This document discusses different map projections and how they can distort representations of sizes and areas. It notes that the Mercator projection greatly exaggerates the size of landmasses farther from the equator such as Greenland and Europe. While convenient for European colonial powers, this has the effect of making developing countries appear smaller. Alternative projections like Fuller's try to represent the globe's data more accurately when flattened into a two-dimensional map. Overall, the document examines how map projections can reflect inherent biases and influence perceptions of different regions' importance.

2. “The greatest obstacle to progress is not the absence of
knowledge, but the illusion of knowledge” Daniel Borstin
“The familiar is not understood simply because it
is familiar” George Hegel
“Common sense consists of those layers of prejudice laid down
before the age of eighteen” Albert Einstein
“It is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies
and to end as superstitions” T.H.Huxley

6. • “It came as a surprise to me after over 20 years
of seeing "normal" world maps to come across
an upside down one. The most surprising thing
was that I found it surprising. It is completely
artificial that we have North at the top of a map.
• The convention came a few centuries ago when
Northern hemisphere, European navigators
started using the North star and the magnetic
compass. Before that, the top of the map was to
the East which is where the word orientation
comes from.”

11. The Mercator projection creates increasing distortions of
size as you move away from the equator. As you get closer
to the poles the distortion becomes severe. Cartographers
refer to the inability to compare size on a Mercator
projection as "the Greenland Problem." Greenland
appears to be the same size as Africa, yet Africa's land
mass is actually fourteen times larger. Because the
Mercator distorts size so much at the poles it is common to
crop Antarctica off the map. This practice results in the
Northern Hemisphere appearing much larger than it really
is. Typically, the cropping technique results in a map
showing the equator about 60% of the way down the map,
diminishing the size and importance of the developing
countries.

12. This was convenient, psychologically and practically,
through the eras of colonial domination when most of the
world powers were European. It suited them to maintain an
image of the world with Europe at the centre and looking
much larger than it really was. Was this conscious or
deliberate? Probably not, as most map users probably
never realized the Eurocentric bias inherent in their world
view. When there are so many other projections to chose
from, why is it that today the Mercator projection is still
such a widely recognized image used to represent the
globe? The answer may be simply convention or habit.
The inertia of habit is a powerful force.

15. • Buckminister Fuller started with the data
for the spherical Earth surface. He
projected the data from the sphere onto an
icosahedron -- the twenty- sided Platonic
solid -- and then unfolded that icosahedron
out flat.

23. Population

24. Gross Domestic Product

25. Energy consumption

26. Child Mortality

27. Amount spent on Health Care

31. Basketball video