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Boston Public Schools Map Switch Aims To Amend 500 Years of Distortion (theguardian.com)
Students attending Boston public schools are now getting a more accurate depiction of the world after the school district rolled out a new standard map of the world that show North America and Europe much smaller than Africa and South America. From a report on The Guardian: 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.
It's so obvious that they're just projecting.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
We learned about maps and their inherent distortions in fucking _middle_ school, again in high school. Referenced the globes sitting in every classroom.
The globes have been removed because the other shapes objected to the privileged position of circles and spheres. In their place will be a diversity of shapes with the exception of spheres which have also been blamed for keeping down Africa and South America. The only spheres that are now allowed are other shapes that have had the corners chipped away to now be spheres as they always felt that they were spheres on the inside.
The only spheres that are now allowed are other shapes that have had the corners chipped away to now be spheres as they always felt that they were spheres on the inside.
Are you sure? I thought apple had a patent on that.