(no subject)

[lollardfish]

Prettiest map ever.

Comments

[daedala.livejournal.com]

Yup, it is.

[chirosinger.livejournal.com]

Nice.

[galacticvoyeur.livejournal.com]

Egads! I never had much of a picture of Venice in my head, not the way I can easily recall the layout and feeling of, say, Brooklyn. This is a really cool map. A bunch of those buildings are still there. And I recognize the names of some of the canals. But I had no real idea of what it looks like, really looks like, how the various canals and islands and bridges work and all that stuff.

[lollardfish.livejournal.com]

Venice is a city that functions best by boat. It's main street is the grand canal. It's outer ring highway is the lagoon. They've done a good job making it a walking city and paving over a few canals to make the "strada nova" (new street), but ... it still works best, as a system, by boat.

Alas, this map doesn't really do what I need.

[buttonlass.livejournal.com]

DOes it blow up to a nice size we can put on my wall?:)

[lollardfish.livejournal.com]

We need to find someone with a big printer and no sense of fair play.

[hunnythistle.livejournal.com]

Lovely. I want one. We likes maps!

[sleigh.livejournal.com]

Ah, I love maps, especially old ones, and that's a particularly nice one indeed. I saved it...

[alisgray.livejournal.com]

have you seen this story yet?
http://www.economist.com/books/displaystory.cfm?story_id=5381851

[lollardfish.livejournal.com]

I get really tired of the whining "but so-and-so got to America first ..." I hear it a lot, actually.

My response is (whether it's the Chinese, Basques, Polynesians, Africans, or Vikings) - they didn't stay, they didn't colonize, their efforts didn't lead to future expeditions.

Now, it's interesting to look at why people's forays to the Americas, if any, didn't result in anything in particular. For China, the Ming emperor decided that China didn't want to look outward. For the Vikings, Vinland was an inhospitable place filled with 'skraelings'. For the Basques, they had the richest fishing ground ever known (the Grand Banks), and didn't want anyone to know. And so forth.

The Americas were there. Currents and winds blow from both sides of Eurasia to the Americas. I'm sure lots of people got there before Columbus. But so what? :)

But anyway - that's an 18th century map. Zheng He definitely got to East Africa. I don't really see how that map changes anything. Forgeries are interesting though. And Journalists want stories.

[alisgray.livejournal.com]

it's a pretty picture, too, I thought. I also thought it was interesting that it's in The Economist.

[lollardfish.livejournal.com]

Actually, even more than people wanting to have been 'first,' I get really grumpy that students are still taught that Columbus was even a little innovative for thinking the world was round. Any educated European knew the world was round. Columbus thought the world was about 66% of its actual size. This put Japan about where the Carribean is.