calimac | can't stop the geography

When someone at a party inadvertently says "Slovenia" when they meant "Slovakia", I ought not to jump in and correct it without even a break for breath. That's really not very polite of me.

I'm sorry; it's instinctual. I can't stop the geography. You may have seen by now the collection of geographic "gotchas" from John Oliver's TV show. I can't prove this happened, I just swear by all that's holy that it did. The first of these "gotchas" I saw in its original innocent nesting in one of the regular episodes. As soon as the map of South America with the highlighting and the country-name label appeared, I was pointing at the screen and exclaiming, "They got it wrong! That's Paraguay, not Uruguay!" And I was already composing in my head a blistering e-mail to the show. And all that in the ten seconds that it took before John Oliver said, "Uruguay, a country that you think about so little that you didn't even notice that that's not Uruguay." Ah, a joke! Well, brother, I noticed. And I'd be the same for all the other times Oliver's pulled this stunt.

I ace the Sporkle tests that ask you to put country labels on maps of continents. I'm a whiz at quiz questions like, given a bunch of US states, what other state borders them all? or Which state extends further north, Washington or Maine? (It's Washington, it really is.) I remember the name of which country Bratislava is the capital of. I can't help it; it's just me.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It's fascinating, how different visualizers can be. At least, I'm assuming you visualize these things. I know I am a very intense visualizer, and I adore maps, but I have just as much trouble with remembering names of states, countries, capitals, and precisely where they lie, as I do titles and authors, though I can tell you where the book sits on my shelves--or how it handled when I checked it out from the library fifty years ago. ("I don't remember which of Georgette Heyer's books it was, at least I think it was hers, but the cover was a vile pink, the girl on the cover wore a mid-sixties granny dress instead of a Regency-era gown, and the word Dratt was misprinted with two 't's in a conversation.") Talk about useless detail!

The way I put the difference is: I have a strong spatial sense, but not a strong visual one. This is why architecture is one of my favorite art forms, but I struggle to have a visceral reaction to painting. In my post on Turner's paintings, I was more impressed by them than moved by them.

Oh, that makes sense. I don't have great spacial sense, which may or may not be related to my astigmatism. Hmm. Interesting stuff.

I can identify countries like that for most of the world. Where I always have trouble is West Africa, and especially coastal West Africa. There are just too many small countries there, all side by side. A few of them have distinctive shapes or configurations (spotting the Gambia is easy!), but I'm vague on a lot of them.

I don't have any trouble with the little countries of West Africa, except that the last time I took the Sporkle test I blanked for a minute on the name of Burkina Faso. The only areas that sometimes make me a bit nervous are ex-Soviet Central Asia, and the clusters of smaller island countries.

What all these have in common is that they weren't independent and/or under these names in my childhood. I spent endless hours upon hours poring over maps when I was around ten years old, and that's why I know this stuff so well. It's what's happened more recently that I'm sometimes more shaky on, although one of my other parlor tricks is to guess the date of a globe from its political boundaries and names.

That doesn't explain why I know which one is Slovakia and which one is Slovenia, but I guess that's because I've always been particularly interested in Europe.

For what it's worth, I appreciated being corrected! I probably would have corrected myself in a minute.

can't stop the geography

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