The True Size of Africa (2010) [pdf]
edge.org
edge.org
The other maps in the collection are also interesting http://edge.org/documents/Edge-Serpentine-MapsGallery/
http://mapfight.appspot.com/africa-vs-au
Even if comparing countries to continents were valid, that map completely omits the two largest countries in the world, and only includes three of the top nine (#10 is an African country).
An appropriate comparison would be Asia, which is considerably larger than Africa. North America (which includes Canada and Mexico) is somewhat smaller than Africa, but not by much.
Russia, Canada, China, the United States, Brazil, Australia, India, Argentina, and Kazakhstan are all larger than any African country.
Africa is a heterogenous continent, with vast numbers of different cultures, languages, natural resources, climates...
Treating it any kind of unit doesn't make sense. It definitely doesn't make sense to compare it with unitary countries on any level, and even less sense to compare it on the basis of geographic size.
Canada is a huge country, but that's not why it's wealthy. The Netherlands is a tiny country, but that's not why it's wealthy, either.
Comparing a continent to a country makes sense the same way that you might compare the size of a child to an adult. They don't have to be the same. You just know which of the two you are and get a sense of how big the other is.
There is a significant amount of work done at the last stages of the turbine (when going from +1bar -> 0.1 bar) so increasing the ambient temperature can have a noticeable on total cycle efficiency.
Yep, but that shouldn't be a big factor in the temperature ranges under discussion.
A mirror-based concentrator can reach 3,500 C (let's say 3,700 K, roughly, though it's closer to 3,800). That's the hot side. The cold side might be about 60 C at the most (the highest temperature recorded in the Sahara appears to be 57.7 C) or about 330 K. Compare to a temperate zone setup operating at say 20 C on the cold side (say, 300 K).
The first will have a maximum Carnot efficiency of 1 - 330/3700 = about 0.91, while the second will have 1- 300/3700 = about 0.92.
As you say, the more intense sunlight (and especially the lack of rainy days) will more than make up for this.
There's a decent image of solar pressure across Africa on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SolarGIS-Solar-map-Africa-....
Whoever made this map under-represented the African island, even though the whole point is to highlight under-representation of Africa.
My theory is that the harder life is the more successful it is. Which is the opposite of what you would expect.
In hot places shelter is not really needed, you don't need to store food for the winter, and you don't need as much food (although you do need water).
In cold places you have to plan for the winter, and that effort translates into improving your life in all things, not just shelter and food.
You might like this book: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Fire_Upon_the_Deep
Edit: The answer is "there are none". from http://ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html:
"Why don't I see down arrows?
There are no down arrows on submissions. They only appear on comments after users reach a certain karma threshold."
So I guess a collusion of puppet accounts in some script that automates upvoting can be used to game the system pretty easily without the story falling from grace for a while - as there exists no mechanism for the community to do so.
Of course, flag too many of the wrong stories, like I apparently did, and you lose the ability to flag.
So we get what we get.
Apparently that was "abuse" of flagging. It would have been nice to have had some guidelines. Ah well, we still get plenty of political stories, and they still turn into 99% tribal warfare.