MondayLunchCrew

This site maps the world based on different criteria and let's you visually see some numbers around the world. While I don't like how they've represented it in terms of style, I do like what it's sayings. It brings to mind two things:

1. A West Wing episode from Season Two where they discussed how the world map should be redrawn because it's too northen centric. Gee I miss how good that show was! I'll definitely have to think about putting some early seasons on my dvd list.
2. The Penguin State of the World Atlas. I first saw it at my favourite bookstore, Kramerbooks & Afterwords Cafe in Washington, DC.  The design and layout of this book is a lot more to my liking.

A map is such a symbolic and simple representation of a very big concept and it's very interesting how certain prejudices stems from just the visual representations on it that are European or northern hemisphere centric. While it's not likely any new world maps will be accepted over the ones we're used to these days, it's very interesting to take a look and ponder the possibilities. For some further reading and to take a look at the map mentioned in that West Wing episode:

• Peters Projection
• An Explanation and Guide of the Peters World Map

Other interesting maps: http://www.odt.org/

Labels: General