The Real Global Map -Boston public schools map switch aims to amend 500 years of distortion

[malaise]

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/mar/19/boston-public-schools-world-map-mercator-peters-projection
<snip>
When Boston public schools introduced a new standard map of the world this week, some young students’ felt their jaws drop. In an instant, their view of the world had changed.

The USA was small. Europe too had suddenly shrunk. Africa and South America appeared narrower but also much larger than usual. And what had happened to Alaska?

In an age of “fake news” and “alternative facts”, city authorities are confident their new map offers something closer to the geographical truth than that of traditional school maps, and hope it can serve an example to schools across the nation and even the world.

For almost 500 years, the Mercator projection has been the norm for maps of the world, ubiquitous in atlases, pinned on peeling school walls.

Gerardus Mercator, a renowned Flemish cartographer, devised his map in 1569, principally to aid navigation along colonial trade routes by drawing straight lines across the oceans. An exaggeration of the whole northern hemisphere, his depiction made North America and Europe bigger than South America and Africa. He also placed western Europe in the middle of his map.

Mercator’s distortions affect continents as well as nations. For example, South America is made to look about the same size as Europe, when in fact it is almost twice as large, and Greenland looks roughly the size of Africa when it is actually about 14 times smaller. Alaska looks bigger than Mexico and Germany is in the middle of the picture, not to the north – because Mercator moved the equator.

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Love it.

[mn9driver]

1. Every kid should have a globe.

Or at least every classroom. I was lucky enough to have a 1964 Rand McNally globe in my bedroom. I can't even begin to estimate how much time I spent looking at it.

[citood]

3. Google Earth is a great stand in for a globe

You can see the correct proportions of continents, without the stretching this flat maps have...just a few mouse clicks away.

[Binkie The Clown]

2. Fake News. Shaq says the Earth is flat, and I believe him.

https://www.yahoo.com/sports/news/so-apparently-shaquille-oneal-is-a-flat-earther-too-035813782.html

I’m sorry to break it to you, but Shaquille O’Neal is apparently a flat-Earther, too. Actually, I’m not sorry at all. I love this NBA narrative so, so much, and I’d like to thank Shaq for breathing more life into it.

Cleveland Cavaliers star Kyrie Irving was the first NBA player to reveal his flat-Earth beliefs, summarized as such: “Can you really think of us rotating around the sun, and all planets align, rotating in specific dates, being perpendicular with what’s going on with these ‘planets’ and stuff like this?”

Soon afterwards, Denver Nuggets wing Wilson Chandler and Golden State Warriors forward Draymond Green endorsed Irving’s flat-Earth theory, with the latter explaining away NASA’s photos of the planet from space by suggesting everyone can manipulate doctored photos of the globe on their phones.

What I want to know is what ever happened to the line that separates reality from ridiculous parody?

[malaise]

4. ROFL

I pass on blissful ignorance

[ProudLib72]

5. Which version does DeVos accept

Shaq's or the new Boston one?