It's cruel to mock the stupid

[pecunium]

Which is why I am not linking to this, but it's an amazing moment of WTF!?!, and I can't keep it to myself (I'm not always the nicest of people).

Today I’m on a flight to San Jose, CA. Well, two flights. Couldn’t find a direct flight.

It was yesterday that I discovered LA and SF were not in the same location… See, I don’t know CA very well and I’m actually headed to Palo Alto. So I mistakenly assumed that LA was pretty much right there, too.

I think the confusion came from last time I was in CA, I flew into SF and out of Oakland, so I had this impression of all the cities being close to each other.

I'm croggled. Not so much that a grown man, and an american citizen, might not know LA and SF are 400 miles apart from each other, but that he would look at a state the size of California, and assume all the metropli are adjacent because two of them were so colocated the last time he was here.

That's the first bit.

The second is that he admits it, with a sense of blasé delivery which implies he thinks this a reasonable mistake to make.

Comments

[urox.livejournal.com]

As a non-native of California, I have to admit that before planning on moving here, I had no idea of the relative distances of SF, LA, Santa Teresa, and San Jose were, much less any other San city. I kept checking and double checking for months (not every day, mind you, but at least once a month) where the cities were and which ones I want to go to to make sure I wasn't making a mistake because I was having difficulty keeping them straight in my head. So I can understand someone else making a similar mistake.

Google has definitely made people more aware of distances and locations of places.

[robot-scandal.livejournal.com]

Cute. I feel adequately mocked, because I DO deserve it for being bone headed not to look at a map. I hope you feel better now, too. Really.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Actually, I didn't feel much, one way or the other, about you, which is why I didn't link to it. No one, who didn't go to a bit of effort to find you would have known it was you, had you not come in and tried, whatever it was this post was trying to do.

But you (in support of comments made elsewhere) had to pop above the radar, and tell people; who really don't care, that it was you, so any specific mockery, is self-inflicted.

My point, such as it was (and you will note that the first poster here took the side of the, unknown person I was talking about, to say that such an assumption wasn't completely unreasonable) is that I, personally, find it hard to fathom.

If I was going to Miami, and was offered a flight to Tallahassee, I'd check, before I plunked down my money, and committed my time.

I'd do the same if I was offered a booking to Midway, when I was fying to Rockford.

If I'd wanted to mock you, qua you, instead of the idea of leaping before lookig, I'd have linked to your page, where anyone who was feeling unkind might go, have a gander and decide your self-descriptives might be less tongue in cheek than I think they are.

But I didn't.

TK

[crisavec.livejournal.com]

I have to admit I've always been mindboggled by that sort of attitude as well as the oftreported statements in the press about how few people(it used to be just highschoolers, but has expanded to the public at large) can find Iraq or some other highprofile location on a map.

I've always been a mapgeek and loved poring over them and looking up locations, so maybe I'm just biased...but still.

[urox.livejournal.com]

Problem is, you're a map geek. Other people won't understand. I'm a music person and had the damnedest time trying to explain time signature and why something is 6/8 vs 3/4 time. I just know it inherently, but others not familiar with it just don't seem to get it. That could also be because I'm a poor explainer of concepts.

So given a state outline, say, Tennessee, you'd know which end Nashville, Knoxville, and Memphis were, without prompting? Those are all rather prominent cities but I wouldn't expect people to know those locations inherently either.

[elf]

Just proves we need to split the state. SoCal gets Hollywood and Death Valley; NorCal gets SF and the Humboldt harvests; we flip a coin over who has to take gets Fresno & Bakersfield. Los Banos can declare independent nation status and charge $5.75/gallon for gas to support itself.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Lesee.... the coast (say Santa Barbara to Point Reyes, and inland about 25 miles), the western south (say Ventura to the Border, again in to the Angeles Crestish). The Imperial Valley, up the backside to include Edwards, the Mojave and Owens Valley.

The Central Valley can be it's own little self, and the North can do what it wants. We Declare the Sierra Nevada to be neutral territory and leave it for a wilderness.

Oh, the water wars we can look forward too (esp. since the Central Valley is the largest user, and waster, in the state).

TK

Null-A

[libertango.livejournal.com]

Repeat after me:

"The map is not the territory."

Hand in your Korzybski/van Vogt medal at once, sir.

{yeah, yeah, yeah, i know the irony of this coming from me... but i know I Am Not the Demographic.}

Re: Null-A

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

I left you out of it (though I thought of you at once).

Which way is the border where you live? :)

Re-visioning the question.

[fjm.livejournal.com]

Americans make these kinds of mistakes about the UK all the time tho'. One thing you aren't really factoring in here is that proximity does not equal distance.

The original poster was thinking in terms of proximity: he'd had short flights between one and the other.

In the UK, distances can be short, and travel times--thanks to railways, canals, roads that followed nineteenth century trade and political imperatives--can be long. I can travel the *distance* from Oxford to Cambridge in a couple of hours if it is laid along a rail road track. Actually doing the damn journey takes half a day.

London to York is one and half hours by train now. London to Liverpool is stuck at two and a half. They are more or less the same distance, but Liverpool is a terminus no one wants to go to. York is on the way to Edinburgh and is also a tourist destination, so it gets high speed tracks.

What I notice is that people moving regions in the US make the same kinds of mistakes: if they move from a place with high density of travel platforms then they often think in terms of long travel time, short distances. If from areas with few travel options (ie mostly only long roads) then they often assume long distances with relatively short travel times.

Travel time and "a long way" is a cultural thing. I'm one of the few UK people I know who will cheerfully travel two or three hours "for lunch", but that's because I lived in Poughkeepsie and later in Wallingford, and "going into the city for lunch" was standard.

Re: Re-visioning the question.

[sunfell.livejournal.com]

I discovered that particular disparity when I lived in the UK. A trip that would normally (in the US) take 90 minutes took 3 hours. Of course, it was from Ipswich to Wells-by-the-Sea, and went across the fen country, but still...!

And the train from Ipswich to London (which is only 70 miles) took two hours.

Here in Arkansas, I live 12 miles from my workplace. It normally takes me 20 minutes to get there. I seriously doubt that I could claim that in the Northeast Corridor or any of its cities.

[saoba.livejournal.com]

True story my hand to god.

My father was born and raised in the a Hawaiian islands.And was a schoolboy there out on his paper delivery route when the bombing started at Pearl Harbor.

After the war a handful of schoolteachers were put toether by the state deperment to rebuild the schools on the island of Guam. There he met a fresh faced red head from near Chicago. But the school year was ending and his Chicago Irish Rose was returning stateside.

Th idea of being apart loomed large and caused much saddness. But the Air Force recruiter had a plan.If he enlisted the USAF would pay for his travel to the mainland for schooling.


He was an island boy. he thought in terms of distances rather smnaller than the white recruiters.

He enlisted. Amd, as he tells it , somewhere along the way he began to suspect that the Dekalb home of his darling was not going to be within easy reach of a brnd new troop assigned to post in Texas.

After long hours in the planes they were put on busses and then driven for several day to reach Texas.They took his clothes, they cut his hair, they had a great many rules and they shouted all the time.

When doing a difficult test perfectly won him a weekend pass he went straight to the train and showed up in Dekalb. He told my mother he only signed up to follow her to the mainland, because how far from Dekalb could San Antonio be? And having signed away the next few years of his life to these very strange people he thought se should know that he was not leaving her porch until she agreed to marry him.

This display of audacity, arriving back on post with a bride, may have been the thing that caused his drill instructor to pull his service jacket and recc him for a different assignment. Thye made him a drill instructor straight out of basic.

[martyn44.livejournal.com]

To err is human, to err stupidly is to be grown up. Get over it.

I have a mental database with just about every city, town, village and hamlet in GB in there (although Ulster is a bit flakey) I know where most places are and how the names are spelled. Getting Indian interpretations of the same provides endless merriment in the office.

If you think anywhere to Liverpool is a long time travelling, try anywhere to Truro, anywhere to Norwich (anywhere that isn't London, that is)

Mind you, even I know that LA and SF are NOT in the same ballpark.

[michiexile]

I can, with some certainty, place mentally all larger cities in Sweden (say over the size of 250'000 at least - I might get hazy at the 100'000 cities). I can, with some certainty, place mentally all major cities in Germany. I certainly have a feel for which direction they'd be in.

I know the states of the giant cities in the US. But I use Google Maps constantly. Not only for trips I end up planning, but also for my current job search: which universities are good to apply to if I want to be able to visit Ypsilanti or Ann Arbor regularly? How far, REALLY, is Williamstown MA from Ann Arbor? et.c.

I really wouldn't even try to navigate a flight booking system without checking locations on Google Maps while I'm at it.

[robot-scandal.livejournal.com]

The whole story is -

I travel for work. I'm a software consultant. In most cases, a project manager will give me a list of closest airports. In this case, the project manager was on vacation when I was booking the flight.

I had worked with this particular customer maybe 8 years ago. I flew into LAX for that particular meeting - that was when I discovered that cabs aren't really useful in Cali, as opposed to NY, where I would never rent a car. It turns out, I am working with a different group this time and they're in a different office.

I booked the flight while doing other things. I did manage to get a hotel right next to the customer, which is lucky, because I had 3-4 different addresses which the appointment could be at. I only had to change flights and rental cars. Not really a big deal. Would have sucked if I actually took the flight.


I really don't like guessing which is the closest airport, because often times the nearest large airport can be a couple hours away, but there might be a tiny one near by which has a convenient connector.

Recenty I flew in to Allentown, PA. They have a nice little airport. Newark and Philly are about an hour away. It was much more convenient and I probably never would have found it if not for the customer.

That doesn't always work out, though. Last week, I flew into Spartanburg, SC. Minutes from the customer. My connecting flight was in ATL. My layover was 2.5 hours. Spartanburg was a 2 hour drive from ATL...

So, maybe now you can see why I might be a little carefree about it. Not that it matters. I'm really not embarrased by it. I'm relieved I caught my mistake. That's about it.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

How are people supposed to know what they don't know? Does it help to shame them, even mildly, for admitting ignorance?

If you and robot_scandal have overlapping flists, then other people would have known who you referred to without robot_scandal bringing it up.

And then I thought I'd see what robot_scandal had to say about other matters, and when I looked at his lj and saw a link to his blog, I found he'd linked to this thread, so he might be adding a little drama to the situation.

I sympathize with your amazement, but I still think mocking admissions of ignorance doesn't have a net educational effect.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Wow. Who is this person? Is he allowed to vote?

B

[sunfell.livejournal.com]

I'm an 'info-junkie' and 'map-geek' rolled up into one. I've been this way from childhood.

One of my first things I get when hitting the ground in a new city or place is a map. Whether it's a big map of the state, or a small map of where things are near my hotel, I must have that map. I then 'imprint' it on my mind, and become 'lost-proof'. This was a real asset when I was stationed in Germany, and we went on deployments to the boonies. My crewmates used to fight over who would get me as 'shotgun' because I didn't get lost. I simply must know where I am, in relationship to everything else. This is my form of 'situational awareness', which has kept me safe and out of trouble and Not Lost for my entire adult life.

Living overseas as both a child and an adult instilled in me the desire to know where I was, and where it was in relation to everything else. I was- and still am- pretty well able to pick out places on a map, and I love maps. I can pore over them for hours. I can tell you that it is not a good idea to land in Knoxville and decide to rent a car to go to Memphis, unless you want to drive for five hours. Or that it's faster to fly to Dallas from Little Rock rather than drive. Or that it'll take you two days to get to Santa Fe from Little Rock- if the weather holds.

It's all about attention and awareness. Maybe the person mentioned in the OP had too much else on his or her mind. Or didn't have someone to correct his or her error in planning. But I'll bet that he or she won't make that mistake again!

[feonixrift.livejournal.com]

"LA is not next to SF" is about the most common point of Cali geography for me to have to point out to people.

Then again, people are still regularly reminding me that Austin and Houston are different cities. And I still can't remember which is which.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Austin is the more civilised one.

TK

[mayakda.livejournal.com]

In Manila distance within the city is measured in how many rides you'd have to catch to get there. As in, oh, that's just one (bus) ride away. Oh, that's three rides away (jeepney, LRT, jeepney).

[texaslawchick.livejournal.com]

I remember some idiot from New York asking me about some explosion in Dallas a few months ago. That Houston is 300 miles away didn't seem to matter to her. Because I was in Texas, I clearly knew what was going on in the whole state.

I had to break it to her that Texas, in fact, is a pretty big state. I'm not entirely sure that she understood.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

See that sort of ignorance I can accept. I smile at it, but not living there, I don't expect people to know that Philly, is only an hour or so from NY. It seems to be it should be further.

But when one is making travel plans...

TK

[lexica510.livejournal.com]

My mother was a theatre teacher, and once had a friend come speak to one of her classes about what it was like to be a working actor in NYC. "Of course, apartments are so expensive in the city," the friend said, "most people live in New Jersey and commute."

As a silence fell across the room, my mother saw the students looking at each other with expressions of "huh?" and realized she'd have to translate. "They're used to California distances," she told her friend. "Out here, you can easily drive six hours and not reach a state line. It's not like that in New York," she told the students. "In local terms, it would be more like 'live in Davis, work in Sacramento'."

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

My step-fathers mother asked why we didn't see his brother more often. When we commented that he lived in Eugene, Ore., and we in Los Angeles, she replied (living in SC), "It's only one state up."

What croggled me on that, is she'd been an army wife for 30 years, before he retired and she took a tenure track and UNC Chapel Hill. It was the same sort of shock.

TK

[anna-en-route.livejournal.com]

At least no-one ever thinks your entire country is:

a) Part of Europe
b) Part of Australia
c) Joined to Australia by the Sydney harbour bridge
d) Run by Vikings

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Yes, at present run by Vikings would be an improvement.

:)

TK

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

I grew up in So. Cal., and in the (OMG) 37 years I've lived in Minnesota, I've been croggled countless times by intelligent people who have no concept of the distances in California. I'm not sure I've ever encountered someone here who had not been to California but who realized how far apart LA and SF are.

[ourika.livejournal.com]

Perhaps the blase way he says it is more of a man showing a willingness to laugh at himself?

As far as it goes, I was living in Arizona (not a small state although not one of the larger ones - I'm from NJ, so AZ seemed huge!), and a lot of people thought that they could come visit me in Tucson and we could spend an afternoon at the Grand Canyon.

[robot-scandal.livejournal.com]

No. No. I would never laugh at myself. I am far to important to be laughed at - even by someone as superior as I clearly am.

I'm honestly appalled that CA would have the audacity to be that large. It should take an example from New England and divide into 5 or 6 random shapes. All the cities should also be renamed to 'New *insert european city/town here*'

Confused non-Californians

[xenolee.livejournal.com]

Visiting an SF fan party in NY, we were asked if as Angelenos we often went went to San Francisco for dinner. I explained that it was over seven hours drive and then, when they looked confused, explained that it was much farther from LA to San Francisco than it was from NYC to DC. The listeners doubted this, so I got out my datebook which has a table of mileage: LA to San Francisco is 401 miles, NYC to DC is 225 miles. Eventually I think we figured out the problem: East Coast states are small, and people living in them tend to assume that same-state cities aren't far apart because of that.

--Lee Gold

[tenderberry.livejournal.com]

Perhaps they exist to make the rest of us look...well, at least marginally intelligent - I am trying to - pfft, never mind - how do these people survive????????