Why is an accurate global map hard to make?

[Holdfast]

Anyway, why can't we use the 100 or so satellites, (you know, the ones that Big Brother owns) that we have sitting in orbit looking down on our planet to take pictures in various areas and then create a composite picture of the end result to make a truly accurate map? Isn't that what most of them are for anyway?

No, most of them are there to figure out just exactly where in the world Carmen Sandiego is. They took time off to find Bin Laden, but now it's back to public enemy number one.

 

[iBender]

Carmen!

Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego? - Epic educational cartoon, back in days.

 

[B.J.]

I used to watch the gameshow back in college (). My housemates and I loved their house band Rockapella, who frequently made offhand comments. (Like saying/singing "Low Budget!" anytime they had a cheap looking set piece!)

 

[Holdfast]

I'd sure want to track her down...



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[Canadave]

Am I the only one who still thinks of the computer game first when he hears the name Carmen Sandiego?

 

[Trekker4747]

Is there another way to think of her?

I grew up on those computer games.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

I also played the games a lot as a kid. First CD-ROM game I ever played, in fact.

 

[RoJoHen]

Am I the only one who still thinks of the computer game first when he hears the name Carmen Sandiego?

I certainly do. I forgot all about the TV show(s).

 

[Gaith]

I've seen Rockapella four times.

 

[Canadave]

Am I the only one who still thinks of the computer game first when he hears the name Carmen Sandiego?

I certainly do. I forgot all about the TV show(s).

I'm glad. Everyone mentioning the TV shows instead at first had me worried.

 

[Scout101]

I also played the games a lot as a kid. First CD-ROM game I ever played, in fact.

CDROM game? Thought you were older than that? My first Carmen Sandiego games were on 5 1/4 floppies...

 

[Robert Maxwell]

I also played the games a lot as a kid. First CD-ROM game I ever played, in fact.

CDROM game? Thought you were older than that? My first Carmen Sandiego games were on 5 1/4 floppies...

I'll be 30 this year. First computer I played games on was a C64, which had 5.25" floppies and a tape setup.

But when I was 12 I got a 386 clone with a multimedia kit, which included a SCSI CD-ROM drive, and Carmen Sandiego was one of the included games.

 

[scotpens]

I'm joking, but, I'm sure, with all the space travel (I've seen An Inconvenient Truth (2006)). It's 2011 A.D - I'm pretty sure that someone, somewhere knows what the planet really looks like, even if our weather maps off of the Equator do get distorted, I guess, look at the U.N Flag, for a flat version of it.

The U.N. logo is based on a Lambert azimuthal equal-area projection, in which shapes are increasingly distorted as you move away from the central point (in this case, the North Pole). Obviously, this isn't what the Earth looks like from space. The most that can be seen from an orbiting satellite, or any spacecraft, is one-half of the earth at a time.

Older map projections stressed accuracy in direction, because navigation and charting ocean currents were the priorities. Today, world maps tend to be projections that represent relative areas accurately, at the expense of direction and distance. It's all a matter of geopolitics.