We've seen this comparison made before, albeit never as lucidly as this. Behold: major countries of the world, overlaid atop an outline of the positively giant African continent.
If this is your first time seeing this comparison, you might be surprised by Africa's immensity. If that's the case, there's a decent chance you can trace your warped view of geographic scale back to a "compromise projection" – map projections so-named for their tendency to sacrifice things like accurate geographic size and shape in exchange for, say, nice, straight lines.
Oh and it's a continent too, not a country. Just in case you were confused by that like somebody we could mention.
Just a reminder that often things are simply not as they seem.
Nor Hawaii for that matter.
More interesting maps (including this one and my favorite, no. 9) can be found here:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.buzzfeed.com/daves4/maps-that-will-change-the-way-you-look-at-the-world
How could we when our maps have been so distorted and biased? I am in my 6th decade and only recently learned the true size of Africa and the deception/propaganda!!
ReplyDeleteThanks for this interesting (though I think little known) fact.
ReplyDeletedowl
When my sister joined the Navy back in the 70s, she requested to be stationed in Alaska. She got sent to Hawaii instead, where she discovered she was allergic to 63 different things, including the smoke from burning sugar cane, which pervades the island twice a year during harvest. She hated almost everything about being in Hawaii and would have been so much happier in Alaska.
ReplyDeleteWe used to tease her that, because so many maps showed Alaska and Hawaii next to each other, the Navy figured that at least she'd be close to where she wanted to be!
Africa is a big-ass country. It's almost as big as Alaskas's little sister, Texas. (h/t Sarah Palin)
ReplyDeleteAnd we're all Africans, by the way, including Sarah Palin, although I'm sure she's probably 50% Neanderthal. Every time I hear a racist Republican make some off-the-wall comment, I just want to swab the inside of his cheek and send it off to 23andMe. Telling a black person to go back to Africa is ridiculous. Every single tea party Republican and rabid racist is descended from Africans--the sub-Saharan, dark variety. They can blame evolution for altering their genes to adapt to limited sunlight and UV rays. No wonder they don't believe in evolution. Then they'd have to admit to being more related to President Obama than they could stand. The Europeans who made it to the new world spent a lot of time getting down with the nonhuman Neanderthals, after they left Africa, which might explain how we ended up with Sarah Palin, Joni Ernst, and her ilk.
ReplyDeleteExcellent!
DeleteOnly 50%?
DeleteThe last couple lines just slay me. I know you should not have to put those there, but for the undeereducated I can just imagine the brain noise, "What, really?".
ReplyDeleteOne of my niece's former housemates studies the Aids virus and the photos she takes are just breath taking. A lot are beyond sad, kids orphaned by the disease, abject poverty, no clean water, small huts for schools, etc.
ReplyDeleteThere are some horrid cultural traditions that spread aids while keeping young girls "in their place", but they're changing by seeing women in roles other than mothers and field workers.
I saw a man on the TED series explain why wall maps show the Soviet Union waaaaaaaaaay on the left and the United States waaaaaaay on the right. The truth is, we're closer than we think and govmint didn't want us to crap our pants knowing the USSR and USA are neighbors.
North America, the Continent, is only 17% smaller than Africa, which in turn is 32% smaller than Asia, the true largest continent.
ReplyDeleteFor instance that is NOT where Alaska is located.
ReplyDelete------------------
Really, I thought Sarah chose to live in Arizona because it was just over the border from Alaska.