Comments | echo_echo: Changing your view of the world

echo_echo

Changing your view of the world

Jul 25, 2007 09:01

One thing that I have always loved are simiple things that make you realise your version of reality is illusional.

Like this...totally accurate yet how bizarrely wrong it looks.
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Comments 12

badfreddy July 25 2007, 08:08:23 UTC

yeh! Everyone knows the world is flat! Thay have been having us on for years!
Also, who built the moon?

miss_soap July 25 2007, 08:10:05 UTC

Aliens built the moon; it's a disused space station which they abandoned. Why else to you think all the asteroid craters there are flat bottomed instead of much deeper gouges? They've struck metal.

badfreddy July 25 2007, 08:17:23 UTC

...and who decided that gravity had to be so strong on this planet, Im sick of things falling of tables and breaking. And why is everything so damed heavy!

Sometimes I think I must be from a different planet where everything is made of foam.

miss_soap July 25 2007, 08:08:53 UTC

Is that the way up we are? I didn't know that at all... Pleasing to see South America and Africa properly represented though.

echo_echo July 25 2007, 20:06:50 UTC

There is no 'right' way up. It's entirely correct to have a map that way around, or any other way around for that matter.

The general North = Up viewpoint occurred around the time navigation started using both the pole star and magnetic North as standards. Previously the East used to be at the top of the map, hence the term orientation.

But yes, having North as up does give a certain Northern Hemisphere bias to maps. I like the way the UK turns into some kind of New Zealand when you invert it and move it from the centre of the map.

glennkenobi July 25 2007, 08:26:10 UTC

The Chinese have China in the centre of the map rather than the Atlantic... it's all a matter of perspective.

keefybabe July 25 2007, 09:23:20 UTC

The US have it in the middle and also fuck up the proportions to make the US seem bigger.

pi66y July 25 2007, 08:54:33 UTC

strangely enough this type of map make you realise much better that our "earth" is mostly underwater water..
still i strongly and pedantically (is it a word?) object the Mercatore projection.. Greenland is NOT as big as Australia!!

echo_echo July 25 2007, 20:11:18 UTC

It's still a Mercator projection, just inverted. So there is the same amount of water there compared to what you normally see on a map, it just seems more because it is as the top. Interesting illusion though and shows how North Hemisphere biased we are.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercator_projection

mirukux July 25 2007, 09:01:07 UTC

twistedly nifty

n.b. you might like this