Among other things, Sir Charles W. Shults III write:

>     It's a very nice image, but why are your continents about twice as
>     large
> as they should be?  It seems you posted a similar globe some time back
> with the same thing going on- huge continents.

I guess it's an effect of perspective and the way we are used to seeing the 
maps...

Here are six different views of the same "ball", which show, I hope, how all 
continents look equally "enlarged" when centered.

I also include a view from much further away (and a tighter angle), which 
should minimize the effect of perspective.

The model is just a spherical map of an image like this one: 
<http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/data/ev116/ev11612_land_ocean_ice_350.jpg>, 
so there should be no weird distortion (I hope)

-- 
light_source{9+9*x,1}camera{orthographic look_at(1-y)/4angle 30location
9/4-z*4}light_source{-9*z,1}union{box{.9-z.1+x clipped_by{plane{2+y-4*x
0}}}box{z-y-.1.1+z}box{-.1.1+x}box{.1z-.1}pigment{rgb<.8.2,1>}}//Jellby

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