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The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

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Re: The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

#161

Post by Rebelgecko »

JdeBP wrote: post #59

I read the article thinking that it was not going to mention Dymaxion. Articles like this rarely do. The BBC has an article on the U.N. resolution ( https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cly5r60v4mro ), and it does not. And then right at the bottom it went and mentioned Dymaxion. Dymaxion is one of the few projections that actually shows Antarctica with something resembling its actual shape. Interestingly, to counter t…

You might get a kick out of the AuthaGraph projection, if you haven't seen it before (although Antarctica may be a smidge distorted relative to dymaxion)

Re: The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

#162

Post by antonvs »

rmunn wrote: post #76
neuronexmachina wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I know the UN claims that "Correcting cartographic distortions of continental sizes constitutes an act of cognitive justice and memorial reparation." but it's purely symbolic and changes nothing geopolitically. This is kind of personally embarrassing, but due to seeing Mercator maps all the time growing up it wasn't until later in life that I realized that Greenland isn't actually a gigantic landmass the size of Af…

> Other than maritime navigation, I can't think of many tasks where Mercator would be more useful than an equal-area projection. Precisely why, I suspect, the US voted against the change. (One of the reasons, at least) I mean, gee, I wonder why the country with the world's largest navy* would prefer maps where you can draw a line on the map between two points and it's the actual compass direction? (Give or take a bit…

I doubt that was a factor at all. As you say, voting for this wouldn’t change the maps a navy uses anyway. Besides, navies aren’t normally using world maps, they use maps for specific regions.

The vote was because the US is an intransigent rogue state at this point, and it doesn’t want to accept any outside influence whatsoever.

Re: The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

#163

Post by inemesitaffia »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #97
hn993302 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trump didn't unilaterally decide what the rest of the world calls two bodies of water, only the US

He doesn't even have the power to unilaterally declare what the US calls it. Names of geographic features are established by popular usage, not governments.

>established by popular usage, not governments.

This is straight up wrong.

Re: The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

#164

Post by antonvs »

frieseke wrote: post #13
AlexandrB wrote: post #3

What's the material difference between this and Trump's "my button is bigger"[1] nonsense or the renaming of various bodies of water? I know the UN claims that "Correcting cartographic distortions of continental sizes constitutes an act of cognitive justice and memorial reparation." but it's purely symbolic and changes nothing geopolitically. My personal favourite equal-area projection is something like Boggs eumorph…

The UN is a body that is intended to facilitate global cooperation. This symbolic change better represents the body's members and updates an incorrect visualization, which leads to better cooperation and representation. Trump's renaming changes serve his own whims and selfish ego, they perform the opposite effect and hinder global cooperation.

Happily Trump’s actions probably help global cooperation for all countries that’s aren’t the US.

Re: The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

#165

Post by mdp2021 »

holgerschurig wrote: post #131
mdp2021 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somebody who does not represent anybody "agreed" - not us.

Well, the underlying thinking "only people I directly voted for can do things" is wrong. I guess you never directly voted for your minister of economy, or? In many countries people don't directly vote for the prime minister, chancellor etc. The key term some people never learned in school is "direct democracy" vs. "indirect democracy". Even many clubs, e.g. in Germany the ADAC, have systems where people vote for an a…

Oh no Mr. Schurig. I never praised "direct vote" (that would even worsen it).

I implied instead that there is a crisis in representation.

(...You could be German and you have not noticed, in spite of all the vocal effort in the North? That and all the other similar signals clearly affecting current history.)

Re: The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

#166

Post by globular-toast »

gumby wrote: post #48
decimalenough wrote: post #38

It's kind of funny how the colonial convenience of having the 0 longitude line pass through Greenwich, UK ends up making Africa the most prominent place on the world map, since the centerpoint (0,0) is just off the African coast. This was true with Mercator as well, but Equal Earth emphasizes just how huge the African continent actually is.

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.

Re: The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

#167

Post by boomboomsubban »

JuniperMesos wrote: post #129

I never had the impression that the Mercator projection, or indeed any particular world map projection out of the dozens in common use, had any kind of official status that needed to be removed. It seems obvious to me that different map projections have different tradeoffs, and that any particular publisher of a world map can and does use whichever one makes sense for the information they're trying to convey.

I assume the UN is a major publisher of maps, often featuring them on all sorts of pamphlets, websites, and if television is to be believed that backdrop for smoke filled meetings.

It makes sense they'd have a default and this would switch it.

Re: The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

#168

Post by jabl »

edoceo wrote: post #108
exabrial wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that's my thoughts as well. The answer is literally in the article: > Mercator useful for sailing This is the only correct answer, and everything else is unscientific nonsense. It hasn't been replaced because... it just hasn't. Mercator + knots + nautical miles is a system that is extremely useful for navigation. Since we aren't sailing ships around a whole lot anymore, a lot of teachers forget to mention the r…

Why not just use KM? We should reduce the number of units of measure in 2026.

If you do positioning in degrees, minutes, and seconds (or decimal minutes which I guess is more common nowadays), a 'natural' length unit for navigation is a minute of longitude, which is the original definition of the nautical mile. And then we get velocity as nautical miles per hour, or knots.

Blame the French for reinventing the wheel instead of, say, using a 1/1000th of a nautical mile as the definition of the metre. Alas, that's all water under the bridge by now.

If you want to do navigation in SI units, the UTM projections (see sibling thread) typically do positioning in metres inside each grid square.

Re: The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

#169

Post by structwafel »

skew-aberration wrote: post #148
riffraff wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

North America is very affected, Mercator makes it look as big or bigger than Africa when it's actually quite smaller.

Continents are in truesizeof btw. Asia is much bigger than Africa, North America is only a little smaller. When you account for the Sahara Desert of course, there is more usable land in North America.

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.

Re: The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

#170

Post by seszett »

inemesitaffia wrote: post #160
seszett wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> European children will look at the map and feel less significant. They might instead feel even more more "important" for achieving so much with such a small territory. I know I was somewhat shocked as a kid when I learnt that France was that small country when I had always thought for some reason that it was Greenland (vaguely the same shape I guess, and big enough to feel like it was important. It was certainly no…

Most of France is in South America

That's not true, about a third of France is in Antarctica if you want to count it, but French Guiana in South America is only a small part of France.
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