Bad Maps, Say His Name, And Stopping A Street Fight

Bad Maps, Say His Name, And Stopping A Street Fight March 23, 2017

Our usual mid-week selection of quick takes.

Bad Maps: Gall-Peters is no cartographic hero

Breathless news stories this week described how Boston’s adoption of the Gall-Peters projection of the world map over the Mercator one would correct “500 years of distortion” [The Guardian] and how its introduction was “blowing [student’s] minds”. [Boing Boing]

Please.

Yes, the Mercator grossly distorts the sizes of nations, making those farther from the equator (the US, Canada, Europe, Russia) seem bigger than those nearer (e.g., Africa). This is not an issue suddenly unearthed by 21st century social justice warriors seeking to decolonize classroom walls; the American Congress on Surveying and Mapping denounced cylindrical projections, the class including both Mercator and Gall-Peters, back in 1989.

The maps on my classroom walls in Baltimore County Public Schools in the 1970s and 80s were not Mercator or Gall-Peters. They were one of the pseudo-cylindrical projections — I think it might have been the Robinson, a map projection developed in 1963. It’s not strictly equal-area, but distorts areas less than Mercator while distorting shapes less than Gall-Peters.

A 1943 New York Times editorial discussed the problem. It has been long understood. If Boston is just catching on they are decades behind, and making a bad choice of a Mercator replacement to boot.

There are several map projections that are either equal-area or are much closer to it than the Mercator, but are less shape-distortingly ugly than the Gall-Peters map. (Gall-Peters portrays the size of equatorial nations versus more polar nations more equitably than Mercator, but distorts their shapes more — would you rather have your nation be big, or stretched out of shape?)

And the history of Gall-Peters projection is marked by ignorance and dishonesty. Arno Peters first presented his map in 1973, but the same notion was documented by James Gall in 1885. Yet Peters claimed his projection was a novel invention. The campaign for the Peters projection was based on inaccurate claims that it was the only equal-area map, and that it did not distort distances or angles.

The Gall-Peters projection is no cartographic hero. Better solutions have long been known.

map_projections
Obligatory XKCD. (Thank you Randall Munroe for allowing blog posts of his comics.)

Say His Name

In the past few months we’re seen a curious phenomenon of people reluctant to us the name of the vile person currently holding the Presidency of the United States. Indeed, it started with an attempt before the election by blue-tribe commentators to rename Donald Trump as “Drumpf”, his paternal grandfather’s less euphonious birth name.

As someone who’s paternal grandfather also underwent a name change, from Swiskowsky — itself an Anglicized version of his father’s birth name, Swieczkowski — to Swiss, I found this sort of erasure of family history offensive, even if applied to a vile individual.

But it seems to have really taken hold since Trump’s inauguration, with many people referring to him as “45”. Cultural critic Roger Bellin finds an interesting parallel with Freud’s citation of an intersection between tribal taboos and neurotic behavior:

The strangeness of this taboo on names diminishes if we bear in mind that the savage looks upon his name as an essential part and an important possession of his personality, and that he ascribes the full significance of things to words. Our children do the same, as I have shown elsewhere, and therefore they are never satisfied with accepting a meaningless verbal similarity, but consistently conclude that when two things have identical names a deeper correspondence between them must exist. Numerous peculiarities of normal behavior may lead civilized man to conclude that he too is not yet as far removed as he thinks from attributing the importance of things to mere names and feeling that his name has become peculiarly identified with his person. This is corroborated by psychoanalytic experiences, where there is much occasion to point out the importance of names in unconscious thought activity. As was to be expected, the compulsion neurotics behave just like savages in regard to names. They show the full “complex sensitiveness” towards the utterance and hearing of special words (as do also other neurotics) and derive a good many, often serious, inhibitions from their treatment of their own name. One of these taboo patients, whom I knew, had adopted the avoidance of writing down her name for fear that it might get into somebody’s hands who thus would come into possession of a piece of her personality. In her frenzied faithfulness, which she needed to protect herself against the temptations of her phantasy, she had created for herself the commandment, “not to give away anything of her personality.” To this belonged first of all her name, then by further application her handwriting, so that she finally gave up writing.

Thus it no longer seems strange to us that savages should consider a dead person’s name as a part of his personality and that it should be subjected to the same taboo as the deceased. Calling a dead person by name can also be traced back to contact with him, so that we can turn our attention to the more inclusive problem of why this contact is visited with such a severe taboo. — Freud, “Totem and Taboo” [emphasis added]

I am reminded of the advice of one of our great mythological wizards, Albus Dumbledore, speaking of the reluctance of most in his world to use the name of the villain Voldemort: “Always use the proper name for things. Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself.”

Also, it makes you look like a neurotic, which is not a basic for effective rhetoric.

Stopping a Street Fight

A recent viral video shows a man stepping in to break up a fight between two teenage boys in Atlantic City, showing excellent de-escalation skills.

Ibn Ali Miller, 26, has received widespread praise online, including from NBA star Lebron James, after he defused a fistfight that erupted in the middle of the street in Atlantic City earlier this week and convinced the brawlers to shake hands and walk away.

In these times it’s worth noting that Miller is Muslim:

“I’m a Muslim. I was raised by Muslim parents. That’s what we were taught in my house, always, growing up,” he said. “For me, I don’t look at it like I’m a peacemaker. I did what I was supposed to do, what I was raised to do.”

But more importantly, watch the video and see how he reveals to the combatants the way in which they are being used by the audience for their amusement.


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