My Australian colleague has a wall map that while not the same as yours centres on the Australian neck of the woods rather than the United States/Western Europe and I find it hysterical how many people it freaks out.

The world is round, people, the world is round. :D

Not only is it round but it hangs in space, too. "Up" and "down" on the map are arbitrary points designed to give our poor brains a fixed point of reference. (tried telling that to son's girlfriend, who insists the map is just wrong!)

All a matter of perspective!

Exactly! That's what the map is designed to prove, I think.

I looked at your previous day's post, and LJ seemed to be complaining about the photo you'd put at the beginning, so that's probably it.

Yeah, just not sure why it worked perfectly on preview and only then decided to bork itself. I'll have to try deleting and replacing photo and youtube link tonight, to see if I can get it to work properly, otherwise it will drive me nuts.

You must have seen this scene from the West Wing, right?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8zBC2dvERM

No, I hadn't seen that until now. When they flipped the map I clapped! The Mercator projection is such an arbitrary picture, it's nice to see it challenged.

Oh, what an excellent map!

I like maps, and yes, they show us lots about ourselves as well as about our world. The upside-down map, the 'by riches' map, the medieval 'Jerusalem at the centre of the world' map...

The first time I went to Tate Modern, the temporary exhibition was of artwork to do with maps. I *loved* it. One that I particularly remember was a colossal representation of Great Britain made out of Ordnance Survey maps. The outline of Britain was okay, but as you got close to it, you found that all the maps were in the wrong places so that all the placenames were somewhere else. A piece of East Anglia would be used to represent the Yorkshire coast, for example, or Birmingham placenames were scattered all over Cornwall.

It has stuck in my mind ever since.

That would be a fascinating map! It would be quite fun, too, to work out where different towns ended up.