Where in the world…?
I know this material is making the rounds, but it is just too good to resist passing it on again.
First found at Eilidh.
You don’t even need to be a West Wing fan to love this. The Peters Projection perfectly presented.
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Reader Comments
Sure you don’t *need* to be a WW fan…but why wouldn’t you be?
Yeah, Colin, watching this clip made me realize how much I miss the show.
This reminds me of why I could never watch more than 5 mins. of WW….
Unfortunately, the (so-called) Peters Projection is just as distorting of relative sizes of land-masses as is Mercator (just notice how short Canada and Alaska look, and compare it with a globe). If one holds Mercator to be “biased” towards Europe, then one must also hold Peters to be “biased” towards Africa and South America.
See: http://geography.about.com/library/weekly/aa030201a.htm
There are much more accurate projections than either Mercator and Peter (and have been for a long time). See for example the Robinson projection here: http://egsc.usgs.gov/isb/pubs/MapProjections/projections.html
Personally, though, I can’t think why any classroom shouldn’t just have a _globe_ and avoid the projection issue entirely. Or these days, a computer with access to Google Earth….
Carl,
I don’t think most people actually watched WW for encyclopedic information. And, as you well know, it is impossible to accurately portray a spherical earth with a flat map. But, it is an interesting study to look at how various maps have developed, for what purposes, and how they affect our perceptions of the world.
My friend, Fred Putnam, noted on FB (in response to this video), “There is a good book, “How to Lie with Maps”, which, along with another (o.o.p.) from National Geographic (something like “A Round Earth on Flat Paper”) will definitely reorient your thinking (sorry).”
And I agree, that Google Earth is a very useful (and accessible) tool.
But, a little humor never hurt anyone either (and I thought C.J.’s reaction was pretty funny).
“Where the hell is that?”
“It’s where you’ve been living all along.”
Priceless. Man, I loved West Wing. Miss it very much. I never depended upon it to tell me what life in the WH is “really like,” but I’m betting it gave a good idea (in terms of the pressures). And it’s humor was always wonderful.
We can argue all day about who has the best map, but all that aside, this is a wonderful little parable about how the way we portray things effects the way people think and behave, whether they are conscious of it or not.
i remember this episode and loved it! thanx for posting it. makes me miss that show terribly!!