I gave a talk at a the Boston Ruby group last Wednesday. The meeting was generously hosted by the Boston start-up Back Channel Media. On the way out, BCM offered attendees schwag in the form of branded inflatable globes and Slinkies. On Thursday, I suggested to SJ Klein and Seth Schoen that we might be able to use the globe as a research aid during the MIT Mystery Hunt. That seemed like a good idea until they pointed out that there were a few inaccuracies on the map.
Sure enough, a quick glance revealed that:
- Burkino Faso is marked as Upper Volta (it’s only been 22 years) with a capital as Duagadougou.
- Rwanda seems to be a small horizontal bar across a country marked both as Ucanda and Buhuno.
- Zimbabn is labeled clearly while Morocco, clearly divided into two countries, is not marked in either of the resulting (and differently colored) states.
- A missing border and a color identical to the ocean (!) renders Egypt completely underwater. Yemen, Iraq, Thailand, Romania, Austria, Croatia, Finland, (whose name is missing), and the eastern quarter of India are better off in that they blend into the ocean but have river colored borders demarcating them from the rest of the sea.
- The Arabian peninsula is host to Qatah, the United Arab Emiraies, and the Saudi capital of Rivaiih.
- A bit to the north, Jurdan borders Irae and Lebanaw.
- The countries Czek and Slovak seem to be located just above Czechoslovakia which, in turn, is just above Huudatn.
- A similar situation happens in Yugoslavia which seems to be next to Monienegro and other more familiar Slavic states.
- Amstercam is right next to the the German city of Roro.
- Swirzerlano sits in the middle of Europe.
- England’s Lworpool and Rirmingham are clearly, and clearly incorrectly, marked.
- Both Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States are clearly marked while China, despite having dozens of its cities labeled, is not.
- St. Petersburg seems a full 1000+ kilometers from any body of water and closer to Bellarussian than to a port.
- Lapan shows many cities including Tokya, Kyole, and others — while most seem to be located somewhere off the coast of Lapan in the Pacific ocean.
- The Korean peninsula contains N. Korea and S. Aurla.
- Myanmar is marked as Burma (although I might forgive that one if I had reason to believe it was intentional).
- Malaysia is labeled Malaskia.
- The continent at the South Pole is proudly marked Tarctica.
Of course, this list is extremely incomplete. I’ve barely looked at cities, rivers, and even some country names and I’ve barely looked at the degree to which the cities and labels are correct but incorrectly placed. The full list of errata would, in a manner reminscent of English As She Is Spoke, be very, very, long.
While the globe does not bear any markings of a producer (I wouldn’t want to take credit for it either), a group of us suspected that we might be able to find the country of origin by locating the one country that was represented completely accurately.
We couldn’t find a single one.
Many of those mistakes sound like what you’d get if trying to produce it by OCR. From a very old original.
Have you considered asking the people who gave it to you where they got it from?
Austria blends into the ocean? Hey, why has nobody told me that we have a shore :-)
Which ocean is this?
Stuart: The map is very up to date in many other ways. Yugoslavia, despite being marked, is devided into seperate countries. Ethiopia and Eritrea are shown as seperate as well.
It seems to blend into the Black Sea through Romania (which I realize do not actually border). As I mentioned before, the map is very inaccurate.
Morocco is not yet devided …
Utterly hysterical! Thanks for the story. Now if only I could find one of those globes… :)
We demand photos, dude.
Hi Mako,
funny to no end! Its up-to-date except its not. Its spells most thing in engrish. It boggles the mind. With all the buzz about homegrown cad-cam system, maybe someone could buy a deflated beach ball and attempt to print an open source map. Or for more fun, determine a new machine to print on an inflated ball. If you can print on beer foam, why not a beach ball!
Cheers,
Kev
“It seems to blend into the Black Sea through Romania (which I realize do not actually border). As I mentioned before, the map is very inaccurate.”
Well, Romania does have a shore at the Black Sea.
I was thinking that the names seem to be messed up as a result of a bad/unfiltered optical recognition software.
The water blending seem to originating from the fact the producer didn’t considered enough colours.
It seems likely that they simply couldn’t get licensing rights from anyone, so had to go the route of Sensible Soccer in the mid-90s.
– Chris
Barcelong?
Valenere 100km south from where it should be?
Helsinki in the middle of the Baltic Sea?
Gdabsk not by the sea?
Krakow in Slovak?
Andorra in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea?
Gibraliar in Africa?
And why is Pori marked and not Tampere or Turku?
And the worst they forgot Luxembourg !
We have this exact same globe in our lab. It was handed out by the UMD Business school on “Maryland Day” in 2008.
The time spent finding new and hilarious mistakes has been well worth it. I think my personal favorites are Mr lake (Melaka) and Kvole (Kyoto).
After some active games of cubicle volleyball, the ball ripped and deflated. Rather than say goodbye to it, we purchased another inflatable globe, inserted it inside of this one, and blew it up.
I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of it.