I remember cutting out of Der Spiegel a map titled Ronald Reagan’s world. This was back in the 1970s (I think) and Europe and Asia were divided into ‘our missiles’ and ‘their missiles’. Great Britain was oddly shaped and called ‘our aircraft carrier’. It was funny, but seriously worrying at the same time. I have no idea if the cartoon still exists – if it does, I would love to see it.

I also remember seeing a book about the mental maps of different sorts of people living in different parts of the UK. Londoners saw England as basically the South-east with a small misshapen blob of ‘the rest of England’ on top of it. Scotland was barely visible. Again, it was funny, but it made its point.

Yesterday someone on the wonderful Twitter pointed to a site called Big Think. 483 – The Great European Shouting Match had me laughing out loud. Read Bill Bryson’s Neither Here nor There (his tour of European countries and prejudices about them) in conjunction with Big Think and you can’t help laughing out loud. You’ve got to go to the site to see the maps and commentary.

[Update: There are more (the originals?) here.]

[Next update: This just gets better and better! Try this and this and this!]



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