Monday, April 30, 2012

African Skies (Are Bigger Than Ours)

First I find out that Australia has states, and now the Internet tells me that Africa's landmass has the rest of the world whupped.  What the heck did I learn during my 4 years at an Ivy League institution, anyway?




11 comments:

  1. Great! I just saw that Germany has a coast at the Mediterranian Sea! How I would love that!

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  2. Put the Russia and the rest of Asia besides China in there and see what is bigger. Mostly you are looking at countries versus a continent in the images.

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    1. Absolutely. I think the original intent of this diagram was to show how misleading flat maps of the world are - they make Africa look smaller than China. Check it out!

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  3. AnonymousMay 01, 2012

    Very cool...I will be sharing this : )

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  4. *whips out geography hat, and double checks facts on internet*

    I think we'd actually have to say that the continent of Africa is bigger than any individual country. Asia is still the largest continent. And Australia, Canada and China are the three largest countries (the USA is 4th) in that order.

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    1. See my reply to Diana. I think the point here is the inaccuracy of "flattened" maps.

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  5. I have read articles on the way maps present a skewed, Western-dominated view. It's interesting.

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  6. AnonymousMay 02, 2012

    Shocking!

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  7. AnonymousMay 02, 2012

    1. Russia is the largest country in the world, about 17 million square kilometers, not quite twice the size of China or Canada.

    2. The United Kingdom looks way too big. And it is superimposed on Madagascar (with Ireland rotated and unlabeled – are they trying to only include Northern Ireland). Madagascar is 587,041 square kilometers (226,658 square miles) while the United Kingdom is 242,900 square kilometers (93,800 square miles). Did the artist mix up the miles and kilometers and think they were the same size, and then upsize the UK to cover Madagascar?


    Did the artist/cartographer mix up the miles and kilometers and think they were the same size, and then upsize the UK to cover Madagascar?

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