West Wing becomes reality.

[Animavore]

Trigger warning: Contains social justice and equality some might find offensive.

West Wing.



Reality.

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/ ... erent-maps

[Forty Two]

That whole map thing is another contrived social justice cause. It's a map. None of them are 100% accurate, most are off because of the difficulty in projecting an oblate spheroid on a map.

Yes, the Mercator map distorts relative size, but in school that is made clear when people learn about maps. And, schools do have globes in them.

The suggestion that the Mercator map is tool of oppression is just more SJW bullshit.

The person in the video clip wants it to be federal law that the Gall Peters map be used to teach. That alone is absurd. There isn't anything "wrong" with the Mercator map, or various other maps, or the Gall Peters map, but there is no law now that requires the mercator map to be used, or that only one map can be used, etc.

The notion, also, that someone who rises to the level of Chief of Staff of the White House doesn't know that maps don't accurately portray size is crazy. the reaction of the people is amazing - what is all this? "It's where you've been living all this time..." -- apparently the woman never looked at a globe.

And, the assertion is that people adopted some sort of discriminatory or ethnic primacy because the Mercator map displayed the northern hemisphere in the north and that the projection distorts country size is absurd. I mean, supposedly it exaggerates the size of NORTH AMERICA in order to make people think that colonial powers are better than the third world countries. However, the fucking map was drawn in 1569. In 1569, the only city in the United States was St. Augustine, Florida, a Spanish fort. It was founded four years earlier in 1565. The Dutch didn't arrive until 1615. The British didn't arrive until 1620, when the Pilgrims landed, or if you like 1607, when they founded Jamestown colony, which was wiped out by native Americans a year or so later. So, the point being, nobody gave a flying fuck about North or South America, which almost completely unexplored and the US did not exist and the New World colonial empires had not yet come to be. Yet, we're told that the Mercator projection somehow was designed to privilege North America. Come the fuck on.

It supposedly unfairly increases the size of Greenland, right - when it should be 14 times smaller than Africa. And, in 1569, Mercator somehow had the nefarious plan to unfairly raise the esteem of Greenland.... and Baffin Island Canada, etc. -- at the expense of the almost equally unexplored and unknown African continent. The fact that Greenland is so big, and Iceland, etc., must mean that the world's people are made to overly credit Greenland and Iceland, Baffin Island, etc., with being superior to the rest of the world....

Also, the Gall Peters map is not "where you've been living all these years..." The Gall map stretches horizontally near the poles and vertically near the Equator, so although the size may be approximately right, the shape definitely isn't. There are plenty of better maps than Gall Peters, too. Not sure why there would be a focus on that one.

[Tyrannical]

West Wing writer already cried a few weeks ago that no one cares about political drama with Trump as president.
Daily press briefing beats all the soap operas.

[Hermit]

Fuck off, the lot of you. This is the only correct 2-dimensional map.

[Forty Two]

I think they should design a map with the poles on the sides, instead of top and bottom.

Either that, or make maps illegal, requiring geography be taught exclusively on globes.

[Hermit]

Why bother with paper maps at all? Everybody can pull out their smartphones, tablets or whatever and get onto an interactive map where you can rotate a virtual globe to any angle you wish to view.

Won't be too long before we drag holograms out of our pockets.

[JimC]

Yep, holographic globes FTW!

[pErvinalia]

...because the Mercator map displayed the northern hemisphere in the north ...

You do realise that "north" is not objective, right?

[pErvinalia]

On a related note, apparently the kooky idea that the Earth is flat is growing popularity.

[Svartalf]

among people with a flat EEG

[NineBerry]

Use this map. A lot more accurate

[Svartalf]

[Animavore]

On a related note, apparently the kooky idea that the Earth is flat is growing popularity.

I've noticed this. Surely if it were Trudeau making maps would be far easier.


For obvious reasons I support maps which don't favour Western, Imperial colonisation. I think it's funny whitey getting precious over it. It's almost like you can feel the mourning of the loss of power.

[Animavore]

[Forty Two]

...because the Mercator map displayed the northern hemisphere in the north ...

You do realise that "north" is not objective, right?

North is north whether the globe has it pointing down or up. In the universe, there is no up, so displaying the Earth on its side (based on the way we've usually displayed it) is also just as valid. But, "just as valid" doesn't mean the traditional display of north on top is invalid or less valid, or that we need to be "fair" to all directions and display the Earth with different directions on top....