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

Re: Null-A

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Up? Where I live it's south. Up is sky, down is dirt.

That's a way cool map. Maybe I'll order one for Marcia this Christmas, so she can use it in the classroom.

Re: Null-A

[shekkara.livejournal.com]

Without looking at a map, if you're standing in downdown Detroit and you want to point to Windsor, Canada, which way is it?

Re: Null-A

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

SSE

Re: Null-A

[shekkara.livejournal.com]

Yep. Asking which way is Canada from Detroit a pretty good "bar bet" as most people don't know that Canada tucks in under The Thumb. I have a friend from Windsor who says he used to go the Windsor airport in the summer and watch people come off the planes wearing winter jackets.

Re: Null-A

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

I, like libertango am really good at killing bar bets. Part of it is the nature of being an info geek. Part of it is that I ask questions for a living, and do it in ways which such questions are asked.

That one is a simple suss, it has to have a catch and knowing how Michigan is built.... Southish would have been an easy guess.

Then again, I've lived lots of places, from the barren of other people, to the densest of cities, and all sorts of in-between. I know the difference between the, "It takes forever to drive a small distance" to, "why aren't you driving" from cops.

That certainly colors my expectations of doing some research before making plans on itinerary and conveyance.

TK

Re: Null-A

[shekkara.livejournal.com]

Well... truth be told, just knowing what I know of you from this LJ if I were to lay a bet on whether or not you knew the answer, I would have said yes. :-)

Re: Null-A

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

You'd have won the bet. I did know.

TK

Re: Null-A

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

Yup, lots of cultures do that -- the Lakota have a standard reference in many War Dance Songs to "the six directions" that might well also be translated as "the whole universe". I was rather surprised to find that Australian Aborigines take a similar, three-dimensional, approach, at least in the area around Alice Springs.