
True size of Africa - tariqr
http://tariq.co/true-size-of-africa/
======
gjm11
Not only is this lifted without proper attribution from someone else's work;
the only added content is the words "Peter's projection" at the start, which
in the space of two words manages to make all of the following mistakes:

1\. The person's name is Peters; the "s" is not possessive.

2\. The projection was devised independently by two people; Gall got there
before Peters. It's therefore usually called Gall-Peters nowadays.

3\. The map shown does not use the Gall-Peters projection, either for Africa
or for any of the other regions fitted into it. (It's all Mercator, but with
Africa scaled up to make its area correct.) The appearance of Africa in the
Gall-Peters projection is unusual enough that no one who actually knew
anything much about maps would make this mistake.

4\. The _Economist_ article to which the page links has its own version of the
"true size of Africa" graphic (which is not the one looted for the "Brain
Junk" page) that uses a different projection also devised by Gall. But this is
also not the "Peters projection" but a quite different one.

I suppose those mistakes are what Tariq Rauf is asserting the copyright on.

(It may be worth noting that Kai Krause seems to have explicitly put his
graphic in the public domain, so there's nothing _illegal_ in what Tariq Rauf
has done here. That doesn't stop it being extremely unimpressive.)

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olog-hai
Why is Kai Krause not credited?

[http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2010/11/cartograph...](http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2010/11/cartography)

~~~
chasing
It's funny that the footer of the tariq.co page states:

"All content copyright Brain Junk © 2014 • All rights reserved."

Even though apparently the one piece of content on the domain is owned by
someone else.

Good times!

~~~
tariqr
haha sorry, did not expect this to go anywhere, added source.

~~~
chrissnell
So you copied his content and claimed ownership and submitted in hopes of
attracting HN views? Nothing sketchy there.

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beloch
Since we're comparing sizes... Let's do it with continents!

1 Africa

= 3.35 Australias

= 2.86 Europes

= 2.20 Antarcticas

= 1.67 South Americas

= 1.23 North Americas

= 0.69 Asia's

Now, in term's of population:

1 Africa

= 35.10 Australias

= 1.38 Europes

= 227669.04 Antarcticas

= 2.60 South Americas

= 1.89 North Americas

= 0.25 Asia's

~~~
_delirium
I wonder if there's a usable ballpark measure for "habitable land"? E.g. you
could say that large parts of Siberia are effectively uninhabitable, along
with some parts of the Sahara desert and a good portion of Australia, and
most/all of Antarctica. Of course habitability isn't really a binary function
with a solid definition, but it'd be interesting to get some kind of rough
estimate, especially when looking at land area and population in parallel.

~~~
speeder
That is a good question.

I think of the huge countries, Brazil is probably the one with less useless
land?

Brazil harshest environment is the quasi-desert plains in the northeast non-
coastal region, it rarely rains there because the coast has lots of hills high
enough to block rain (thus the coast is very rainy too), but it is not a
complete desert (yet... overuse of land in agriculture is slowly transforming
it in a desert).

Brazil has no crazy areas of desert, tundra, or other non-fertile areas, the
only parts "hard" to live as human are the rainforest (because it is too
dense, nothing you cannot fix by making your own clearing) and the marshy area
(because to live there you need to figure how to make a floating house or a
house that don't flood).

US has the Arizona desert, and some snowy mountains, Canada half of it is just
ice, Russia too, half of it is ice, China has a huge desert plus the
himalaias, and the largest countries in Africa usually are large because they
extend the border to the middle of Sahara because of natural resources, it is
not really useful land.

And Australia has that very dry outback where you cannot have proper farming.

~~~
a8da6b0c91d
Navigable rivers is the big problem. Extensive navigable rivers is what made
and continues to make Europe and North America such premium pieces of land.
Siberia, Brazil, and Africa have all had the problem that moving stuff in and
out is super energy intensive.

~~~
avn2109
This is an interesting point. Can you suggest some reading to find out more
about this? eg. what got you thinking along these lines?

~~~
ximeng
Jared Diamond - Guns, Germs and Steel

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coltr
There's a pretty cool Vidsauce video on this. The most popular version of the
map that causes this misperception also causes Greenland to look much, much
larger than it really is.

~~~
vacri
The Mercator Puzzle demonstrates this quite dramatically:

[http://gmaps-
samples.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/poly/puzzledra...](http://gmaps-
samples.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/poly/puzzledrag.html)

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ww520
Where is Alaska fitted into the picture? Alaska is part of U.S. and adds
substantial weight to its size.

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colinbartlett
Reminds me of What Fits Into Russia:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Zm6HzN5YVI](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Zm6HzN5YVI)

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ZoF
Wow, I thought China was much larger than America(as in much much larger);
Africa though I already knew was a fucking giant.

Accurate maps of the globe are enlightening.

~~~
Aloisius
China, the US and Canada are all nearly the same size (9.5 million, 9.1
million and 9 million km^2, respectively).

Russia on the other hand is significantly bigger (16.3 million km^2) - bigger
than even Antarctica (14 million km^2).

~~~
johnsonman
Wikipedia says 9.6, 9.8, and 10.0 million km^2 respectively. Do these numbers
include something (e.g. water) that the numbers you quoted don't? (They also
peg Russia at 17.0 million km^2)

~~~
Aloisius
The numbers are land-only, but there are multiple conflicting ways of
calculating it often due to land disputes. For instance, Taiwan/Tibet/etc. wrt
China

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_area...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_area_%28graphical%29)

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yulaow
The author forgot a part of Italy

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jackmaney
Yes. I get it. Africa is big. Whoopty-freaking-doo. Stop polluting HN with
this irrelevant fluff, please.

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chasing
I know that the average American has some issues with maps -- I think we've
all seen those videos where some chubby schlub is asked to point out the
United States on an unlabeled map and winds up sticking his finger in his eye.
Or his nose. Or butt. Or France.

But Hacker News readers: I really hope the general size of the African
continent is not news. Knowing the general size and arrangement of the
continents is _basic_ geography...

