Maps to Scale

I'm none too enamored of retired military men drawing upon maps for the news channels; they're just too coarse to be informative. Lileks puts the point just so much more nicely:

I’ve kept track of the war via the radio and the web. Radio gives you the news of the moment; the web gives you detail and commentary. TV is useful for pictures - I get the feeling sometimes this should be called Operation Stock Footage - and it’s useful for seeing retired military people draw lines on maps. I am heartened by the maps that show where our troops are located - if the pictures are indeed drawn to scale, we have three soldiers on the ground, and each is about 135 miles tall; they have at their disposal four tanks, each of which is the size of Rhode Island.

Yup!