As I said before, I am one of the Breeze Reporters, supported by Seoul and VANK.  Vank Exhibition began today, in December 22nd at 10am. In order to cover this, reporters had to skip school, and write a report after ’ Learning by direct experience’.

VANK Exhibition is stated at Joong-ang National Museum,the largest museum in Korea.

More information on how to come to the museum. http://www.museum.go.kr/EngMain.do

People are not allowed to take pictures in the museum. Instead, I will put up some pictures of the outside.

△The lake is frozen. Other days were super cold, but today was quite warm, compared to other days of winter.

△The Entrance of Joong-ang National Museum

△You can see the N-Seoul Tower. Can you notice it also?

△Are you wondering what this is? Let me tell you about it. In these days, Joong-ang National Museum has special exhibition on history and mystery of Incan civilization. The picture above is stairs designed with pyramids of Machupicchu. So if you climbe of the stairs, it looks like you are climbing up the pyramids.

△This is the view you can see from the very top of the stairs.

△It’s one small building next to the big one.

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I went inside and I found the place where VANK Exhibition was about to start. It will be continued until 12.27(Sun) and the available time is from 10am to 6pm. Guides will give explanations about exhibition. It’s free of course!!

Since today was the first day, the VIPs, including the vice mayor. All of them were people who work with the president Lee. It was like an honor to me. 

The tape is cut, and the exhibition officially began!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Below are series of some pictures.

△Korean Explanation on ‘What is VANK?’

△This is posting up ‘post-it’s that is written briefly about this:’Korean features that would make people in the world to be amazed at after 10 years.’ Since I took this picture before the exhibition started, there are not many ‘post-it’s but soon after the VIPs, Breeze Reporters and other people put them, the board were filled with pink post-its.

△Korean Postcards

△Information on Korea of foreign textbooks corrected after people such as Korean students asked the pressing company to fix the incorrect information.

△English Version of World Map, produced from VANK, Voluntary Agency Network of Korea(www.prkorea.org)

The head director of VANK, Mr. Park began to explain about pieces of work exhibited in the museum to the VIPs.

△VIPs listening attentively to Mr. Park’s explanation.

△Mr. Park explaining to us, the Breeze reporters.

△Breeze Reporters, not including me, busy taking pictures.

After the Breeze reporters took pictures with the vice mayor, he exchanged greetings with every one of us, individually!!

Apology here. The vice mayor had to go quickly to work for his next schedule, so unfortunately, no one had a chance to interview him.

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Dear Mr. R(Jason), I am so sorry I couldn’t ask any questions. However, I will try to answer your questions as fast as possible instead through your email. Of course, I am planning to research and add those to my knowledge before answering yours.  I will do my best.

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△VIPs putting up ‘post-it’ on the board, posing at the camera, the same time.

[VIPs'  Short message to the world]

• Uh-Yoon-Dae, the chief of National Brand Committee

• Park-Jeong-Chan, the head director(president) of Yeonhap News.

• Shin-Gill-Soo, Eastasia history foundation’s ambassador of marking international terms.

Anyone who want to receive a free world map in an English Version, please leave comments with your email address.

△World Map

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Did you enjoy? I recommend this exhibition to the foreigners, because it will provide them to have a new point of view toward Korea. 

Always yours.

Xiah-J

Okay, as some of you may know, I’m reading The Fourth Part of the World by Toby Lester right now so I’m really into historic maps at the moment.  Though I make maps for a living (along with a bunch of other stuff), I do not have a cartographic background.  Especially not a historic cartographic background.  So, I’m learning quite a bit.

In Toby Lester’s quest to derive the origins of the fourth part of the world, he explores how much of the European medieval world thought that the world was not only flat, but consisted of only three parts.  These three parts were often linked to the Holy Trinity.   Scholars, mostly monks, represented the world with T-O maps (a T within an O).  Here’s an example of one:

T-O Map

The cardinal directions start from the top, East.  The right is the South, the bottom represents the West, and the left, the North.  The whole ‘map’ is surrounded by God “enthroned above the circle of the earth”, or in latter maps also represents Jesus Christ.  The top represents the large land mass of Asia.  The bottom two divisions represent Europe and Africa.

The central cross represents the oceans, but as it symbolized the cross rather nicely, Christian mapmakers used it to represent the cross that Christ died on as well.  This particular example doesn’t show it, but a lot of these T-O maps also showed Jerusalem at the center of the cross, thus the center of the world as was fitting to their Christian world view.

I never knew about T-O maps, and I find the whole concept intriguing.  I hope you did too.

Cheers,

tmso:)

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Request all of these items through Direct Donations. If you are unfamiliar with Direct Donations, click here.

I just started reading a non-fiction book.  Though I am not finished, barely 35 pages into the thing, I’m so excited, I wanted to post about it.

So here it is: The Fourth Part of the World by Toby Lester.

If you are at all interested in history, maps, and the world, you should read this book.  Toby Lester is a masterful story teller as he presents the history of a map.  One single map: Waldseemuller World Map of 1507.

Waldseemuller World Map

This incredible map was the first to show the Americas as separate continents (with ocean on both sides), and to name South America as ‘America’ after the explorer Amerigo Vespucci.

I won’t go much more into the book as I’ve just started it, but I can say that Toby Lester is a great writer.  He brings the story and history of the map to life.  If you are looking for a gift to give that map lover in your life, I would seriously consider this book.

Cheers,

tmso

On the 2OneDay international forum there is an amazing fan project going on in which one of the members purchased laminated world maps and put out an appeal for other fans to reveal their location and names. In each location, stickers will be placed, more for more fans, less for less. She will also be decorating the maps to show our love for 2PM. So far 35 pages of responses have flooded in to support this amazing project and you can join in too!

All you have to do is get a membership at 2OneDay and then go to this topic. Once you are registered, you simply post or message the fan (wackycashew) with your real full name and your location. Easy as that, you are represented on the map! So, join up and help this amazing fan project be an even bigger success!!

2PM fighting!

Morbi Visit

Home > Morbi Visit

Okay, okay.  Just saw this, and since it ties in so well with my last post, I will pass this on:

Potato Chip World

Again, many thanks to Cartophilia for spreading all the wonderful ways that food and maps go hand and hand.

I was reading some news and came across this interesting interactive chart.

The cost of the financial meltdown: Deficits and spending

It lets you see budget surplus, deficit and stimulus plans for the countries around the world in a nice graphical format.

Be warned…

The large orange circles can get a bit scary…

for 2009 in the U.S. deficit = -13.5% (pretty large orange circle)

Why not spiffen up on some of our travelling geography? You know all those itty bitty countries that we have a general idea of where they are, but could not pin point them on a map, like Tajikistan perhaps.

Sporcle provides addictive games that stimulate your mind and have actually been proven by studies that they improved overall entrance exams into secondary education facilities.

You don’t believe me? Test it out yourself! Click here.

The one that got me the most, was trying to name all the countries in the world, 192 countries according to the UN in addition to three well-known nations. My score was 120 out of 195 without studying a world map before hand quickly. What is yours? Comment your answer! (and be honest).

Why not waste your time in a productive mind stimulating environment that really is addictive!

Here is the compilation of 10 most popular mapping sites in the world. I must state that I have considered only those sites which are in English and which are not a geography specific and cover whole world. Mapsofworld.com is of course owned by Compare Infobase Limited and I am proud of the fact that it has made to this list. Global traffic assessment has been don through various third party sites and press releases and blog coverage.

I’ve been looking through the website and noticed we now have lots of unusual products that would make great gifts for that person who is difficult to buy for. I’ve put them together under ‘The Unusual’.

You will find products like unusual world maps, Raised Relief Maps, and even the largest atlas in the world.

If you find something on our website that you think is unusal and I’ve not added it to our ‘Unusual’ catagory, please let us know.

World MAP illustrating percentages of total budgets allocated for Military, Healthcare and Education.

Source:
http://www.visualeconomics.com/how-countries-spend-their-money/

Strange Maps posted about a very interesting, historic map.

The map shown on his post details the world as it was known then, and how the Great Biblical Flood inundated the world giving us (more or less) what we see today.  The map shows (in lighter blue) where land used to be exposed, but, after the flood, is now under water.

What is fascinating about this map is how hard people worked to reconcile localized events in the Bible to world-changing phenomenon.  Of course, we all know God didn’t flood the world.  That’s not why the land masses are in their current configuration, but that’s what this map is meant to show.  It does make one wonder, when the world map was being produced for

Willem and Jan Goeree’s immensely popular book Introductions to Biblical Knowledge, and … Thomas Burnet’s Sacred History of the World (3).

did any of the authors think: “Wait, God didn’t mention all this other land in the Western hemisphere or in the Southern hemisphere.”  How did they reconcile those obvious facts to the recorded history and geography in the Bible?

Other interesting facts to note are the errors 0n the map.  This map was completed sometime in the late 1690s.  Our knowledge of the earth was increasing at an incredible rate during that time, but still it was incomplete.  It makes me think of what we don’t know today.  What theories we hold now will be seen in the future as incomplete and woefully misguided?

tmso

Ok, so I can’t confine myself to one map a week.  So shoot me.  It’ll be our little secret. 

A bit ago, I came across a map done by the artist Kevin Van Aelst.  You can see a picture of it here.  I thought it was so cool.  And it’s halloween, right?  So what do I decide to carve on our pumpkin?

A map, of course.

I had visions of doing something similar to Kevin’s Apple Map but the time involved to do something like that just didn’t present itself.  I ended up just carving out the continents and a few islands.  I’m not happy with it (or the blurry photo).  And half way through I thought what a dweeb, I should have done a globe.  Ah well.  Next time!

Pumpkin World Map by tmso

tmso

“To fight a bull when you’re not scared is nothing,” says a well-known bull fighter. “And not to fight a bull when you’re scared is nothing. But to fight a bull when you’re scared – that is something.”

When was the last time you went to the arena to fight a bull of an idea? What gives you the courage to act on your ideas? Having a well-thought plan? Encouragement? Faith in the idea? Past success?

Curiosity and passion for what I do are the lions in my heart. If I hate what I do, I can’t stand up for it, nor can I do it well. That means I end up doing a lot of things just for fun. And that also means that my days are usually too short…
For example, having just returned from a couple months of backpacking through Mexico, Cuba and Belize a few years ago, I decided to draw my very own world map. It greatly improved my geography knowledge and now hangs in our bedroom. Roaaar…

What puts a lion in your heart?

World Reader Distribution

Click Images for Larger View

For the pie graph, Australia is at 40%, USA at 37%, UK at 6%, Canada at 5%

The burning Earth...

Guys……Can you imagine the world under a endless and never ending sea ???? how would you like to have all your wonderful things under water??? can you imagine our life under water??? how would you manage to go to college through sea……And when you leave for a college, you are hammered with a bitter truth that there is no colleges left anymore !!!! the people you love and adore are no more with you, you don’t remember since how many days you haven’t had good food, cloths, not even pure water to drink……how would you like to see this world once you decided to conquer….and there is no world now…….WE ARE DIEING GUYS…..WAKE UP !!!!

Terrorism, hunger, illiteracy, unemployment, recession are not the only hurdles in our way…..Global Warming is the biggest problem; certain problem that can’t be heal once started…..and it is already started guys…..according to the recent report, if we keep doing what we have been doing then in coming 9-10 years we will deserve all the things i mention above….

Imagine you are in trouble, you are sinking in deep endless sea and craving and screaming for help and nobody appears….cause once it happens, nobody can stop this…..

So please WAKE UP GUYS, come together and take necessary steps to stop this…..

Risks & Impacts of Global warming

Scientific Predictions - End of human race on earth.

Global Warming - Causes & Effects

Major Causes of Global Warming

Do something guys or just wait and watch how our mother earth is being fucked !!!!!

This is how the mother earth will look

And this is how mother earth will be fucked....

Think over and over again…and finally if you want to make a change; just start with the Man In The Mirror…..!!!! Be informed, and help others being informed about this….

I know I’ve already put up a map this week, but this is just too good to pass up:

American Map

It came to me via my good friend down in Santa Cruz. If you would like the citation, drop a line.
tmso