The pseudonym "Philo Vaihinger" has been abandoned. All posts have been and are written by me, Joseph Auclair.

Monday, March 20, 2017

Peters vs Mercator

According to The Guardian, the Mercator projection, by pushing the equator below the halfway line of the map, while handier for representing navigation routes, exaggerates the size of land masses in the northern hemisphere.

The Peters projection, putting the equator halfway down the page, gets the relatives sizes better - though I must say to observers used to be older map it looks like the world in a fun house mirror.

Naturally, this being The Guardian, the switch to the latter in the Boston public schools, while noted as a switch toward relative accuracy, is celebrated as a decolonization of the map, as rejecting exaggeration of the old imperial powers.

Like Greenland, Sweden, and Alaska.

Yet that does seem to reflect the motives and beliefs of the school authorities, as indicated in these snips.

They are certainly not making this change merely for the sake of accuracy.

The result goes a long way to rewriting the historical and socio-political message of the Mercator map, which exaggerates the size of imperialist powers.

“This is the start of a three-year effort to decolonize the curriculum in our public schools,” said Colin Rose, assistant superintendent of opportunity and achievement gaps for Boston public schools.

The district has 125 schools and 57,000 students, 86% of whom are non-white, with the largest groups being Latino and black.

Leave it to The Guardian to count Latinos as nonwhite.

They fully endorse the absurdity that "Islamophobia" is a form of racism.

Still, those numbers tell you of a demographic future for the country that Bozo's wall will not avert.

After changing the maps, Rose said, educators plan to look at other subjects and shift away from presenting white history as the dominant perspective.

The respective merits of the Mercator and the Peters maps have long been debated.

A spirited discussion about their implications even featured on an episode of the West Wing, in which characters argued for the Peters map to be used in US public schools and told the administration the Mercator projection had “fostered European imperialist attitudes for centuries”, creating an “ethical bias” for “western civilization” against the developing world.

“The Mercator projection is a symbolic representation that put Europe at the center of the world. And when you continue to show images of the places where people’s heritage is rooted that is not accurate, that has an effect on students.”

The Guardian does not note that these claims are racist lies and weaponized history.

Boston public schools map switch aims to amend 500 years of distortion

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