Subject:
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Re: Geography (was: We'll take in your poor....)
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Mon, 12 Jul 2004 16:32:29 GMT
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Viewed:
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1354 times
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"Purple Dave" <purpledave@maskofdestiny.com> wrote in message
news:I0ny3F.F5E@lugnet.com...
> I've often wondered about this sort of thing. Admittedly, I have it • easier than
> most US citizens, having lived my entire life on the longest lakeshore in • the
> world, but I have a really hard time imagining not being able to point out • where
> I live on a map. Anyways, what sort of map would you be talking about? • If it's
> a globe or a world map, would it be color coded only by country, or would • the US
> be divided up by States? Trying to find a single city in the entire US • without
> benefit of State boundaries is roughly equivalent to trying to find a • single
> city in Europe without benefit of national boundaries, and I'm amazed at • the
> number of people who scoff at the intelligence of US citizens while • failing to
> remember that. I think my favorite real-world example is a story a friend • of
> mine told me, where they were visited in Michigan by German relatives who
> thought it'd make a good day-trip to visit the Grand Canyon.
Hmm, I think I could come reasonably close to pointing out the location of
every city I've lived in without just a map of North America including major
natural features. I might not get the location of Raleigh NC too well, but I
am sufficiently familiar with the coastline that I should at least place it
in North Carolina. Troy NY might also not get placed in the correct place
along the Hudson River. My locations of Massachusetts towns might not be
perfect either. Beaverton OR should be pretty easy to place correctly.
One comment I have about people's knowledge of geography in other countries
and such is that people are going to know and remember stuff that's
important to them. To the average American who has never left his home state
(we have had high school students in our church youth group here in Portland
who have never been out of the state - and here, you can take a city bus out
of state!), the locations of many geographical features even in the US are
of little importance, let alone some country halfway around the world. These
tales of Europeans who totally underestimate distances are just a good
example (actually, one would think they would be a little better seeing as
distances for a daytrip in Europe are considerably shorter than in the US,
we once tried to take a daytrip from a city in Yugoslavia to the beach, and
discovered we had really forgotten about the fact that a "highway" in Europe
(especially in Yugoslavia) is not like a US interstate).
One I always thought was ridiculous was my Scottish co-worker's dismissing
the efforts of the US railroad builders, totally ignoring the order of
magnitude in difference between the trials of building railroads in the US
as compared to the UK. Of course there are other countries with even bigger
railroad building challenges, though I'm not sure if any have the extent of
railroad building across their large expanses that the US have. Canada is
probably close. Ok, India probably actually exceeds the US for railway
network across an expanse. The USSR does have the Trans Siberia, but it's a
single rail line, not a network. Hmm, I tried finding some world railroad
ton-mile statistics, but was unable to find any. I did find this statement:
U.S. freight railroads are the world's busiest, moving more freight than any
rail system in any other country. In fact, U.S. railroads move more than
four times as much freight as do all of Western Europe's freight railroads
combined.
From http://www.aar.org/AboutTheIndustry/AboutTheIndustry.asp but that could
be a biased source.
Frank
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Message has 2 Replies:
 | | Re: Geography (was: We'll take in your poor....)
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| (...) Have you ever lived in Kansas? ;) (...) Exactly. And to many Americans, knowing the geography of your neighboring States is roughly equivalent to knowing the geography of neighboring nations in Western Europe. The big difference is that most (...) (20 years ago, 12-Jul-04, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
| | | Re: Geography (was: We'll take in your poor....)
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| (...) Yep, and I'd probably have no trouble with the places I've lived (and most of the places I've visited) in Aus. I'd probably take a little longer to find the places I stayed in the USA & Canada, but I think I'd generally get pretty close. (...) (...) (20 years ago, 13-Jul-04, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: Geography (was: We'll take in your poor....)
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| (...) It's also not spelled with a lower-case "s", but that's beside the point. (...) I've often wondered about this sort of thing. Admittedly, I have it easier than most US citizens, having lived my entire life on the longest lakeshore in the (...) (20 years ago, 11-Jul-04, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, FTX)
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