking at a globe

Re: The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

#257

Post by allknowingfrog »

flohofwoe wrote: post #181
marcus_holmes wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I ponder whether, if the poles flipped and we survived that relatively intact, there would be a sudden enthusiasm for "South is up".

AFAIK in the past there were all sorts of 'up' conventions, for instance medieval European maps sometimes put East up, because Jerusalem is in the East. Ancient mediterranean maps often were South up, as well as maps of Islamic cartoghraphers. There were also Roman road maps which were entirely schematic, more like our modern public transport maps (e.g. such maps only cared about how locations were connected by roads…

I was taught somewhere along the way that the term "Orient" for the East comes from the idea that maps were once oriented in that direction.

Re: The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

#258

Post by xyzelement »

graemep wrote: post #229
xyzelement wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it doesn't matter why did Africa make such a push for this projection?

Some people think it matters, mostly politicians and political activists. That does not mean its actually important.

Either the vote doesn't matter and don't have it, or it matters and you vote for your people.

Re: The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

#259

Post by cbeach »

'decolonize the curriculum' says it all.

This is the left doing what they always do: finding supposed victims and oppressors, and acting (loudly and publicly) as white knight saviours.

Doesn't matter if the victims asked for their help or not, or even if the issue is real. This is a performative act of virtue by the left. Nothing more.

The UN is 1-country-1-vote, which means Western liberal market economies are in the minority. As an organisation it structurally favours the economic-distributional and collectivist economies.

The New International Economic Order (UNGA, 1974), the New World Information and Communication Order at UNESCO, the 2024 Global Principles for Information Integrity and the Global Digital Compact are ideological, and all about global redistribution of wealth and international control of media flows.

The UN is not an organisation that exists to promote the values of freedom and equality of opportunity that underpin constitutions like the US.

Re: The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

#260

Post by cbeach »

shevy-java wrote: post #138

> The UN endorsed a resolution to promote maps that accurately reflect the true size of continents, dethroning the 500-year-old Mercator projection in the process. That project was always silly really. That the USA is turning into the number #1 rogue country is also problematic. Trump is damaging everything here.

> That the USA is turning into the number #1 rogue country is also problematic. Trump is damaging everything here

Only in the minds of the far left is "Trump damaging everything", or is the US "the #1 rogue country"

Personally I support reindustrialisation, reinstating secure borders, and taking down totalitarian regimes that killed thousands of innocent people

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