[time-nuts] OT: At the Flea

[Philip Pemberton]

On 19/04/11 20:48, Chris Albertson wrote:
> The story I like used common terms where they asked people to find
> things on a world map and 30% could not locate the Pacific Ocean.
> http://www.nationalgeographic.com/geosurvey/highlights.html

Good grief, that's an easy one.

The Atlantic is the big one between the East coast of the USA and West 
coast of Europe / Africa.

The Pacific is the slightly smaller one off the West coast of the USA 
and East coast of Asia.

The Indian ocean is between Africa and Australia. Had to look up the 
name though.

And this is from someone who badly failed at geography. I most likely 
couldn't tell you where all the borders of the various EU member states 
were (and I certainly couldn't name all of the US states)...

Thing is, it's not something that most people need to know in order to 
do their jobs. This is why we have atlases, Google Maps and -- of course 
-- Wikipedia. Frankly if I needed to know where (say) Norway was, I'd go 
to Gmaps and type in "norway"...

In my experience, wild guesses are only a viable option if you somehow 
end up on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire or The Weakest Link and all 
other approaches have failed...

-- 
Phil.
lists at philpem.me.uk
http://www.philpem.me.uk/