Today was the day that I realized that the ridiculous "The World" artificial archipelago in Dubai is based on the Mercator projection, with as many islands representing Greenland as all of South America. 
As I've mentioned before, I spend a day in each of my classes each semester talking about map projections—how they're constructed, why they look the way they do, and so on. Why is north up? Why is Europe in the middle? That sort of thing.
Today, near the end of class, someone asked about the "The World" project, and what version of best practices in cartography it reflects. I'd never looked at it from that perspective, so I went to check. And wow.
And it doesn't even make any sense. The whole point of the project is that these little blobs of land are being given essentially arbitrary names in order to create an artificial hierarchy and sense of scarcity.
(When the whole thing collapsed with the 2008 crash, "Lebanon" was one of the only islands that had been developed. Since then, a few islands in "Europe" have been built on. Most of the rest is still empty desert landfill.)
Artists' conceptions of the project vs. reality are amazing, BTW.
Anyway, yeah. Twenty islands making up Greenland. Cartography is a hell of a drug.
Oh, and here's an actual-size comparison of South America (left, partial) and Greenland (right), for reference.
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