I know where all those are right off the top of my head, with the obvious exception of the trick question you planted in there. Your inclusion of so many entities that no longer exist I can only assume was to make you point more strongly, but as I was clearly referring to existing states you rather dilute your argument.
Mind you a lack of historical knowledge that meant you couldn’t indentify most of them too is equally distressing.
Knowledge of Germany’s location during WWII is miles apart from knowing where Iraq is in this conflict. The war with Germany was largely fought at and around its borders, and its position and surroundings were of immense importance in our global war strategies. Ignorance of Germany’s location in those times would indeed be appalling.
Iraq however, has always been fought almost entirely within the country’s borders, and the surrounding countries are largely uninvolved in the conflict (at least in comparison to WWII). I don’t believe that Iraq’s exact location has any quantifiable impact on one’s understanding of the war, nor is it an accurate guage of intelligence or the quality of our public education. Approximate knowledge of its general region and nearby countries is sufficient.
I remember being required to learn almost every country in the world in high school- we’d be assigned a new continent every week, and be required to label every country by the end of the week. Within a week of every test, I remember having forgotten at least 75% of everything I’d just memorized. I’m simply unable to retain information to which I can’t assign a reasonable value of importance. I’m sure I couldn’t correctly label more than about 35 states now. I doubt I can correctly identify Iraq on a map (though I’m sure I could get it within one or two countries), and the only reason I can identify Louisiana is due to its shape - I’d be largely clueless otherwise. There are many more important things that can be occupying that brain-space.
To say that I’m “getting by with the minimal amount of information possible” is just rediculous. I have a more than sufficient understanding and knowledge of the situation in Iraq and the events in New Orleans - far more than enough to evaluate decisions and opinions regarding each.
Allow me to answer with my opinion on how relevent this information is:
[li]Who wrote Idylls of the King, and about what historic figure?[/li]King Idylls? Never has come up in conversation.
IMHO, pop culture, even classical pop culture, is something that you know as much as you want to know. You rarely ever NEED to know it.
[li]If you’re given volts, what do you need to calculate watts?[/li]Unless you are an electrician, it is not really necessary to know.
You should know that the higher the wattage the brighter the bulb and that your electric bill is measured in 1000s of watts per hour. You should also know that you shouldn’t put a US appliance in a European outlet.
[li]What’s the formula for calculating the area of a circle? [/li]I have not needed to know this once I stopped being an engineer
Sometimes I do find it useful to know how to calculate the area of a graph
[li]Name this tree[/li]There are two kinds of trees - pine (AKA xmas style) and all other trees.
[li]Name this bird[/li]It’s too generic looking for me to care
[li]Name a situation where you are likely to use a dado joint[/li]Never
[li]Name all the NFL teams in the state of California[/li]If you are a sports fan, you already know this. If you aren’t, you don’t care.
[li]Define Say’s Law[/li]Not specifically useful unless you are an economist or have a particular interest in economics but people should have a basic understanding of supply and demand. They should understand taxes and interest rates and time value of money as these things are relevent to everyone.
[li]How many fluid ounces are in a cup?[/li]People should probably know this as well as most common measurements
[li]Define the relationship among the following: gene, chromosome, DNA[/li]Might be useful to know this when you are thinking about having kids. Last real use it had to me though was waking from my nap in high school biology class to rattle off the full name of DNA as a joke
[li]What is the name of Bart Simpson’s bespectacled friend?[/li]Not really relevent in an adult conversation. However it is relevant to the various juvenile conversations I have with other adults
[li]How many members of Congress does your state have?[/li]It’s probably more important to know what they do than how many of them there are.
[li]What metals typically are used to make brass?[/list][/li]Am I making my own brass today?
I put in these former countries to show how unwise it is to memorise every country in the World, since they change.
I still wonder why you claimed that not knowing where e.g. Turkmenistan was would make you unable to function in the World.
All these posts, and no-one’s mentioned that copper and tin make bronze? Y’want brass, throw that tin away and pitch in some zinc. Cheez. :rolleyes:
Well, no wonder. Iraq isn’t on a map. It’s in the Middle East.
It’s a whole COUNTRY. How could you fit it on a little map?
Hey, the board is peopled with ignoramuses. What can I say? You get nekulturni like msmith537, who revels in the fact that his general knowledge is pretty near nil, and yet somehow – somehow – he succeeds in carrying on with existence.
In New Hampshire, we’ve just renamed the Manchester Airport the Manchester-Boston Regional airport. Why? They hope the move will boost business.
It seems that they surveyed travelers and only 3% of those coming from west of the Mississippi knew where Manchester is, while 93% knew where Boston is. No one on the news has said it, but personally, I find it a lot more worrisome that 7% of people savvy enough to get on a flight have no idea where Boston is.
Actually my general knowledge is fairly extensive. I just try not to be a pretentious jackass to people who don’t know the obscure minutia of my various hobbies and interests.
I assume “nekulturni” is some kind of term for “uncultured” or Philistine. Probably in Russian or something as the only place I could find its use online was on a Russian messageboard. I’m sure it’s a perfectly cromulent word. Congratulations on using a term I neither knew, heard spoken nor could find in any online dictionary or encyclopedia in English.
Personally, I try to use my vocabulary to embiggen my ability to communicate with people. Not to appear superior.
Geez, msmith, I was just funning with you! I think you and I are in perfect agreement that one person’s “general knowledge” is another person’s obscure minutiae of various hobbies and interests.
The Geography Olympics is exactly what you are looking for. It ranks the results by country and state too. I was really surprised how hard it was to name countries on a blank map.
As to the OP, I don’t think these results are too surprising. If you hand someone a blank map of the world (or Middle East), I think a lot of people would mix up Iran and Iraq. And while there have been tons of maps of Iraq in the news during the war, most of the maps are a close-up of the individual country with the adjacent countries constrained to the edges. Doing a google image search for Iraq returns similar results.
I think people identify most countries (and states) based on relative postion. For example, this country is next to this sea. Or it is next to this funny-shaped country. Or Iraq is under Turkey because I remember Turkey wouldn’t let us invade from the North. If you can’t establish that relation, then it is easy to make a mistake. Israel is another example that Americans see a lot of close-up maps: with the disputed territories and fringes of their neighbors. But when you zoom out to a map of the entire Middle East and remove all of the annotations, it can be disorienting. Add to that the pressure of taking a quiz or answering questions for a reporter and it is easy to see a lot of innocent mistakes by otherwise intelligent people.
Sal Ammoniac and others keep talking about “general knowledge.” Knowing where to find Iraq is not general knowledge, it’s specific knowledge. It’s not trivia, it’s very important. In the early 90s I would have been appalled if people in the US didn’t know where Yugoslavia was (and I’m afraid that many probably didn’t) because it was a big conflict that we were currently blockading, were involved with through the UN, and were considering invading. Now, I don’t much care if people have basically forgotten about where the former Yugoslavia was since it’s not a currently pressing problem. Knowing where Iraq is, where thousands of people on both sides have died, where there is a continuing conflict, and where events that shape domestic and international policy for the entire US – not to mention Iraq – occur is a hell of a lot more important than knowing Millhouse’s name.
In addition, the age group that was surveyed should have that information pretty fresh in their minds. There’s not much of an excuse for someone who presumably just learned things like basic geography to not know something like this, especially when it might directly impact their lives. One of the reasons I knew where Iraq was in high school was because the first Gulf War happened when I was in high school. I damn sure wanted to know where I might be going if they instituted a draft.
It’s not irrelevant, it’s not trivial, and it’s pretty upsetting that so many people even on this board are so blase about basic ignorance.
Sleel, you say knowing where Iraq is is “very important,” and I say prove it. What are the consequences to a person of not knowing where Iraq is? What were the consequences to those people who, in the early '90s, appalled you by not knowing where Yugoslavia was? I get the feeling that the only risk they’re running is your disesteem.
If you’re going to say that people *have *to know where Iraq is, then you ought to be able to lay out for me the exact parameters of what every person should know about everything.
They will not be informed at the most basic level about current events, which will lead to their making a non-informed vote*. Their vote could have ramifications not just for them but for everyone in their society. It is for the best of all of us that we have an electorate that is as well-informed as possible, and I think that includes knowing the physical location of countries we are in conflict with, or at least knowing what part of the globe they are on. I don’t want someone without even a basic knowledge of world events to have a say in who gets to boss me around.
*And no, I’m not trying to be partisan here.
What I’m arguing is that knowing where Iraq is on a map is not the same as being an informed voter. Iraq is one of just a billion issues affecting the average citizen, and I know perfectly well that you and Sleel and I are woefully uninformed about some basic stuff that has a huge impact on us. We pretend that knowing where Iraq is is a proxy for being well informed, but it’s a false assumption.
Take, for example, the proposed hydrogen economy. With high gas prices and the specter of global warming, alternative fuels are a big deal – if not THE biggest deal. So you could say that in order to be informed about this issue, you should have some basic knowledge of chemistry and physics. Well, I don’t know about the rest of you, but what I know about those two subjects would fit inside a thimble and still leave room for milk. So what do you conclude? That I’m a knuckle-dragging ignoramus? That I shouldn’t vote?
Everyone is ignorant about something, and there’s something a little too convenient about berating people for not knowing something that we ourselves (oh, we happy few!) happen to know.
I’ve got a Seinfeld one about Burma (you might know it as Myanmar, but to me it will always be Burma).
Of course when I tried that quiz upthread I couldn’t place it on a map, but I did have a good chuckle about the name. Surely it’s the good chuckles that really matter in life.
Sorry if my post sounded unduly harsh.
I’m not to worried about morons voting based on moronic decision making. For every moron who votes X because of their ignorant misconceptions, there’s probably another one who votes Y because of a completely different ignorant misconceptions. The error balances out in the end.
But in the case of the Presidential elections, Bush didn’t get elected because people were ignorant of where Iraq was or other topics. They, in their middle American wisdom, believed that Bush represents the values they believe in.
As several other people have pointed out, knowing the location of a country that has been prominently featured in the news for some time is an indicator of how much they are likely to know about something. I think that you are making a false assumption about the extent of those people’s knowledge by saying that they are potentially well-informed. Not knowing where Iraq is may not mean that they are uninformed about that country, but I’m willing to bet a decent amount of money that they probably are. This is especially likely when it’s obvious that they haven’t taken even the minimal effort of looking for it on a map lately. I find it hard to believe someone would look up relevant political issues without encountering information about where the country in question is.
As it happens, I do know basic chemistry and physics, at least enough to comprehend simplified explanations of how fuel cells and photovoltaic panels work. That was covered as part of my general education in school, along with history and geography. Did you sleep through those classes or something? I think it’s more likely that you’re exaggerating your level of ignorance in order to support your point.
If I realize I don’t know much about something, I make an effort to learn more about it since if it comes to my attention it is obviously important enough for me to need that knowledge. When the Abu Ghraib stories broke, I didn’t know much about the prison, so I looked it up. One of the first things I found out is where it is located.
This isn’t esoteric or specialized knowledge like Tibetan funereal practices, String Theory, or the equations an actuary might use to calculate the likelihood of dying by meteor strike. This is basic geography and map-reading. This is about something that any moderately informed person is likely to know. It’s more than a little ridiculous to argue that a normal adult would not know this.
And yet, there are hundreds of millions of “normal adults” who don’t know things like this and yet get along just fine. You’re making the mistake of judging people by your own standard. You have a certain intellectual curiosity that leads you to look things up. Many people, if not most people, are not that way. Which means your basic complaint is that they’re not like you.
And let’s have some humility about the things we don’t know. How’d you do on my quiz, for example?
Nope… I never had a single class in basic chemistry of physics. I admit that the schools I went to were pretty lousy. And yet… here I am, 20 years later, and I can’t think of a single instance where lack of knowledge of chemistry or physics has stood in my way. I don’t tend to look at knowledge in a hierarchical way as you do. “Need to know” is such a situational and personal construct that it’s folly to demand that a random person know X, Y, and Z.
No, one of my complaints is that this is something that everyone apprently agrees on enough to require our children be taught in school and yet more than half the population doesn’t know and perhaps doesn’t even care that they haven’t actually learned it. My other complaint is that you and other people in this thread are arguing that ignorance is acceptable.
I’ll freely admit that I don’t know everything. That’s one of the reasons I’m constantly finding new things to learn. While about half of your questions are basically trivia, I will be spending some time finding out about some of the things I didn’t know on your quiz. I am not arguing that people need to know everything about everything, and I am not saying that there is no such thing as irrelevance (the bird and the tree for instance are probably native to a habitat at least 6000 miles from my present location) but there are some basic facts that everyone should know. And as I said before, I find it unreasonable to argue that the location of Iraq is irrelevant to the average American.
Hell, I’ve spent the last 5 and half years overseas in a country that refuses to have anything much to do with the whole mess. If anything, the information is particularly irrelevant to me and should be comparatively more important to someone actually living in the US.
That explains shows about the moon landing being faked finding such fertile ground and the popularity of homeopathic and other junk therapies. If the average person doesn’t know the basic ideas behind physics and chemisty, they can easily be mislead or lied to and never even realize it.
I’m definitely not arguing that you need wide amounts of knowledge for success. I’m probably less financially successful than you, for instance, but I might still be doing something like loading trucks for a living if I weren’t continually interested in learning. You keep arguing over and over that it’s okay for people to remain ignorant. I don’t think it is. I find it ironic that you’re arguing this point on a bulletin board dedicated to informing and challenging people.
