Mike "Pompous Ass" Pompeo has been here in Ukraine informing us that America does give a f**k about Ukraine but that Trump will not meet with Zelensky in the White House, I assume because Zelensky has not yet announced that he will investigate the Bidens. After suggesting that Americans did not, in fact, give a f**k about Ukraine, Pompeo asked international journalist Marie Louise Kelly to find Ukraine on a map, which she did. Pompeo pretended she pointed to Bangladesh. I doubt he could find his ass with both hands in a snowstorm but I digress.
Radia Free Europe/Radia Liberty posted this quiz on Facebook:
Can You Survive The Pompeo Challenge? Name These Unmarked Countries.
So I and a few of my FB friends took the challenge. I confused Georgia with Azerbaijan which is not good as I live in this neck of the woods and was here when Russia invaded Georgia in 2008. So I figured I better brush up on my grade school geography. In grades 6-8, we took Current Events as part of our Social Studies. Those were the years that Great Britain and France were shedding their colonies and there was a new map of Africa every month.
Www.freeworldmaps.net Has some great and simple political maps of the continents and various parts of them eg SE Asia, Oceania, Middle East, etc. I downloaded and printed a number of labeled political maps and their blank counterparts and began to practice naming the countries. Blank maps are not all on one website and must be Googled.
Learned lots of trivia, like Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan are actually in Asia, not Europe, or Brunei is two pieces as is Oman. I can now place both Andora and Monaco on a map. The most useful piece of information I found when looking on a map of Africa for Upper Volta (Russia has been described as Upper Volta with nucs). Could not find it nohow. Burkina Faso, I had heard of. The shock was to find that Upper Volta had been Burkina Faso since 1984. I'm not keeping up.
I need to really work on Africa, SE Asia, and Oceania. The rest I think I can point to if you give me a name or give you a name if you point to a place.
Radia Free Europe/Radia Liberty posted this quiz on Facebook:
Can You Survive The Pompeo Challenge? Name These Unmarked Countries.
So I and a few of my FB friends took the challenge. I confused Georgia with Azerbaijan which is not good as I live in this neck of the woods and was here when Russia invaded Georgia in 2008. So I figured I better brush up on my grade school geography. In grades 6-8, we took Current Events as part of our Social Studies. Those were the years that Great Britain and France were shedding their colonies and there was a new map of Africa every month.
Www.freeworldmaps.net Has some great and simple political maps of the continents and various parts of them eg SE Asia, Oceania, Middle East, etc. I downloaded and printed a number of labeled political maps and their blank counterparts and began to practice naming the countries. Blank maps are not all on one website and must be Googled.
Learned lots of trivia, like Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan are actually in Asia, not Europe, or Brunei is two pieces as is Oman. I can now place both Andora and Monaco on a map. The most useful piece of information I found when looking on a map of Africa for Upper Volta (Russia has been described as Upper Volta with nucs). Could not find it nohow. Burkina Faso, I had heard of. The shock was to find that Upper Volta had been Burkina Faso since 1984. I'm not keeping up.
I need to really work on Africa, SE Asia, and Oceania. The rest I think I can point to if you give me a name or give you a name if you point to a place.
I still remember all the European countries and their capitals... circa the mid-1970s when I learned them. Most are still the same, but I never did learn the rejigged Russia/Eastern Bloc. These days, I have to look up just about everything.
ReplyDeleteGeography is kind of a hobby of mine as it goes hand in hand with studying history. Geography plays a major role. Have you ever played Risk?
DeleteTrying to remember all the counties and capitals is trivia but knowing the main ones is useful.
Geography was never my strong point.
ReplyDeleteI can't recall much geography from school. I've learned more since the internet became available, but I'm still very deficient in it. And if I want to understand, say, a news article, I can always look up a map on Google.
ReplyDeleteBut then again I'm not a diplomat or a journalist or a government official, all of whom I'd expect to have a good working knowledge of the area they're involved with. I saw a tweet (which may or may not have hit on the truth) that Pompeo meant to say Belarus instead of Bangladesh, which - if true - only makes his comment a bigger mistake than it already was and the irony of it better :) I've been wondering if he had the unmarked map only because he had been trying to learn to identify places himself ...
Deb, many people say that.
ReplyDeleteJenny-O, Google maps is a great boon to the geographically challenged. It is easy to print off a blank map of the world. It takes only a minute to find and print it. I also heard he may have meant Belarus which would have been a better-intended slight. Instead, he just made himself into a fool
the thing that always brings me joy.??? almost everyone can identify Texas
ReplyDeleteJackiesue, not only that but I know the name of the capital city. So there.
ReplyDelete