Beware - money saving is dangerous
AN APOLOGY
Some time ago I published here a great way to save money - learn the world-map by heart and never spend money again on guide books or maps while travelling.
BEWARE!
World maps are inaccurate.This has costed me dearly!
In my previous post, I have recommended a piece of ancient DOS freeware software and a web-site which teach you the world map interactively, while having fun. And so, a few weeks later, knowing the map by heart (!!) I made a costly bet: I claimed that the Ukraine is bigger than India. Yes. I was sure of winning as I remember precisely their contours on the world-map on the DOS-software screen.
Wrong! India is about 6 times b(i/u)gger. I lost the bet!! You don't want to know what I had to pay for this!!!
!
Scrutinizing the map afterwards, I noticed that other country sizes are also wrong - Kazakhstan, just for example, is way bigger than India on the map, while being smaller in actual reality.
The software also claims for no apparent reason that Greenland belongs to the Netherlands. This is a dirty lie!!
Greenland belongs to Denmark.
I decided to check the website I recommended - it turns out that although Zaire is for more than a decade now called "the democratic (read "communist") republic of Congo", the web site seems to supports the democrats by ignoring this and keeps calling this country by its old name.
Later I got a really nice present - a Belarussian world-map from 2006. It was hung on the wall, got lots of honour, was offered bread+salt, etc. After a careful check of this map - some facts:
1. Taiwan was never independant. Same color as China, marked "Taiwan island (China)".
2. It is actually written in the Map footprint (!!) something similar to: Israel has conquered the west bank and other Palestinian territories at 1967, where it leads a brutalizing and violent regime directed to annihilate the rightful population. The size of Israel on this map BTW is extremely flimsy.
Conclusions:
-------------------
1. Don't trust maps - show me at least one where Argentina is smaller than India, for example.
2. Beware of irresponsible advices of shadowy figures, and never, ever, trust anyone.
3. Don't use drugs.
Some time ago I published here a great way to save money - learn the world-map by heart and never spend money again on guide books or maps while travelling.
BEWARE!
World maps are inaccurate.This has costed me dearly!
In my previous post, I have recommended a piece of ancient DOS freeware software and a web-site which teach you the world map interactively, while having fun. And so, a few weeks later, knowing the map by heart (!!) I made a costly bet: I claimed that the Ukraine is bigger than India. Yes. I was sure of winning as I remember precisely their contours on the world-map on the DOS-software screen.
Wrong! India is about 6 times b(i/u)gger. I lost the bet!! You don't want to know what I had to pay for this!!!
!
Scrutinizing the map afterwards, I noticed that other country sizes are also wrong - Kazakhstan, just for example, is way bigger than India on the map, while being smaller in actual reality.
The software also claims for no apparent reason that Greenland belongs to the Netherlands. This is a dirty lie!!
Greenland belongs to Denmark.
I decided to check the website I recommended - it turns out that although Zaire is for more than a decade now called "the democratic (read "communist") republic of Congo", the web site seems to supports the democrats by ignoring this and keeps calling this country by its old name.
Later I got a really nice present - a Belarussian world-map from 2006. It was hung on the wall, got lots of honour, was offered bread+salt, etc. After a careful check of this map - some facts:
1. Taiwan was never independant. Same color as China, marked "Taiwan island (China)".
2. It is actually written in the Map footprint (!!) something similar to: Israel has conquered the west bank and other Palestinian territories at 1967, where it leads a brutalizing and violent regime directed to annihilate the rightful population. The size of Israel on this map BTW is extremely flimsy.
Conclusions:
-------------------
1. Don't trust maps - show me at least one where Argentina is smaller than India, for example.
2. Beware of irresponsible advices of shadowy figures, and never, ever, trust anyone.
3. Don't use drugs.