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There was a memorable scene from "The West Wing" on the biases imposed by most map projections, in particular, how Mercator makes North America look huge: http
by randcraw 3y ago
There was a memorable scene from "The West Wing" on the biases imposed by most map projections, in particular, how Mercator makes North America look huge:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLqC3FNNOaI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLqC3FNNOaI
- chippiewill 3y agoAndrew Jackson, in the main foyer of the White House, had a two-ton block of cheese. It was there, for any and all who were hungry, it was there for the voiceless.
- js2 3y agoProbably seen that clip a dozen times and this was the first time I noticed Whitford manspreading in the middle of the clip and Janney batting his leg back. By the look on his face, it seems improvised to get a laugh out of her.
- eldaisfish 3y agoit’s a huge stretch to claim there was no bias involved. the biais is in putting europe front and center and at the top. Have you seen maps that place the americas in the center? How about maps with north and south swapped?
- tick_tock_tick 3y agoAlmost no one lives in the south so they are never swapped.
- prepend 3y agoMaybe more accurate is that there wasn’t some nefarious bias that was meant to oppress people. Europe was at the center because they made the maps. It’s a simple reason. If some other culture has been dominant we’d be using a projection that makes it more useful for them.
- yunohn 3y agoThe vast majority of items are manufactured in Asia now, especially globes. By your logic, should they unilaterally start printing Asia in the center?
- NoRelToEmber 3y agoUnilaterally? If they want to use maps that center Asia in their education and work, who is stopping them? In fact I'd wager they start their education by learning about the geography of Asia first. I'm puzzled by this demonization of simply observing the world from the perspective of one's own culture. Blaming Europeans for putting Europe in the center of their maps is like blaming Italians for teaching Italian in school, and not some globally-representative language (maybe English or Chinese) chosen without local "bias". Though your mention of "especially globes" has me wondering how they would place Asia in the center of a globe...
- trhfhxggf 3y agoIt makes things further from the equator appear huge. There's no conspiracy or biases involved, unless of course you're proposing that the Mercator projection was developed to give Antarctica a false sense of superiority.
- Taniwha 3y agoOne of the common maps used in schools cuts off the bottom quarter of the map, including Antarctica making the southern hemisphere half the size of the northern
- WirelessGigabit 3y agoExcept Mercator wasn't German. He was born in the County of Flanders, current day East Flanders and moved to Germany at the age of 40. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerardus_Mercator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerardus_Mercator
- gerdesj 3y ago"5 March 1512 – 2 December 1594" Everything was a bit complicated in that region in the medieval period. In the C16, you immediately come up short with the concept of "Germany".
- Tade0 3y agoGermany the state - indeed, but German as a culture/language/nationality(in the contemporary definition) was definitely there. Same with Italy, which wasn't a single state until the mid XIX century. Over to the east states lost independence and remained so for hundreds of years, only to re-emerge in the XX century. My point is that state as an entity doesn't fully define one's identity.
- varenc 3y agoThe video quality of that clip was so bad I uploaded a new 1080p version to YouTube: https://youtu.be/dxhWybPCEpI https://youtu.be/dxhWybPCEpI If you want to avoid YouTube, here's just the video: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/szn691fdcgvxwh8/map_projection.mp4 https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/szn691fdcgvxwh8/map_proj... edit: updated YouTube link to include the full version
- izzydata 3y agoIt ends too soon. The funniest part is when they talk about the northern hemisphere being on top and then them putting it on the bottom and her saying it is freaking her out.
- varenc 3y agoDoh! Thanks for the spot. The 2nd part is actually from a different scene, but I combined them both and updated the links above.
- NoRelToEmber 3y agoIt's fascinating how we're expected to believe senior White House officials are such perfect strawman doofuses that they have never seen a globe or the Mollweide projection, or were ever reprimanded by a geography teacher for saying "up" instead of "North". The only thing that scene is missing is for her to fall over in shock and disbelief at hearing that the Earth is round. They're not characters, they're tools to push a message.
- codingdave 3y agoIt is fiction. Relax and enjoy the show.
- NoRelToEmber 3y agoThe only way I could enjoy that farce is after multiple, life-alteringly serious concussions.
- ralusek 3y agoThis clip is always hilarious to me. Smugly declares "it's where you've been living this whole time," as he stands in front of a projection that is just as flawed, as all projections are, as the Mercator. The only priority of that map projection is attempting to account for the accurate area of landmasses, sacrificing correct shape of landmasses, as well as a ton of navigational utility. A globe is the only correct projection, and I have personally never looked at a globe and thought "Wow, I've been deceived!" Google maps now even switches to trying to do a globe projection when you zoom out far enough. This is a ridiculous issue for smug people to bring up at parties.
- fifafifi 3y agoA globe is not a map projection. With a globe you can only see part of Earth at once.
- bentley 3y agoAnd that’s the tradeoff of using a globe, whereas the tradeoff of the Peters projection is that the map is distorted in various ways, and the tradeoff of Mercator is that the map is distorted in other ways. Which is why that West Wing clip is, frankly, pretentious, because it doesn’t discuss the negatives of Peters, wrongly implies that it’s “the” correct way to view the world, and makes no mention of other major projections, or even a globe. Choice of map projection is all about context. Peters is sensible in a particular context; Mercator in another; a globe in another. My usual projection of choice is Albers, which is typically great for the continental US, but I probably wouldn’t use it so much if I regularly made maps of other places!
- throwawaaarrgh 3y agoTo be fair, the West Wing was pretentious in so many other ways that this is one of the few clips that borders on genuinely educational. Flawed? Yes. But it's not an educational show, it's a bizarre hyper-liberal hour-long lecture to the viewer where for some reason every single character talks like an over the hill Jewish man with the same verbal tics and expressions. And honestly, it's a bit pretentious to publicly denounce an entertaining TV show just to seem smarter than everyone at cocktail parties.