I work for a car company. We bring in our cars through three ports here in the US. Baltimore Maryland, Newark New Jersey, and Port Hueneme in California. I ordered a car for my training center in Seattle Washington. want to guess which port is was unloaded in?
You got it, Baltimore. :smack:
I should add that the choice of port was done by people in America not Europe.
Here’s a chance for me to learn something. Are you saying maps of Africa were shrunk for non-map-projection reasons? That is, a Mercator-type projection of a sphere onto a flat map distorts size.
Do you have a cite for this?
I think the point, Bricker, is that some people argue that the Mercator projection was chosen over other types specifically because it tends to make northern countries seem larger.
I’m no map projection expert, but from the little i’ve read it seems that it’s impossible to project a globe onto a flat surface without some sore of distortion. Based on my limited knowledge, it seems to me that the critiques of the Mercator projection can someties see a conspiracy where there really isn’t one.
I blame Greenland, frankly. Or maybe Antarctica. Bloody penguins…
Again with the ill-informed teachers:
I distinctly remember my primary school teacher (in the first year) telling the class if you mixed all the colours of the rainbow you’d get a yellow-brown colour <b>because that’s what she got with her chalks on the blackboard</b>. Really, no kidding.
Image that’s bold eh? Frightening I don’t know these funny tags.
Regarding bad teachers: I had a teacher who wouldn’t let us fan ourselves on hot days because our fanning “excited” molecules, and “excited” molecules caused heat. That story would be better if she was my chemistry teacher, but she wasn’t. Thank god.
Yes, thanks. In addition, you have the effect of the maps on generations of children raised looking at the distortion with no realization that there is a distortion. I don’t mean to imply that there was a sinister motive at first–it was quite a chore to map the world at all in the beginning–but I do think there was a definite lack of interest in changing things later since it didn’t help the US and Europe to do so. If the US were located on the equator, I suspect that the Mercator system would have been replaced with the Peters map decades ago. This isn’t really fact, it’s just argument. I just can’t imagine most Americans wouldn’t have been outraged to know that their country was shrunk relative to the rest of the world.
I haven’t studied this since college, so I honestly can’t remember sources. But this provides guidance on the effect on children, this states that some UN agencies and churches have condemned the Mercator system, and this give some insight into the minority experience as regards to subtle such things as maps. Sorry about the generic nature and potential unreliability of the sources. The Internet has less on this than I though it would. I’ve graduated, so I no longer have access to academic journals via Lexis, etc., for better sources. But I’m sure they are available. This is a standard topic in African-American studies and Asian-American studies. Asia is often split on many maps, so that causes its own set of problems. When it’s not split, it’s always on the right, which give the impression that Asia is east of the US, when it’s actually closer to west. Sometimes tiny things shape the very perception of civilization.
I’m not sure I nuy your theory about the Mercator projection, but is true that maps are made with their country of origin in mind.
See here:
http://www.flourish.org/upsidedownmap/
Oh, very cool maps. Thanks for that.
So was everyone else who had to learn the Fifty Nifty United States song forced to pronounced Iowa - Io-WAY? I was. Couldn’t even tell you why. Nobody in the area pronounced it that way outside of the song.
And in The Music Man, don’t forget: “You’re in Iiiiiowaaaaaaay…”
Nifty upside-down maps, to be sure, but speaking of maps and Greenland, can anyone tell me how big Greenland really is? Comparison with a US state would be particularly helpful. The horrendous distortions on most maps make it look like it’s the size of Africa (which it quite obviously isn’t).
My ex-wife once expressed amazement that the light poles in parking lots extended into the ground. She thought that the cement barriers around them simply “stuck” to the pavement.
Heh. When will I ever stop telling this story?
Never mind; I found it, despite the perversity of most of the Greenland sites. On the off-chance you care:
Total area: 2,175,600 sq km
Land area (ice-free): 383,600 sq km
Comparative area: slightly more than three times the size of Texas
So – still pretty big, if not comparable with Africa.
My father swears a friend-of-the-family was about fifty before she learned that ham comes from pigs. I have no idea where she thought it came from before; ham trees, perhaps.
The bits of ignorance that frighten me, though, are the “how did you manage to avoid killing yourself until now?” type. For instance, I witnessed one near-fire when someone old enough to know better put a plastic measuring cup on a stove to melt butter, and a friend of mine was awoken in the middle of the night by a roommate who decided to reheat leftovers in a paper tray in the oven and was concerned when the kitchen began to fill with smoke. The butter melter’s excuse was that plastic spatulas don’t melt, so how was she to know plastic measuring cups do? The paper fire guy figured that since it was an electric oven, there was no flame, and therefore no risk of fire… which might have actually protected him if he hadn’t cranked the temperature up to 500F :rolleyes:
From the “Lisa the Vegetarian” episode of The Simpsons:
I was managing a DQ at night and teaching during the day for a while. One night, I noticed an odd smell in the back and went back to see what it was. One of my teenage employees, instructed to mop the floors, had poured generous portions of both bleach and ammonia in a bucket and was busily filling it with hot water, coughing a little as the cloud of poisonous fumes rose around her.
We had to evacuate the building. Girl was baffled- no one had ever told her that these things didn’t go together. Wasn’t one of those cases of I-didn’t-know-there-was-ammonia-in-that, either. Big bottle labeled ‘Bleach,’ big bottle labeled ‘Ammonia.’
Please don’t tell me the extra day is a Monday. I hate Mondays. I don’t think I could handle an extra Monday even if it’s only every few years.
Fifty nifty stars in the flag that billow so beautifully in
the breeze.
See you at the meetings.
Reminds me of the story of the Britsh company that had a local representative in Vancouver .One day this rep got a message from his London office which said " Mr. Smith is arriving in Halifax , Novia Scotia .Could you meet him ?. The Rep replied " you meet him you’re nearer than me ".
Thank you. Finally something to bug my husband with next road drip.
To counter
*One Fat Hen, Couple Duck, Three Brown Bear, Four Running Hare, … *