In our computer room, directly above my monitor, hangs a big elementary-school wall map of the world, circa 1970 (we got it at City Liquidators in Portland - a sweet place for old school paraphenelia and everything else ever made by humans). This map, in contrast to every other I've seen, places Africa in the center of the world, with all the rest of us emanating from that continent. As cartographers and geographists are most likely scientists, what can be the reason for the millions of jingoistic maps scattered around our country? Looking at my map, it's so much easier to see that the world was once just a blob of land, and the global shift caused by [insert a big geological word here] resulted in the dispersion of the continents as we now know them. My map also better demonstrates how the migration of our species must have occurred. Conclusion: modern cartographers are creationists, or, most likely, Texans.
On a slightly less attacking note, I see that our map is not hung exactly straight. Now that I've noticed this I will never look at this map again. We'll just have to move. Oh the joys of OCD.