Cartographers for Social Justice - Episode of West wing

[SCDem]

Last night I was watching a West Wing episode and thought I'd look up what they were talking about - and sure enough it is true -



What do you guys think about having the world displayed like this. I think it's cool - tempted to buy it for my young son but kind of scared I'd be warping him even before he got to school.

[Ilsa]

1. Aside from the social justice issue,

it still displays the USSR. Do they offer a more updated political map?

[SCDem]

4. I got it from a Canadian website

I'll look if the Peters map has been updated. I know it was originally printed in 1974.

[tjwmason]

2. A couple of friends of mine have one

The points made by the cartographers do make sense - I'd be a bit careful about getting one for a very young child before he's taught geography with another map projection, with older ones it could be a very good discussion point.

What I never got about the W.W. episode was how C.J. couldn't understand it - the map is completely intuitive to me (having been raised on Mercator), and I certainly didn't have any trouble finding Germany. I'm afraid that such instances of artistic licence bug me intensely.

[northzax]

3. it's no more misleading

than any other map of the world. The problem is that you cannot lie a sphere flat and rectangular without sacraficing some surface integrity. You do better to buy him a map where south is up and north is down.

[HereSince1628]

5. Personally I like Fuller's Dymaxion Projection

http://www.thirteen.org/bucky/dymap.html It's a reasonably good "equal area" projection.

[SCDem]

6. Wow

I've never seen that one before - thanks for the link

[Ilsa]

8. Thanks. You've broadened my horizons

or have you shrunk them? ;) I bookmarked this site and another one with the map for sale.

[Zuni]

7. The shapes of the continents are distorted

compared to satellite photos of the earth, Africa and South America are elongated.

If the map maker did that to give the countries more relevance, than it is just stupid. People do not derive importance from cartography :eyes:

[mcscajun]

9. Robinson Projection

Use of the Mercator is outdated: National Geographic adopted the Robinson Projection as its standard in 1988 and it is now used in most schools.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:World-map-2004-cia-factbook-large-2m.jpg?click