Country shapes

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I like looking at maps of countries and I find it annoying that some have weird shapes - you know, irregular ones I hate looking at the map of Chile for this ver yreason. Eritrea also is weird in this respect - it has such a long "tail" And Ruanda and Burundi... well, they are normal but it looks funny that such TINY countries are in such a close neighborhood with such a HUGE one like Congo. I don't like to look at the maps of very small countries either - it looks just silly that a country can be so small, while the other countries are so big. I always wonder how it is to live in such a very small country, which can be travelled across in a very short time. And I am fascinated by an idea that a country may be covered by jungles all over (Congo, Brasilia) or by sand - like Saudi Arabia - it is annoying; imagine that there is that HUGE area covered with sand all over - no cities, no towns, just sand all over the Rub- al-Khali area. Nice that at least my own country has a very regular shape
Who else is annoyed by such things like the shapes of countries?

I don't find oddly shaped countries annoying at all. I actually find their shape quite intriguing. Like Chile and Togo. Chile really does look like a chilli. The three neighbouring countries Malaysia, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea are also quite unique. In Europe we have Italy that looks like a boot, and Norway and Sweden that reminds me of a horses head. The sheer size of Russia is quite astounding as well.

New Gwinea has a curious shape - it's shaped like a dinosaur.

In the Netherlands, we used to call the North Western peninsula of New Guinea 'Vogelkop' ('bird's head'), because of its resemblance to a bird's head.

I think the most curious thing about the shapes of sovereign states, is that the very old ones tend to have borders that are defined by natural boundaries like mountain ranges or rivers, while a lot of countries that are former colonies and were often only conceived as adminstrative regions during the days of European imperial expansion, quite often will have these smooth straight lines for borders, because the European governments were deciding amongst themselves "Right, you guys won this war, so now we're going to define the border between our territories by so-and-so meridian."

To me it looks like the head of a T-Rex. Seriously - this island is a T-Rex shaped one - it has a head, short front legs, the tail...

Im bothered by the scale distortion greenland is so much smaller compared to equatorial countries than it appears to be.

I saw a documentary once that said all the different countries were joined thousands of years ago but over time they broke away.

New Zealand was once joined with Australia if you look at the shape you can see how they were joined.

YES!

The shapes of countries sometimes intrigues, but rarely "bothers" me.

But the standard Mercator projection usually used to make world maps is a major source of annoyance to me.

When you translate the surface of a sphere to a flat map you have to make trade offs. The Mercator projection was invented 400 years ago by the Dutch geographer to aid ship navigators because it accurately preserved distances- but it screws up shape and size.

But most world maps you see on walls and in the media (for the general non navigating public) use that projection- which enlarges things near the poles and shrinks things near the equator.

So Greenland appears to be as big as all of South America. In reality Greenland is the same size as Mexico (large, but only about an eighth the size of South America). The old Soviet Union appears to be twice the size of Africa (Africa is slightly larger than the old Soviet Union). Canada appears to about four or five times as big as the USA when its only about 1 and a quarter the size of the lower 48 contiguous united states.

I like the way North America looks. Canada looks like the top of a chubby woman's torso and The United States looks like the bottom of a chubby man's torso.

That about North America...I dont see.

But when I was a child in the Sixties I was struck by how much France is shaped a profile of Charles De Gaul wearing his signature military gendarme-type hat. And also how much China looks like a fat man lying on his belly- a fat balding guy with hair around his temples- a guy who looks alot like Mao Tse Tung.

De Gaul is facing west- the peninsula of Britany is his big nose, and one of his ears borders Italy, and Switzerland.

Mao is facing the Pacific. His head, and remaining hair are the region of Manchuria.

Yes, but how many of the shapes can you actually name?

World Shapes I
World Shapes II
World Shapes III
World Shapes IV

I did pretty badly:

I: 9
II: 7
III: 6
VI: 5

I need to improve my geography.

It's pretty hard. I got an average 7 a C. And I consider myself pretty good at Geography. I can locate most countries on a map. But even some of the countries I know where they are, but I get the shapes mixed up.

As someone living in such a very small country: Todays living was waking up to the alarm clock, showering and hygiene stuff, driving to work, having lunch, working, eating two breads and drinking a tea.

What do you mean in particular, that you think might be somehow else?

The only stuff I mentioned, is that US people, due to their big country size seem to have lost connection to their government and offices. So they often refer to those as "Them" or as organizations, not being connected to them and ruling them, without their influence. I think thats in a rather small country a bit better, so if you want to do an public election to change a law I think its far easier informing the publicity about that, so that they do know about the voting, then in a big country. As well that if you are really pissed about something, then you only have 8 hours to capital city for joining the protestors. So in opposition to US-people its not some anonymous them doing laws or ruling us, but its us as people causing certain laws or rules to exist, so I hardly can blame them for being stupid morons, when they are only doing what is supposed to do their job, according to our desicions. ^^Because of the less anonymity of public people, I think there is as well less mindless aggression. At least I remember us having an public discussion about the increasing aggression of politic protestors, when an minister got hit by a butter-creme-cake. (It was on purpose a cream-pie, so the protesters announced that they only wanted to express their opinion and their huge disappointment publicly, but did not intend hurt anyone.)

And our spam-mails, might look cute to others. So if you want to order Online alps cheese, directly from the farmer "Alps-Sepp", you can now get a 5% discount by mentioning the codewort "Sepp 2014" in your E-mail order.

As well that it is easier to keep overview about certain stuff and financials, so as example, our complete aircraft (18 jets ^^) could easily be carried by one of those US-aircraft-carrier ships as a whole.

I-10

II-10

III-9

IV-9

All A's, or A+'s.

On the first test I didnt even need to see the choices-just imediately knew it.

Got a bit harder on the other tests and sometimes had to guess between pairs of choices (like one shape coulda been either Papua New Guinea, or the Domincan Republic, which are both halves of islands. Guessed one, and it was the other).

OP- if you're so bothered by the shapes of countries dont ever flip through an HISTORIC atlas showing past geopolity because the shapeshifting by your own country of Poland would freak you out!

Lol!

In the 1600' Poland was a major power and ruled a big chunk of real estate (it ruled Lithuania- and together they were big).

Then in the mid 1700' (about the time our USA was being put ON the map) Polands nieghbors ganged up on Poland and partitioned it between them. Poland shrinks, and then disappears altogether (as it gets gobbled up by Russia, Prussia, and Austria).

Then Poland reappears after World War One as a major independent country. But then gets partitioned again between HItler and Stalin- and disappears again- for the duration of the Second World War (dividied between Russia and Germany).

Then Poland reappears after WWII, but it has jumped west on the map from its previous location. Russia kept the eastern regions they stole during the deal with Hitler. But gave Poland regions that were traditionally German. Germany gets thinner, Russia got a little fatter, and Poland stays about the same size, but makes a little hop to the west.