The Public Broadcasting System broadcast "Stop the Church," a documentary that reported favorably on the disruption of Catholic worship services by homosexual activists, a protest that led to the desecration of the Host at New York's St. Patrick's Cathedral.

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Letter to the editor, the New York Times, February 4, 1992:

The widespread, persistent and increasing loss of wild birds (a high estimate of 976 million fatalities) from window collisions (not just winter feeders, but through the year, particularly during migration) contrasts sharply with the relatively meager losses from such catastrophes as oil spills, pesticides and collisions with vehicles. You did not go far enough in "Windows Near Bird Feeders Can Pose A Deadly Threat" (Science Times, December 31, 1991).

The Fish and Wildlife Service's Office of Migratory Bird Management introduced me to the expert on this subject, Dan Klem, when I was preparing a booklet on backyard bird problems. Dr. Klem, an Associate Professor at Muhlenberg College, may be the only ornithologist to consider "plate glass predation" worthy of study. The results of his nearly two decades of research have been published in journals, including an article on prevention techniques for Living Bird, the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology's popular magazine, in 1985.

Dr. Klem's studies show that the scare techniques you mention, falcon silhouettes and owl decals, do not significantly reduce window deaths.

Homeowners can prevent a major cause of bird killing by requiring architects to use angled or nonreflective glass and by retrofitting windows with an external covering. Now that I know it's not just a few birds, I've chosen to cover my killer windows with bird netting.

—Heidi Hughes, Vice President, American Backyard Bird Society

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The National Council of Churches and several United Nations agencies have endorsed maps that use the Peters Projection over those that use the Mercator Projection. German mapmaker Arno Peters has denounced the widely used Mercator Projection as an example of "European Arrogance," since, to render most of the earth's land mass as accurately as possible, it makes the Northern Hemisphere appear relatively large compared to the Southern Hemisphere, which has less land mass and population. This makes Greenland appear to be the same size as Australia, even though Australia is more than three times the size of Greenland.

The Texas Education Agency, which heavily influences textbook content nationwide, now requires a disclaimer placed next to the Mercator Projection and inclusion of comparison with other maps. "In our society," one critic claimed, "we unconsciously equate size with importance and even power, and if the third world countries are misrepresented, they are likely to be valued less." A spokesman for the National Council of Churches' publishing organization commented, "The political implications of this map are true, whereas the political implications of the Mercator map are false."

It has always been known that the Mercator Projection represents the earth's geography inaccurately—indeed, any two-dimensional projection of a spherical surface will be inaccurate in some way—but it is only recently that political implications have been attached to this fact. The Mercator Projection shifts its midpoint latitude line up from the equator, while keeping both latitude and longitude lines straight. The Peters Projection also keeps navigational lines straight, but while attempting to render area sizes equally, it grossly distorts the shape of land masses. Equatorial continents such as Africa and South America appear tall and thin, while polar regions appear short and wide.

Other projection methods address the problem by bending navigational lines. The Robinson Projection, used by the National Geographic Society, keeps latitude lines straight but bends longitude lines outward. The Van der Grinten Projection adapts this approach by bending latitude lines downward towards its center in an attempt to keep polar areas from receding into shapelessness. (One map using the Van der Grinten Projection sets the earth "upside-down"—that is, with Australia, South America, and Africa on "top"—to challenge students' orientation and prioritization of continents.) Employing a radically different method that solves many of these problems while causing others, the Interrupted Sinusoidal Projection cuts the earth into orange-peel-like segments, each segment joined at the equator. The Fuller/Dymaxion Projection divides the sphere into triangular segments, all of which are connected in a seemingly haphazard way that makes it difficult to orient one's self relative to other segments, and scrambles perception of latitude and longitude.

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