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  Did They Shrink Africa? The Map, the Mathematics and the Colonial Question There is a moment when a familiar world map suddenly stops looking familiar. Greenland, which can appear enormous on a conventional Mercator map, turns out to be tiny compared with Africa. Europe, which often seems to occupy a commanding position, suddenly looks much smaller. Africa stretches across the page with an imposing scale that many people never learned to appreciate in school. It raises an uncomfortable question. Were we taught a distorted picture of the world? And if so, was Africa deliberately made to look smaller? The internet has turned that question into a provocative accusation: that Europeans designed the Mercator projection to exaggerate Europe and diminish Africa. The historical evidence tells a more complicated story. Gerardus Mercator did not create his 1569 projection with the stated intention of making Africa look insignificant. He was solving a very different problem ...

  What Different World Maps Get Right and What They Get Wrong There is something strangely powerful about a world map hanging on a classroom wall. At a glance, it appears to tell us exactly how big countries and continents are, where they sit in relation to one another and what the world looks like. But there is a problem hiding in plain sight: the Earth is not flat, and no flat map can show the entire planet without distorting something. That distortion has suddenly become the centre of an international debate after the United Nations called for greater use of world maps that represent the relative size of continents more accurately, particularly Africa. The move has reignited an old cartographic argument over whether the world map many generations have grown up with gives a misleading impression of the planet. The issue is not simply about replacing one picture with another. It is about understanding what every map sacrifices when the curved surface of Earth is transferre...

  Will Self-Flying Planes Transform the Skies? Imagine boarding an aircraft, taking your seat and looking towards the cockpit  only to discover there is nobody there. No captain greeting passengers, no co-pilot checking instruments and no human hands taking control during take-off or landing. Instead, sophisticated computers, sensors and artificial intelligence are responsible for getting you safely to your destination. It sounds like something from a science-fiction film. But autonomous aircraft are already flying in the real world, raising a question that aviation can no longer ignore: could self-flying planes transform the skies? The answer may eventually be yes, although the journey from experimental aircraft to passenger airliners without pilots is likely to be long and complicated. The age of autonomous flight has already begun Self-flying aircraft are not merely theoretical machines being designed in laboratories. Autonomous aviation is already being tested f...

  From ‘Dog Fruit’ to Darling: How India Fell in Love With Avocados There was a time when an avocado falling from a tree in parts of India was hardly worth anyone’s attention. In some communities, ripe fruit was left on the ground for dogs to eat, earning the avocado the rather unfortunate nickname “dog fruit.” Today, the same fruit is becoming increasingly valuable, with farmers planting new orchards, restaurants demanding better supplies and consumers developing a taste for the creamy green fruit. India’s avocado transformation is a striking example of how quickly food habits can change. According to a BBC report, demand for avocados has grown dramatically over the past 15 years, creating an opportunity for farmers who once regarded the crop as little more than an afterthought. From shade tree to profitable crop Sunil Bopaiah, group manager at Cottanad Plantations in Kerala’s Wayanad hills, has witnessed the transformation firsthand. The plantation grows cocoa, rubber...

  The Ultimate Battle of the O’s: iPhone vs Android "The Rivalry That Refuses to Die" A rope stretches across the road. On one side, an iPhone digs its feet into the ground. On the other, an Android phone pulls back with equal determination. In the middle stands a referee, watching a battle that has been raging for almost two decades. The scene may look like a playful tug-of-war, but the rivalry it represents is very real. For years, iPhone and Android users have argued over cameras, battery life, operating systems, security, customisation, artificial intelligence, gaming and status . Yet despite countless technological battles, neither side has managed to eliminate the other. Instead, something extraordinary has happened. Both have won. Two different philosophies enter the smartphone revolution The modern smartphone battle changed dramatically in January 2007, when Apple unveiled the original iPhone. Steve Jobs presented it as three products in one: a mobile p...

  The $6.24 Million Banana: How Maurizio Cattelan Turned a Joke Into Art History A banana. A strip of silver duct tape. A white gallery wall. That is all it took for Maurizio Cattelan to ignite one of the biggest cultural arguments of recent years and eventually turn a piece of fruit into a $6.24 million work of art . To many people, Comedian remains the ultimate symbol of everything they dislike about contemporary art: something ordinary presented as extraordinary, surrounded by wealthy collectors and sold for a staggering sum. But the real story is more complicated. Behind Cattelan's notorious banana lies a centuries-old tradition in which artists have deliberately shocked audiences, challenged accepted ideas and sometimes used ridicule as a weapon. What looks like an absurd stunt is, in fact, part of a much longer history of artistic provocation. The day a banana conquered the art world The story began on 4 December 2019 at Art Basel Miami Beach, one of the world...