Just Where Is The Lincoln Memorial, Anyhow? 650
John3 writes "Searching Google Maps for the Lincoln Memorial is returning the location of the FDR Memorial instead. Conservative bloggers smell a conspiracy since Glenn Beck is holding his 'Restoring Honor' gathering at the Lincoln Memorial tomorrow (August 28). Notes for the map listing on Google state 'This place has unverified edits'; so, did someone claim the listing and edit the location?"
Politics aside, wtf is wrong with Google? (Score:5, Interesting)
Hypothesis: an SEO-related bug (Score:4, Interesting)
I would imagine that it's simply a matter of the word memorial being attributed to FDR more than Lincoln, for some reason.
What's the benefit to vandalizing the map? (Score:3, Interesting)
I mean, follow the bouncing ball: you're so paranoid that you'd like to hide the location of a giant rally by desecrating Google maps, but you've scheduled said rally at a landmark so famous tens of millions could find it with no maps at all? And how are fellow paranoid conservatives supposed to find said rally? Does Glenn Beck's web page include coded directions, decipherable only by clues so small you'd never notice them if you hadn't read Ronald Reagan's autobiography twelve times?
You may think Glenn Beck listeners somewhat clinically paranoid and/or politically foolish, but you don't look any smarter, more rational, or less paranoid in believing them both smart enough and rationally motivated to vandalize the map but otherwise too stupid to tie their own shoes.
Re:This is bad (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd suspect that this sort of thing would work /better/ on Democrats than Republicans, being how Democrats are younger, hipper, and more apt to use Google where as most Republicans probably have a paper map of DC around somewhere. It's a capstone monument on the national mall. All roads lead to Independence and Constitution. It's only a few blocks from the friggin' FDR memorial anyway -- and its not even real blocks. You can see one from the other.
This is just incompetence magnified by douche-baggery and wordpress.
Re:The answer? Simple (Score:3, Interesting)
Real Americans know the public parking garage under the city buildings on North Highland Street, about 2 blocks from the Clarendon metro stop are free on on weekends, and then its only like 4 or 5 stops on the orange line till you're at Smithsonian. Parking in D.C. is impossible, you're likely to get a ticket for being 30 seconds past a meter, and they have a tendency to tow you onto the side walk. People who don't know that they do that then think you're a dick and got the ticket for parking on the sidewalk and then you get stared down while trying to get back onto the road.
Re:True patriots (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:GASP! Google maps is wrong! (Score:2, Interesting)
It was really on the other side of the highway, and Google didn't handle the road-discontinuity correctly...you'd figure that they'd have the area around their campus pretty well mapped out.
Re:True patriots (Score:4, Interesting)
Turns out Fallout 3 is a more reliable source than Google Maps.
Because major game developers go on field trips to actually see the place for themselves. They didn't use Google Earth... :)
Though suddenly I really want to see Google Wasteland... any mashup artists in the house?
Re:Hypothesis: an SEO-related bug (Score:3, Interesting)
I would imagine that it's simply a matter of the word memorial being attributed to FDR more than Lincoln, for some reason.
FDR is SEO. Lincoln gets spamdexed. Also, most recent results at the top. ;) Date bias.
And something you tend to find with geography (Score:5, Interesting)
Is that MOST people suck at it. Europeans like to laugh at Americans because they generally know the correct locations of more countries... Forgetting that America is bigger than Europe and knowing the correct locations of some states would be the same relative amount of knowledge. Their geography outside of that area is usually fairly limited. Most know where the US is since it is large and in the news a lot, but often little more.
For example I guy I chat with online from the UK had visited Brazil and was thinking of visiting the US. He wanted to know where various people he knew lived so he could decide if he was going to try and visit. I knew there was a good chance he didn't know where Arizona was since it doesn't make the news a lot (the new anti-immigration bill non-withstanding). So I told him it was "Just east of California, and just north of Mexico." He said that didn't help. I though he meant he didn't know where California was so I clarified. No, he didn't know where MEXICO was. He thought it was in Central America, near Brazil.
Thing is, geography is just kinda boring. It is route memorization, and not all that necessary to most people. This is even more true now, what with maps online and so easily accessible. If you need to know where something is, from a countries down to a street, it is easy to locate.
I also get a little tired of geography snobs because it is exceedingly rare that someone can properly locate all the countries in the world. Never mind the amount of time spent, most people lack a memory that accurate. So when people get snobby about parts of geography but can't do other parts, to me that is just saying "What I know is important, what everyone else knows isn't."
Re:True patriots (Score:4, Interesting)
After Rupert Murdoch and your "Tea party" votes his party out in the midterm elections coming November, can you make sure he steps down and looks for employment here?
We've got an economic crisis going, on and could do with a good prime-minister (in both countries I've lived in). Apparently we appreciate him more than you, so give him to us
Re:And something you tend to find with geography (Score:3, Interesting)
In my travel around Europe (back when I had the freedom to do that), I found few Europeans who knew much about North American geography. That includes the semester I spent at university in Scotland. OK, they knew Canada, US, Mexico, bunch-of-little-countries, but litte more detail. New York, Florida, and California seemed to be the only states most people knew (or visited). I'm from Michigan and when that name drew blank reactions, I tried explaining that it was the one in the middle of the Great Lakes, figuring: they're visible from the moon, they form an eye-catching section on the nation's north border, etc. Still no recognition. Eventually my stock answer to polite queries of "where in the US are you from?" was a deadpan "Michigan. It's next to Canada." That seemed to satisfy most people. Once when someone asked "Is it near Detroit?" that actually made my day.
Re:And something you tend to find with geography (Score:5, Interesting)
It may be an issue only of Europeans that visit America, because I haven't seen the same thing when I talked to Europeans in Europe, but I'm willing to bet that Europeans are also similarly ignorant of politics. How many know the details of the treaty of Lisbon? What percentage typically vote? While you and your friends might, I'll bet most people don't.
Re:Politics aside, wtf is wrong with Google? (Score:4, Interesting)
Deficit went up during Bush years and no Tea Party movement: check. Legislation deemed terrible based purely on page numbers (costs are if anything going to be positively affected, but hey, we won't know for sure until 2020) vs terrible legislation based on what it says: check. Calling Obama "brazen" after Bush is comical (and no Tea Party during Bush). Basically you are (by association) a bigot.
As for the taxes. Has it occurred to you that it is sometimes socially useful that individuals have a net disincentive to increase their wages? For example, the salaries (and boni are just disguised salaries) of Wall street bankers are disproportionate to their social utility, which would be fine if such salaries were not an elicitation to pursue careers in finance despite inclinations towards medicine or engineering or fundamental science, for which there is a lack of qualified workers.
Some citizen paying net taxes, in fact a minority of citizen paying net taxes, is a necessary result for a society which is increasingly unequal: given a minimum standard of living rising with inflation and average income levels, more and more people will find themselves under the line as a vanishingly small minority syphons off all the income of the country. This cannot be fixed unless taxes are redistributive, or there are no taxes. Now you may think of no taxes as a good idea, but...
That is why, mechanically, your argument about taxes makes no sense: it just happens that way, automatically, unless there are no taxes. But morally? it is not a question of people having earned their money: at some point, objectively, they haven't. If the share of the income of the richest grows, and the absolute income of those under is stagnating or receding (as is the case) what you are witnessing is robbery on a grand scale.
But does it matter? Well, if all a significant part of the goods and services only go to a small minority of the potential customers (only they can afford these) then your economy swings with the mood of a small number of people. This means repeated booms and bust, great instability, even more inequality, and eventually a descent into societies looking like these of Latin America. And let's face it being rich in America is nicer than being rich in Brazil precisely because the people around you are rich enough that they don't want to kill you for your wallet.
Comment removed (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:And something you tend to find with geography (Score:2, Interesting)
Every American of voting age needs to have enough knowledge of the world to know that India -- the world's largest democracy -- is a majority Hindu nation, that the Sudan -- the nation containing the Darfur region, which you might have heard about in the news the past few years -- is in Africa, and at least be able to say "Iraq is in the middle East, somewhere around here, and borders Iran and Turkey."
If they point to Iran or some other near-by country when asked to find Iraq on an unlabeled map, ok, I'd say that's within tolerance. (If the map has the Tigris and Euphrates rivers clearly marked, though, and you can't identify Iraq, you fail it.) But you've got people pointing to Australia when asked to find Iran [youtube.com]. (Yes, it's a satire show, but it's illustrative.)
Anyone who doesn't know these basic facts about the geopolitical situation, or doesn't know why it's important to know them, please refrain from voting in any national elections; such ignorance disqualifies you from being able to make an intelligent choice.
But political relationships between nations are highly influenced by geographical factors, indeed perhaps more by geography than anything else.
No, actually, if all someone knows about how a nuclear bomb works is that it's "crazy destructive", they are too ignorant to contribute to the democratic process. "What's all this fuss about nuclear reactors in Iran and North Korea? I don't care about that, so long as they don't get The Bomb! Because that'd be the end of the world!"