I am quite fond of Buckminster Fuller, the visionary thinker and architect who lived and worked in the mid 20th century. He contributed many novel ways of looking at things and generally was an out-of-the-box sort of individual. He took a fresh look at everything from housing to automobiles and brought the concept of 'synergy' into the mainstream. He is widely known as the father of the geodesic dome, which segments a sphere into triangular elements for strength and ease of construction.
He also applied this concept in producing an accurate map of the world by peeling back the surface of the globe like an orange, to lay flat and to show true sizes and relationships of the land masses. Definitely mind boggling, and one of my favorite ways of looking at the earth. All the continents are string together in a way that we're not used to seeing. Africa is pretty big; Asia not so much so. You can see how humanity walked from Africa to the tip of South America. The Arctic Ocean is almost an inland sea, and northern Alaska - where I will be in July, is actually closer to Finland or to parts of China than it is to my home in Southern California.
And, no, Greenland is not really larger than Africa. Remember that map that hung on the wall in your sixth grade classroom? You know, the one that taught you all you know about geography?
I love maps that make us rethink our view of the world. Thanks for sharing, John.
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