the.com/map
a beautiful lie that gets you home anyway, because every flat earth is a compromise
means a flat representation of an area — land, sea, sky, or anything else — showing the position of its parts relative to one another.
from From Latin 'mappa,' meaning a napkin or cloth — the Romans drew their charts on fabric, so the word for the cloth became the word for the chart. The full medieval phrase was 'mappa mundi,' a 'cloth of the world.' English clipped it down to 'map,' and the napkin became the planet.
- projection problem
- No flat map shows true sizes and shapes at once
- greenland trick
- Mercator inflates it to Africa's size; reality, fourteen times smaller
- oldest known
- A Babylonian clay tablet maps the world around 600 BC
- north fixation
- Up-equals-north is convention, not law of nature
- four colors
- Any map needs only four colors, mathematically proven
google maps — digital mapping service launched by google in 2005, used by over 1 billion people monthly
mercator projection — cylindrical map projection created by gerardus mercator in 1569, still standard for navigation
national geographic atlas — comprehensive physical and political maps published since 1888, gold standard reference work