In these days of global business, wouldn't it be good to have a proper understanding of what our world really looks like. Because globe = sphere = ball = round. Most of us have an atlas at home, a flat perception of an otherwise spherical surface. And that, I believe, is very confusing indeed and gives many of us a completely wrong impression of where places really are, especially in relation to each another. In addition, our personal "Map of the World" varies from place to place with our own home country usually somewhere right in the middle and the rest out there towards the perimeter. I had (and still have, by the way) an old school book entitled the "Atlas of Great Britain and the Rest of the World". A partial explanation for a somewhat "insular" mentality, perhaps? On the first pages, the Mercator projection puts London right in the middle (the Greenwich meridian, of course), the USA to the left, China way out right and, of course, Australia "down under". Right, left, up and down. But what is right or left and what is up and down on a sphere. Tradition would have north at the "top" and south at the "bottom". But, of course, that is not at all valid on our globe. So if you want to understand things better, throw your atlas away and have a really good look at the globe. I'm willing to bet that many of you will be in for a surprise. Your perception of the size of different countries, landmasses and even whole continents and your perception of the distances between different places may be very very distorted. Compare the size of Africa with North America. Compare Australia and Greenland. Did your atlas give you the same impression?

Imagine you want to get as far away as possible from any given place (or a given person, your boss for instance), where would you go? There's a common perception that it we Europeans could dig a deep enough hole, we would finish up in China! Would we really? Of course not. For we Brits, wanting to get as far away from London as possible, the Antipodes are the place to be. But where are your antipodes? So here's the challenge! If you lived in Seoul, South Korea, and wanted to get as far away as possible, where would you go? If you lived in Bogota, Colombia, where would you go? And what about people in Auckland, New Zealand? Where should they go? But please don't cheat. Have a guess first. And then go check your globe. Surprised? I think so.

 Posted 04.06.2009

Having spent some time in the USA attending the NLGI Annual Conference and meeting some other friends for both business and pleasure, I come home with a high degree of confusion concerning what is supposed to be the world's leading democracy. The main headlines on all the television news channels, including rivals CNN and Fox News questioned the results of the election in Iran. In report after report, Iranians were shown to be united in viewing the re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a miracle. Some literally and others in the sense that they see no explanation why such a failed president would attract nearly eight million more votes that in his first victory. Leading US politicians were united in condemning the Iranian election as corrupt. So was the election of George W. Bush also a miracle ? But that's another story and not the reason for my current confusion. It was an article on the front page of the New York Times (Wednesday June 17, 2009) that caught my attention. In Phoenix Arizona, a place you would think to be much more modern than Teheran, they had a problem concerning how to settle a draw in the local election. Here, the heritage of the Wild West came storming through the saloon doors to remind us of how it used to be not that very long ago. The two politicians stood nervously in front of the town judge. He selected a deck of cards from a Stetson hat and shuffled it six times. Thomas McGuire cut the deck and selected a card, the six of hearts. Adam Trenk, a newcomer to town, stepped forward and lifted the king of hearts and his supporters cheered. "It's a hell of a way to win .. or lose .. an election" said Mr. McGuire. So here we have two so-called democracies with two quite different ways of ways of settling an election. In one, the sacred leader decides, in the second, a deck of cards decides. So it depends really on whether it's your vote that counts or your count that votes.

 Posted 29.06.2009