Friday, 10 February 2012
A few weeks ago, they (sorry, I don’t know why “they” are) installed a very cool map of the world on the wall at my job. The wall itself is painted deep blue and the land masses are all a raised, shiny metal. There are no features on the map apart from the land masses – no political divisions, no indication of terrain, no markings to show “you are here.” I walked past them (sorry, I don’t know who “them” is) a few times on the day of installation, and I was almost jealous of their job. They had all these pieces of the world scattered on the floor, and they affixed a paper tracing of the world onto the relevant wall. Then, as they day progressed, the installed the land masses one-by-one, careful to place each one where the tracing indicated. One of the workers cut out the paper map as the metal one was installed, thereby revealing the blue “ocean” background.
I am unnecessarily picky about the maps I like. In fact, though I am a map-lover, it’s probably a good policy to never purchase a map, globe, or atlas as a gift for me because I will almost certainly be disappointed.
I give the map installed at work a solid B.
For one thing, it’s not Mercator’s Projection, and I loathe Mercator’s Projection. It’s not a Goode Homolosine, either, which is better, but bugs the crap out of me. I believe it’s an Equirectangular (albeit sans Antarctica) – and that, inmy opinion, is on e of the four or five best projetions out there.
But there’s a problem (besides the absense of Adrian Veidt’s home continent). The problem is…There’s complete disregard for land masses smaller than 10,000 square kilometers (almost). I noticed right away that many island chains were not represented and I determined that, one day, I would figure out the minimum limitation.
Today, I figured it out: Jamaica is the smallest island nation depicted on the map. At 10,991 square km, Jamaica just makes the cut for “big enough to count.” But there area few other islands on the map that are smaller than Jamaica. One of them is Puerto Rico, which is only 8,870 square km. Another is Prince Edward Island, at 5,684 square km. Why are these included, I wondered, and not Cyprus? Cyprus, after all, weighs in at 9,251 square km, so it’s bigger than both Puerto Rico and Prince Edward Island. But maybe (and I think this really is why) the designers felt that leaving off PR and PEI would be immediately spotted by their American and Canadian clientels. This would also explain the map’s biggest grievence – Hawaii is on the map…but only the Big Island. So, for one thing, it looks weird. I mean, if you’re gonna show Hawaii, you’ve at least got to show five or six of the main islands (you know, like Maui, O’ahu, and Kaua’i) in order for the representation to look like the State of Hawaii. The one islands, all by itself, just doesn’t look right.
I saw someone staring at the map the other day, so I stopped and stared with her. She put her finger right on the Big Island and said, “What’s this?” I said, “It’s Hawaii, minus about 130 of its islands.” She smiled at me like I was a dork.
Try picturing this with only the Big Island. Doesn’t look like Hawaii anymore, does it?
Second, even that Big Island is only a measely 4,028 square miles – far smaller than many other islands that are not depicted at all. So why even bother? Again, it’s got to be because, as Americans, we damn well want to see all of our fifty states. And that Spanish stepchild.
So, I’m sure you’re now wondering: what nations are not given any land mass representaion at all? Well, Cyprus is the largest. The others, in descending order of size, are…
The Bahamas (at 13,000+ sq km, the Bahamas is larger than Jamaica. Alas, none of its 700 islands are larger than 6,000 sq km)
Trinidad and Tobago
Cape Verde
Samoa
Mauritius
Comoros
Sao Tome and Principe
Kiribati
Bahrain
Dominica
Tonga
Singapore (maybe – thanks to The Causeway I’m not sure if it’s an island or not anymore)
Micronesia
St. Lucia
Palau
Seychelles
Antigua and Barbuda
Barbados
St. Vincent and the Grenadines
Grenada
Malta
The Maldives
St. Kitts and Nevis
The Marshall Islands
Nauru
I’m thinking of drawing them in myself. But I don’t think my free-hand pencil would blend in with the die-cut metal.