How Maps Can Distort Space and Deceive Us

How Maps Can Distort Space and Deceive Us Maps have become increasingly present in our everyday lives, and with new technology, maps are more and more accessible to view and to produce. By considering the variety of map elements (scale, projection, symbolization), one can start to recognize the innumerable choices that mapmakers have in creating a map. Why Maps Are Distorted One map can represent a geographical area in many different ways; this reflects the various ways in which mapmakers can convey a real 3-D world on a 2-D surface. When we look at a map, we often take for granted that it inherently distorts what it is representing. In order to be readable and understandable, maps must distort reality. Mark Monmonier (1991) puts forth exactly this message: To avoid hiding critical information in a fog of detail, the map must offer a selective, incomplete view of reality. Theres no escape from the cartographic paradox: to present a useful and truthful picture, an accurate map must tell white lies (p. 1). When Monmonier asserts that all maps lie, he refers to a maps need to simplify, falsify, or conceal the realities of a 3-D world in a 2-D map. However, the lies that maps tell can range from these forgivable and necessary white lies to more serious lies, which often go undetected, and belie the agenda of the mapmakers. Below are a few samples of these lies that maps tell, and how we can look at maps with a critical eye. Projection and Scale One of the most fundamental questions in mapmaking is: how does one flatten a globe onto a 2-D surface? Map projections, which accomplish this task, inevitably distort some spatial properties, and must be chosen based on the property that the mapmaker wishes to preserve, which reflects the maps ultimate function. The Mercator Projection, for example, is the most useful for navigators because it depicts accurate distance between two points on a map, but it does not preserve area, which leads to distorted country sizes. There are also many ways in which geographic features (areas, lines, and points) are distorted. These distortions reflect a maps function and also its scale. Maps covering small areas can include more realistic details, but maps that cover larger geographic areas include less detail by necessity. Small-scale maps are still subject to a mapmakers preferences; a mapmaker may embellish a river or a stream, for example, with many more curves and bends in order to give it a more dramatic appearance. Conversely, if a map is covering a large area, mapmakers may smooth out curves along a road to allow for clarity and legibility. They may also omit roads or other details if they clutter the map, or are not relevant to its purpose. Some cities are not included in many maps, often due to their size, but sometimes based on other characteristics. Baltimore, Maryland, USA, for example, is often omitted from maps of the United States not because of its size but because of space constraints and clut tering. Transit Maps: Subways (and other transit lines) often use maps that distort geographic attributes such as distance or shape, in order to accomplish the task of telling someone how to get from Point A to Point B as clearly as possible. Subway lines, for instance, are often not as straight or angular as they appear on a map, but this design aids the readability of the map. Additionally, many other geographic features (natural sites, place markers, etc.) are omitted so that the transit lines are the primary focus. This map, therefore, may be spatially misleading, but manipulates and omits details in order to be useful to a viewer; in this way, function dictates form. Other Manipulations The above examples show that all maps by necessity change, simplify, or omit some material. But how and why are some editorial decisions made? There is a fine line between emphasizing certain details, and purposefully exaggerating others. Sometimes, a mapmakers decisions can lead to a map with misleading information that reveals a particular agenda. This is apparent in the case of maps used for advertisement purposes. A maps elements can be strategically used, and certain details can be omitted in order to depict a product or service in a positive light. Maps have also frequently been used as political tools. As Robert Edsall (2007) states, some maps†¦do not serve the traditional purposes of maps but, rather, exist as symbols themselves, much like corporate logos, communicating meaning and evoking emotional responses (p. 335). Maps, in this sense, are embedded with cultural significance, often evoking feelings of national unity and power. One of the ways that this is accomplished is by the use of strong graphical representations: bold lines and text, and evocative symbols. Another key method of imbuing a map with meaning is through the strategic use of color. Color is an important aspect of map design, but can also be used to evoke strong feelings in a viewer, even subconsciously. In chloropleth maps, for example, a strategic color gradient can imply varying intensities of a phenomenon, as opposed to simply representing data. Place Advertising: Cities, states, and countries often use maps to draw visitors to a particular place by depicting it in the best light. A coastal state, for instance, may use bright colors and attractive symbols to highlight beach areas. By accentuating the coasts attractive qualities, it attempts to entice viewers. However, other information such as roads or city-size that indicate relevant factors such accommodations or beach accessibility may be omitted, and can leave visitors misguided. Smart Map Viewing Smart readers tend to take written facts with a grain of salt; we expect newspapers to fact check their articles, and are often wary of verbal lies. Why, then, dont we apply that critical eye to maps? If particular details are left out or exaggerated on a map, or if its color pattern is particularly emotional, we must ask ourselves: what purpose does this map serve? Monmonier warns of cartophobia, or an unhealthy skepticism of maps, but encourages smart map viewers; those that are conscious of white lies and wary of bigger ones. Sources Edsall, R. M. (2007). Iconic Maps in American Political Discourse. Cartographica, 42(4), 335-347. Monmonier, Mark. (1991). How to Lie with Maps. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Marketing Managemant 6 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Marketing Managemant 6 - Essay Example Similarly, in order to be remain profitable in the future also, they need to know the future changes in the consumers' tastes as they imperative for the success of the business as it is the consumer purchases that keep the business up and running and do well for the owners of the company and for all other stakeholders including the company's customers as well. Marketers will have to base their promotional strategy on the basis of consumer's perceptions. If consumers value discounts more than other offers such as free samples than the marketers need to make sure that they get the appropriate promotion technique and hence marketers need to know a lot about the market in order to keep the business on track and up and running. Apart from consumer's perception, the psychology of consumer's must also be kept in mind. If certain ad is considered to be bad according to the culture of the country than such ad should not aired or printed. These are some of the techniques that marketers must ke ep in mind in order to make successful promotional and marketing techniques to contribute to the success of the business.

What does Tiberius' life and death tell us about Roman society at that Essay

What does Tiberius' life and death tell us about Roman society at that time - Essay Example Tiberius throughout his life fought for one cause; to eliminate the line of discrimination between rich and poor through a revolutionary change in law. Yet, Rich gentry of Rome depicted how ‘influence’ deciphers power and law. The bright Tiberius was educated in ‘Augurs College’, which was embarked as a supreme institution for excellence in academics. Upon inspecting his skills and talent, Appius Claudius offered him his daughter ‘Claudia’ in marriage. Fortitude and determination in armed conflicts was observed in Tiberius, whilst he served in Africa for ‘Young Scipio’s Army’ (Kishlansky et al., 142-146). ‘War against Numantines’ provided an opportunity to Tiberius; to resolve frenzy conflicts in the presence of senior generals. Twenty thousands and more were saved due to his successful dialogues with the victor Numantines. In the times of Tiberius’ rule, literacy was valued most and due to his love for tomes; he went back to the defeated zone and requested only for his literary treasure. He was offered to take back more from his personal possessions, but Tiberius only chose his esteemed collection of books. Humiliating punishments (stripping captors in public) were imposed by victors; as it was a common practice in the past, but Numantines did not practice it for Roman consul officers due to prestigious Tiberius presence. This event setup benchmark in Tiberius’s administration career and he eventually became a legislator. The conquered regions of neighbour-state were allotted to deprived citizens on meagre rents, yet; wealthy Romans drove away the poor and paid huge rents. These illicit actions became the stepping stone for ‘five hundred acre-property ownership law’. Yet, through false-name-ownership act influential people violated law and poor farmers became more deprived and eventually, were not able to pay heed towards education or warfare. Subsequently, Tiberius

To Shoot or Not to Shoot an Elephant Essay Example for Free

To Shoot or Not to Shoot an Elephant Essay Audience Profile: My target audience for this summary and response paper is my online English class. Being an online course through a community college, this is a large and very diverse class containing people of all ages, all ethnicities, and all kinds of education backgrounds. Audience-Subject Relationship: I believe the main idea of this essay has to do with peer pressure. Although my target audience is a diverse one, I know every single person has in some way been exposed to peer pressure and can relate in some way to the reading. Audience-Writer Relationship: Being in an online class is different and in some ways makes it more difficult to get to know classmates. So far we have shared brief descriptions of ourselves and our writing styles and that’s about it so this first draft will be a good way of showing what we all have to bring to the table. Writer’s Role: I would like to come across as someone with personal experience of this topic. The main idea of this essay, peer pressure, is something that every single person has to deal with at some point in their lives in some way or other so mostly everyone should have personal experience on this idea. A European man is stuck in a dreadful job, in a foreign country, where he is already disliked, and is faced with a decision that would impact a few thousand people. George Orwell, the author of the essay, is a sub divisional police officer in lower Burma. He is bitter towards his job and is ridiculed on a daily basis. He feels as though he is living only to impress the local â€Å"Natives.† There is an elephant loose in the town and George is called to help. When he arrives in the village and does some investigating he finds that the elephant went on a rampage eating, destroying, and killing. A local Burman had been in the way of the elephant and was trampled. Gun in hand, George located the enormous animal with no intentions of harming it, only intending on defending himself if necessary. A large amount of people had followed him, over two thousand and counting. He then realized he had given his followers the idea that he would be shooting and killing the elegant elephant. Now he felt obligated to do so or the Burmans would think less of him and laugh in his face. He internally struggled trying to make a final decision of what to do, although on the outside he knew he could not let the people know he was struggling to decide. He did not want to look weak; he wanted to be viewed as a strong authority. He truly believed the elephant was over his â€Å"must† and would no longer harm anything or anyone, as it was gracefully grazing in a pitiful field. However, he knew that would not be acceptable to the thousands in the audience waiting for him to pull the trigger. He considered testing the elephant by getting close to it to see if it would charge, but then decided that that would not please the crowd either. His final decision was to shoot the beastly elephant. I believe the essay â€Å"Shooting an Elephant† by George Orwell was intended to point out how peer pressure can impact a person’s decision and to make the audience question how they would react had they been in that situation. In the essay George takes many things into consideration as he is faced with the difficult decision of whether or not to shoot the elephant. He considers all the things the elephant destroyed, including a human beings life. He considers the owner of the elephant. He considers how many people are watching him and how they want him to shoot the elephant. The one thing he seems not to consider is his own feelings. He acknowledges that he feels it to be unnecessary to shoot the elephant. In the essay he says â€Å"As soon as I saw the elephant I knew with perfect certainty that I ought not to shoot him.† (Orwell) Although he thinks this, he still does not act on his feelings due to the pressure he felt from those thousands watching and wanting him to do it. He thinks â€Å"The crowd would laugh at me† (Orwell) if he did not do it. He cares more about what others think about him than what the actual right thing to do is. He thinks â€Å"I had got to shoot the elephant. I had committed myself to doing it†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (Orwell) Against what he thought was the right thing to do; against his better judgment, he goes ahead and lies on his belly and shoots the elephant several times. He ends the essay by saying â€Å"I was very glad that the coolie had been killed; it put me legally in the right and it gave me a sufficient pretext for shooting the elephant.† (Orwell) I think that even if the villager was not killed by the elephant, George would still have given into the peer pressure from the people and killed the elephant anyways. He is only using the death of the villager a s an excuse and a safety net to not get in legal trouble for unnecessarily killing the elephant. The fact that a person was killed was not the motivation for shooting the elephant, which is the only thing that bothers me personally. As the reader of the essay, put yourself in George’s situation. Would you have made the same choices George made? The essay takes us through George’s thought process. How would your thought process differ from George’s? In the beginning, personally, I mostly understood George’s way of thinking and why he did what he did. He was already trying as hard as he could to fit in and not be ridiculed for being a foreign authority. George says in the essay â€Å"†¦in every crisis he has got to do what the natives expect of him. He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it.† (Orwell) I think he was trying to convince the Burmans that he was on their side, and he was afraid if he did not do what the Burmans thought was the right thing to do, then he would give them the idea that he was not on their side. Although I do understand where George is coming from and why he made the decision to kill the elephant, after taking everything into consideration, it still was not the right thing to do and I believe I would have not made the same decision. It is harder said than done to do the right thing when you are pressured to do the wrong thing, but if I were in George’s situation I would have chose not to shoot the elephant. He did it to please the Burmans, but why continuously try to please people when they are already ridiculing you and most likely will not stop? I think that although George made a decision that the Burmans were happy about, they will continue to ridicule him and make his job and life difficult so what really is the point of trying to please these people? At the end of the day everyone is faced with peer pressure and you never know how you would actually react unless you are in that situation yourself because doing something is much easier said than done. Works Cited Orwell, George. â€Å"Shooting an Elephant.† Shooting an Elephant and Other Essays. New York: Harcourt, Brace World, 1950. Gale Cengage Learning Litfinder. Web. 28 June 2012. Reid, Stephen. The Prentice Hall Guide for College Writing. 9th edition. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson, 2011. Print.

Depression During Pregnancy: Nursing Role, Interventions, and Care Essa

Introduction Pregnant women are vulnerable to depression because of major changes in estrogen and progesterone levels as well as changes in the brain which produce significant physical and psychological impacts (Stewart, 2011). Depression during pregnancy can affect not only the mother but the unborn child and other children. Caring for women who are depressed during pregnancy is in many respects different from other types of caring. Caring in this situation is demanding and truly involves the intention to care. The women are diverse but most of them live in poverty, without social support, and many do not want the child (Sable & Washington, 2007). The nursing role is best summarized as a moral ideal because of the level of acceptance needed by nurses. In terms of interventions, the women need to learn coping strategies to deal with stress but the most prominent need is social support. This paper will explore these three areas of nursing role, interventions, and care as they apply to the pregnant mother who is experiencing depression. It becomes clear in all the literature that the nurse requires the highest level of competence, skills, and knowledge in order to effectively manage these women’s complex and diverse needs and concerns. Background Depression is common among pregnant women and about 13 percent of these women experience changes in their mental state and functioning (Buck, 2009). While postpartum depression is even more common than depression during pregnancy, the rate of suicide is the same during the final six weeks of pregnancy as it is during the 12 weeks after delivery (Buck). Furthermore, the emphasis on postpartum depression tends to diminish the importance of depression which occurs during pregnancy. Among... ...ions during pregnancy and lactation. Journal of Psychosocial Nursing & Mental Health Services, 47(5), 19-24. Joseph, J. & El-Mohandes, A. (2009). Reducing psychosocial and behavioral pregnancy risk factors: Results of a randomized clinical trial among high-risk pregnant African- American women. American Journal of Public Health, 99(6), 1053-1062. Sable, M. & Washington, C. (2007). Social wellbeing in pregnant women. Journal of Psychosocial Nursing & Mental Health Services, 45(12), 24-32. Suppaseemanont, W. (2006). Depression in pregnancy. The American Journal of Maternal/Child Nursing, 31(1), 10-15. Stewart, Donna E. M.D. "Depression during Pregnancy" N Engl J Med 2011; 365:1605-1611 October 27, 2011. Web 18 May 2015. http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMcp1102730 Swinburne, C. (2008). Pressure to deliver. Nursing Standard, 22(19), 22-23.

Edgar Allan Poe Analaysis

Isaiah Mutakabbir Dille Senior English 2 23, March, 2013 Edgar Allan Poe Literary Analysis Edgar Allan Poe was born on January 19, 1809, Massachusetts. Poe died at the age of 40. The cause of his death is undetermined and has been attributed to alcohol, drugs, cholera, rabies, and other agents. He is most known for his poems and short stories such as The Raven, Tell-Tale Heart, and The Black Cat. Poe was one of the early American practitioners of the short story and a progenitor of detective fiction and crime fiction.Poe used many different forms of figurative language in his poems but the one I find as his best and most used is his use of symbolism. Poe’s use of this literary element is seen all throughout his works. In one of his greatest poems, The Raven, symbolism is used very many times. Such as the main symbol in the poem which is a raven. It symbolizes never ending and mournful remembrance. Many others also agree that symbolism is Poe’s greatest form of figurativ e language is his use of symbolism. Such as Tyler G. who said that Poe â€Å"masters it in his every work. He also said that â€Å"in The Pit and the Pendulum, the whole story symbolizes the dark and rough time in the torture chambers. † Another critic named Christoffer Hallqvist agrees and says that â€Å"Poe uses several symbols to take the poem to a higher level. † In his online essay written about Poe’s use of figurative elements he is also quoted saying that Poe’s â€Å"way of interpreting signs that do not bear a real meaning, is one of the most profound impulses of human nature. † Though many believe that symbolism is Poe’s greatest literary element others believe that it is his use of foreshadowing that should be known as his best element.In an article on 123helpme. com it was written that Poe’s â€Å"most common literary element used †¦throughout many of his works is foreshadowing. † The article also stated that When Fortunato states, â€Å"I shall not die of a mere cough†, Monstressor enthusiastically agrees with him. If you read into this meaning behind this it is direct foreshadowing that he will not die of a mere cough, but starvation and dehydration caused by Monstressor burying him in a wall will be what kills him. Though this is a good example of Poe’s use of figurative language I still believe that it s his use of symbolism that should be accredited with being his most and greatest used literary element. Poe overall is one of the post modern pioneers of symbolism. Works Cited Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition, September 2006, p1, 10p â€Å"Edgar Allan Poe and His Use of Literary Devices. †Ã‚  Teen Ink. N. p. , n. d. Web. 23 Mar. 2013. â€Å"Edgar Allan Poe. †Ã‚  A Brief Biography of including Selected Works to Read Online. N. p. , n. d. Web. 23 Mar. 2013. â€Å"Literary Elements Used by Poe :: Essays Research Papers. †Ã ‚  Literary Elements Used by Poe :: Essays Research Papers. N. p. , n. d. Web. 23 Mar. 2013.

A Study On Values And The Value Of Individual Initiative...

Neoliberal Values. The first key dependent variable in this study is neoliberal values (DV). While neoliberalism is â€Å"a political project that entails a set of particular economic and political ideologies,† this study will be focusing on the dimension that emphasizes â€Å"the individual and the importance of individual initiative and distaste for all collective efforts† (Dolhinow, 2006). The degrees of neoliberalism will be determined by the responses to the following statements: 1) America is a society that protects and guarantees my basic rights, 2) I think America provides opportunities for success for everyone, 3) Through hard work, anyone can overcome racism or sexism in America (Alpha=.83). The items that measured adherence towards neoliberal values were operationalized with a range from 1=Disagree, through 3=Neither Agree not Disagree, to 5=Strongly Agree. The closer to 1 a participant is the less likely to adhere to neoliberal values and the closer to 5 the more likely to adhere to neoliberal values the participant was. To capture the variability of the scores for the variable neoliberal values measures of central tendency were calculated. The results of these analysis are; N = 575, M=3.33, SD=1.256. When you look at the mean, it appears that most participants lean slightly more to adhering to neoliberal values than not. Racial Discrimination. Racial discrimination is the tendency to treat or to be treaded unequally based of your racial make-up. 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