Russian TV explains Geography

Posted on 2012-08-06 by Andreas Moser

Living in Lithuania, I also receive some Russian TV channels. On one of them, I spotted this show in which the size of Russia is compared to the size of other countries.

About Andreas Moser

I am a lawyer in Germany, with a focus on international family law, migration and citizenship law, as well as constitutional law. My other interests include long walks, train rides, hitchhiking, history, and writing stories.
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6 Responses to Russian TV explains Geography

  1. John Erickson says:
    2012-08-06 at 02:43

    Isn’t that Dave Thomas (or whatever his name is) from Second City TV? That whole bit just screams “SCTV”!

    Reply
  2. radius says:
    2012-08-06 at 10:21

    Hi Andreas, ha ha, at least some Russians still keep their sense of humor (o.k., at least before they got sued for blasphemy or un-patriotic actions (hope you will soon make some comments on the pussy riot trial).
    About the size of Russia as compared to other countries: its an easily explicable issue. It has to do with the Mercator-projection of most modern geographic maps (see here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercator_projection). This was revolutionary in the 16th century to minimize short-range distortions at maps of coast lines and to “fit” the spherical shape of the earth surface onto flat maps. The disadvantage is a huge distortion of the size of countries and continents, if they are nearer or closer to the equator (most extreme: the north- and south-poles which are in reality a few centimeters look as broad as the entire circumsphere of the earth. Still
    extremely distorted are the sizes of scandinavia (Sweden seems to be larger than Egypt or Iran) and Canada (seems to be larger than Brazil). If you look at these maps, Russia appears twice as large as Africa. But its all just a matter of the viewpont. As long as people make fun´of it, o.k., as long as they dont apply this distorted view to make foreign politics.

    greetings Michael

    Reply

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