The things you discover when playing Trivial Pursuit

16 November 2004, 21:35

14% of U.S citizens can’t locate the U.S on a map. That’s 40 million people. In a first-world country. Am assuming a small proportion of that figure are babies, but even so…

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1. What percentage of Yanks don't know what a map is? Well, many of them do think that they live in the centre (check spelling) of the universe. They're not all bad.
   — Hammy    Nov 17, 06:39 AM    #
2. i'm not surprised :) every year, some news organization in the states goes out on the streets and asks questions like "who is the prime minister of great britain?", "who is the governor of california?", and for gosh sakes "who is the president of the united states?" and invariably some nitwit answers all the questions wrong. your post reminds me of a story i heard on NPR. there was an interview with the AOL help desk and their first question that they ask callers is "do you have a computer?" because the majority of people that call for help stick the GET AOL FREE! cds in their stereo.
   — gleek    Nov 17, 01:57 PM    #
3. Nah, they're mostly products of the District of Columbia public school system. This place spends 40% more per student than the next most expensive public school system and the best they produce is 40% can read at a 4th grade level. That didn't stop the president of the teachers' union steeling $4 million USD and nobody noticed it was missing for two years! In case you didn't know, the District of Columbia is a minority-run government of people predominantly on the liberal government dole.
   — Leonard Gump    Nov 18, 06:23 PM    #
4. one of my favourite memories of high school was when a fellow student asked, four months after the election, "is paul keating really our president?". it took a while to explain our electoral system, the monarchy etc. and this was to someone taking history with me.
   — robert    Nov 22, 12:28 AM    #
5. A long long time ago (1942 to be exact), in a land called the US of A, my father and a friend of his from the university they were attending had a bit to drink and did a bit of fooling around. This was Boston, a city where lots of students did lots of fooling around, in those days usually harmless stuff. A police officer stopped them, asked where they were from and told them off. My father´s friend said "China", obvious to the eye. He himself said "Turkey", not obvious to the eye. The policemen said to my father: "Your friend may have an excuse, being a foreigner, but what is your excuse !!??". He thought Turkey was a state or city in the USA.
   — Ferit    Nov 22, 12:08 PM    #