{"id":4025,"date":"2011-07-04T18:30:40","date_gmt":"2011-07-05T00:30:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=4025"},"modified":"2011-07-04T18:30:40","modified_gmt":"2011-07-05T00:30:40","slug":"521-cartography%e2%80%99s-favourite-map-monster-the-land-octopus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=4025","title":{"rendered":"521 &#8211; CARTOGRAPHY\u2019S FAVOURITE MAP MONSTER: THE LAND OCTOPUS"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a HREF=\"http:\/\/bigthink.com\/ideas\/39146?utm_source=feedburner&#038;utm_medium=feed&#038;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+bigthink%2Fblogs%2Fstrange-maps+%28Strange+Maps%29&#038;utm_content=Google+Reader\">Frank Jacobs<\/a>: <\/p>\n<blockquote><p><I>Over the centuries, the high seas have served as blank canvas for cartographers\u2019 worst nightmares. They have dotted the globe\u2019s oceans with a whole crypto-zoo of island-sized whales, deadly seductive mermaids, giant sea serpents, and many more heraldic horrors. As varied as this marine bestiary is, mapmakers have settled on a single species as their favourite for land-based beastliness: the octopus.<br \/>\nReal octopi are sea creatures, of course. But the Cartographic Land Octopus &#8211; CLO for short &#8211; need not worry about being in the right ecosphere. Being fictional, it is not restrained to any biosphere, and has only one iconic function: instilling readers with fear and revulsion. The CLO does have a link to the ocean, though. It is clearly descended from an older fictional monstrosity: the Kraken, a sea-bound giant squid whose enormous tentacles dragged whole ships down to their watery graves.<\/I><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Frank Jacobs: Over the centuries, the high seas have served as blank canvas for cartographers\u2019 worst nightmares. They have dotted the globe\u2019s oceans with a whole crypto-zoo of island-sized whales, deadly seductive mermaids, giant sea serpents, and many more heraldic horrors. As varied as this marine bestiary is, mapmakers have settled on a single species [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4025"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4025"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4025\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}