Brilliant.

Wonder how the Chinese developed their maps, when they were an early extensive seafaring nation?

Even beyond the Chinese, what about other nations/societies?

IOW, is there any indication that they might have come up with a similar design to the Mercator?

Sorry about the Leslie Jones.

http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/190656/the-mapmakers-by-john-noble-wilford/9780375708503/
“In his classic text, two-time Pulitzer Prize–winner John Noble Wilford recounts the history of cartography from antiquity to the space age. With this revised edition, Wilford brings the story up to the present day, as he shows the impact of new technologies that make it possible for cartographers to go where no one has been before, from the deepest reaches of the universe (where astronomers are mapping time as well as space) to the inside of the human brain. These modern-day mapmakers join the many earlier adventurers—including ancient Greek stargazers, Renaissance seafarers, and the explorers who mapped the American West—whose exploits shape this dramatic story of human inventiveness and limitless curiosity.”

Question for discussion: Did LeVar Burton’s Reading Rainboy skew Left?
I don’t remember any particular bias in his choice of kids books, but I didn’t watch much of the program myself.
I think on the whole they were well-written choices, so he can’t be faulted for the degeneration of education in general, but I have noticed that you have to vet a lot of modern books for tweens / teens for basic literacy.

A variety of studies are now showing that the biggest differentiator between public and private school performance is due to parental involvement.

Perhaps it is not so much the schools and their administration, as it is the parents and the standards they hold both their own children and their school systems to.
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We’ve become a society of grievance and victimhood. That is that wedge that others exploit to divide us all. But, its root is in looking externally to blame rather than taking personal responsibility.

What seems to be emerging from 2016 is that significant numbers on “our” side suffers from it perhaps as much as does the left.
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This is a theme that fits nicely with a few posts ago about “optimism”.

To take a grievance and victimhood view of the world is squarely in the pessimistic, zero sum, divide up the spoils camp. Of course, there are a variety of things to point to that justifies each person’s pessimistic view. There always is.

An optimistic view is more likely to see the world as one of opportunity, of growing the pie through one’s contribution, where a rising tide floats all boats, each individual earning their piece along the way. It is a harder argument to make (e.g. easier to see job losses and attribute them to trade – though technology might be the real reason – than to see the jobs gained and other benefits from trade – lower prices – received by the wider population).

IMHO, America was Founded on the optimistic view. We ALL are letting ourselves succumb to the pessimistic view, and too many are willingly being led down a destructive path, arguing that one destructive choice is better than another one.

I put it out there because we are all accustomed to thinking of the world in a certain way, when the exact same facts, arranged another way, can provide a different perspective, similar to the point about the Mercator design, but perhaps more jarring.

As you say, often the perception expressed is a reflection of the perceiver than of the reality.

When we are debating this election, the “anything is better than clinton” argument is very much caught up in the old, usual right vs left view, with all the focus on the left side and little concern about what we are really advocating for (going to have if we win) on the “right” side.

China building ‘death drone’ cruise missiles guided by artificial intelligence…
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/1638833/china-building-cruise-missiles-powered-by-killer-artificial-intelligence/

not a bad accomanyment to a militar that is larger than all the worlds militaries combined (upon activation)

japan is daring china over spratlys and with new missiles

80,000 troops are on the border of the ukraine
(and another set are near the baltics)

and the one country line in the sand was dismantled by obama and now russia is ruling the middle east with iran, and has a clear corridor to military expansion in the area thanks to Obama negating the buffer zone that was being created (And i laid out… remember? turkey, iraq, afghanistan, pakistan, india…
with all those closed only a very tiny path tourh iran would enable such games, now the doors are wide open, and iran is taking iraq and afghanistan, russia hs syria, we lost egypt, etc.)

Maps, even terrible maps like Mercator projections, are tools that tells as much about the tool MAKER as it does about the tool USER. The “upside down” map was drawn for Australians; note that Australia is in the center left-to-right.

My officemate looked at it. “You’re right, it’s huge.”

“Wow, look it’s bigger than…[whatever]…and [whatever]…”

Etc. We went on in that way for several minutes before the truth dawned on us, and then we felt pretty stupid.