title: Rhumb Lines and Map Wars: A Social History of the Mercator Projection
author:  Mark Monmonier 
description: "Any attempt to show how map projections work must include their rhetorical role, which involves goals markedly different from traditional cartographic tasks like describing boundaries, exploring patterns, and getting around. This rhetorical prowess, rooted as much in the map's symbols and generalizations as in its projection, makes the map vulnerable to diverse ideological interpretations. Thus the Mercator map can be viewed as an icon of Western imperialism while the [Arno] Peters map can connote fairness and support for Third World concerns." Monmonier, professor of geography at Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, builds on this foundation a rewarding study of mapmaking and the uses of maps. His prime example of the rhetorical role of maps is the "map war" of 30 years ago over whether the familiar Mercator projection, with its inescapable distortion of the size of countries, is Eurocentric and diminishes the significance of Third World nations. "Although a potential for bias [in maps] exists," Monmonier writes, "broad assumptions of conscious or subliminal malevolence trivialize commonsense notions of bias and agenda. In my experience, the bias of ignorance, the bias of sloppiness, and the bias of tradition, individually or collectively, are far more prevalent than the bias of political ideology."
zlib_text: * * * *
  
   **Line War**
  
  [Cormac 05]
  
   **By Neal Asher**
  
  Scanned & Proofed By MadMaxAU
  
  * * * *
  
   **1**
  
   _The Line, which is effectively the border zone of the Polity, has in many
  areas stabilized where thePolity has ceased to expand (a prime example being
  the point between the Polity itself and thePrador Third Kingdom, called by its
  residents the ‘Graveyard’) but is still shifting outwardselsewhere (towards
  the galactic centre mostly). Upon this border there have been and will
  continueto be numerous conflicts, for beyond it human and even AI occupation
  extends even further as aresult of the first diasporas of the solar system and
  the continuous emigration of those humans andAIs searching for something new
  or fleeing something old. These conflicts are called Line wars -being very
  specifically defined as such by the resources required for them and how they
  impinge onPolity territory. Usually they are finished quickly by ECS warships
  or Polity ground forces, or both.Generally it is the 