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The True Size of Africa (2015)

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Re: The True Size of Africa (2015)

#131

Post by dnautics »

ulfw wrote: post #129
t0mas88 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me (an outsider from Europe) the US doesn't feel homogenous at all. Compare New York to Taxas or California to South Carolina and they feel as much as different as for example Germany and Spain. With the only difference being that all US states share the English language and Europe has different languages, but even that difference is slowly reducing. For example the French, famous for not speaking English 20 years…

None of what you write makes any sense. Spain and Germany have hugely different history, completely different food, different weather, they speak two non-compatible languages sets (Romantic vs Germanic), they have different laws, different stores, different banks, anything. Texas and California speak the same language, have similar makeup of people, are similarly wealthy, they have the exact same stores, your bank ac…

> Catalonia and Madrid

I believe those are what are literally called "fighting words"

Re: The True Size of Africa (2015)

#132

Post by e3bc54b2 »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #122
bandana wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would those regions be ? The Sahara isn't overpopulated if you look at the density of population, but it can't really sustain anybody. I'm sure there are some rain forests left to cut so we can grow more food for 1 or 2 billions extra people, but what's the end goal ? The world is overpopulated.

What are you measuring to determine over or underpopulation? Food production? We grow more food that is required to feed current population, much of world's farming is not efficient, done without modern equipment, etx., and then there is the subject of meat - if we stopped growing feed for animals, and instead seitch to vegetarian diet, we could feed a lot more people. Then there is the argument that glasshouses are…

The modern agriculture just means automating depleting natural aquifers and using up topsoil and abusing chemicals at massive scale. Its the agricultural equivalent of optimizing for next quarter, but losing out on next decade.

Re: The True Size of Africa (2015)

#133

Post by ahi »

Many years ago, a family member (USian, suburban, whitebread) was dating the son of a Nigerian diplomat posted in Addis Ababa. She asked him how long a drive it was, and that's how I knew the relationship was doomed.

I just looked it up. Addis Ababa to Lagos is 2400 miles as the crow flies. This presumably auto-generated route planner states nearly 5000 miles driving. On day one on your drive to Lagos, it recommends 9 hours of driving and stopping in Gondar, still 3.5 hours to the Sudanese border. https://www.trippy.com/drive/Addis-Ababa-to-Lagos-Nigeria

Re: The True Size of Africa (2015)

#134

Post by birktj »

alanbernstein wrote: post #96
boraoztunc wrote: post #77

>> The Good Design Grand Award, arguably Japan’s most prestigious award for design, went out to architect Hajime Narukawa’s completely groundbreaking design for a map of the world. His map, the AuthaGraph World Map, isn’t your average map of the globe: It’s a near-perfect representation of the continents and oceans as they exist on our spherical planet, all laid out on a two-dimensional surface. https://totravelistol…

I prefer the (related) Dymaxion approach myself, but I'll admit it's not quite as accessible.

I really like the Dymaxion projection as well, especially the fact that one can easily see that all major land masses are separated by only small distances of water.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dymaxion_map

Re: The True Size of Africa (2015)

#135

Post by eru »

josephcsible wrote: post #117
boraoztunc wrote: post #77

>> The Good Design Grand Award, arguably Japan’s most prestigious award for design, went out to architect Hajime Narukawa’s completely groundbreaking design for a map of the world. His map, the AuthaGraph World Map, isn’t your average map of the globe: It’s a near-perfect representation of the continents and oceans as they exist on our spherical planet, all laid out on a two-dimensional surface. https://totravelistol…

This projection seems to really skew shapes. For example, Alaska looks skewed diagonally, Brazil looks really stretched east-to-west, and the west half of Australia looks too big compared to the east half.

Mercator is what you get when you preserve local angles (ie shapes). So it's only natural that moving away from Mercator would distort shapes.

I guess you could try to concentrate your angle distortion into the ocean away from the land masses that people care about?

Re: The True Size of Africa (2015)

#136

Post by logbiscuitswave »

tardismechanic wrote: post #90

Reminds me of this scene: Why are we changing maps? (from The West Wing) - https://youtube.com/watch?v=eLqC3FNNOaI

I love that scene. It’s one I find myself thinking back on whenever there’s a cartography discussion (such as this thread).

Re: The True Size of Africa (2015)

#137

Post by youtube__ »

sangnoir wrote: post #93
init wrote: post #35

Africa has 54 countries, thousands of languages and 1.2 billion people. As an African, whenever I see this map I'm more astonished by how densely populated Europe and India are, how big and populated China is and how homogeneous the US is compared to its size.

I'm always surprised to hear people say "The world is overpopulated" - I'm thinking there's plenty of room to grow in regions that live sustainably.

No, there isn't room to grow unless you're talking about decimating other species and habitats. I live in one of those densely populated areas, and see the environmental, social, and political challenges of overpopulation every day.

Re: The True Size of Africa (2015)

#138

Post by vitus »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #99
runarberg wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone from Scandinavia I was surprised to to find out that there is even homogeneity in brand names. In Scandinavia if you from Denmark to Norway, you will likely stop shopping at Netto and instead shop at REMA 1000 , if you travel to Iceland, you might find your self shopping at Nettó again, but it is a whole different chain (more likely you will shop at Bónus ). In the USA you will probably shop at Safeway in…

Actually, the one example you've picked there (grocery stores/supermarkets) is quite a bad one. There are very few national supermarkets in the US. Ironically, Whole Foods Market (now owned by Amazon) is as close as any to this title. Safeway may once have been widespread, but in terms of stores bearing that brand (as opposed to be owned by the company), there are not many Safeways anymore. Instead, there are regiona…

While Albertsons itself might be mostly in western states, the parent company owns plenty of other chains in other states, e.g. Safeway or Jewel-Osco. These chains all run the same promotions, carry the same generic brands, etc.

Re: The True Size of Africa (2015)

#139

Post by owenversteeg »

boraoztunc wrote: post #77

>> The Good Design Grand Award, arguably Japan’s most prestigious award for design, went out to architect Hajime Narukawa’s completely groundbreaking design for a map of the world. His map, the AuthaGraph World Map, isn’t your average map of the globe: It’s a near-perfect representation of the continents and oceans as they exist on our spherical planet, all laid out on a two-dimensional surface. https://totravelistol…

I’m not a fan of AuthaGraph at all. It has horrible distortion look at Brazil or Alaska - and it’s proprietary (creator never released the actual map details, so you can’t make your own...) The worst thing, in my eyes, is that the distortion is unpredictable. Looking at a map where Canada is too big, you can mentally imagine Canada as smaller. But you can’t mentally undo the multi-direction transformation of Alaska into not-Alaska. The distortion is so bad that real world things like a road trip through South America would end up looking completely different from this map to another. You better hope you never get on a boat or a plane using this map - try tracing a straight line if you want a laugh. (The unfortunate distortion-hacking done by its creator effectively dumped the distortion in the oceans, so good luck if you ever go there.)

Design features like “you can do nifty origami with it” shouldn’t factor into if a map is used or not.

In my opinion, if you want something modern and cool, and you really care about pure accuracy, go with Waterman Butterfly. If you want something four sided and traditional, and relative sizes are slightly less important (but still important), go with Peirce Quincuncial - which, I might add, has far better looking Tissot’s indicatrices.

Re: The True Size of Africa (2015)

#140

Post by scythe »

scythe wrote: post #69

There are three basic choices you have with a rectangular map: - Mercator, which preserves shape and direction, but not size - Gall equal-area etc, which preserves size and direction, but not shape - AuthaGraph, which preserves size and shape, but not direction No rectangular map will ever be satisfactory, but maybe putting all three together would make a good display? And then there's my stupid projection (a rip-off…

Aside: this was meant to be a reply to this comment:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27168589

Not at top level.

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