Without looking at a map? Hmmm. Ecuador, Peru, Brazil, Gabon, French Congo, Belgian Congo, Uganda, Kenya, India, Indonesia…
I correctly guessed Ecuador and Congo and incorrectly guessed Malaysia. I’m surprised I got that much though as I’m not that great with geography usually.
…and Ecuador is sort of a cheat since it literally means “equator”.
I’m pretty confident one of my sons would have nailed this in Junior High. Went to state and nationals in geography. For those of you unfamiliar with geography bees, questions aren’t just about locations. They involve national parks, natural resources, demographics, religions, terrain, city names…
I lived with him and I still don’t know how he absorbed and retained what he did.
In 2020, the Bee was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The 2021 edition was also canceled after a 75 percent drop in school registrations. The National Geographic Society later announced that the Bee had been “permanently discontinue[d]… to make way for new, transformative, and innovative geography education opportunities in which students around the globe can more equitably participate.”
I guess it was inequitable my son knew more geography than other kids. Who knew?
Some people are map people.
Other people make their living claiming by saying—with chin in hand and knitted brows—that “the map is not the territory”…
I’ll stick with the map people…
Well those are very silly people (they may work for garmin)
I tend to be a visual person, with some visual memory capability. I was never good enough to pull that quiz off. Maybe this guy is?
I have been trying exercise my memory in recent years, & among other things, I find mnemonics to be helpful.
The internet tells me Ecuador, Colombia, Brazil, São Tomé and Príncipe, Gabon, Republic of the Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, Kenya, Somalia, Maldives, Indonesia, and Kiribati. I would have missed many of those. To be completely honest, I’ve never heard of Kiribati, population 119,000.
Nor did I have any notion of where São Tomé e Príncipe was: just off the west coast of Africa, nowhere near Brazil. Somalia just clips the equator at its southern tip, while Lake Victoria just touches the equator at its northern tip.
If any of you have any interest in geography and Monty Python style humor you’ll find their videos very entertaining. And educational. They’re entertainucational!
Rufus T. Firefly, I have an eight-year-old grandson who just might be able to do it. I’ll ask him next time I see him. He has one of those detail-obsessive minds that in my experience small boys sometimes have, leading to passions for things like dinosaurs, sea creatures, Pokemon etc. He got interested in flags, which led to getting interested in countries, which led to getting interested in globes and maps, with an offshoot towards art (he likes drawing the flags onto maps of the world.)
I, on the other hand, love maps but would not have done well at all on this particular challenge!
About a month ago I listened to Jordan Peterson’s interview of Michael Saylor of MicroStrategy fame. That conversation has stuck with me. Really interesting guy, Mr. Saylor. He took a unique (and very open minded) approach regarding the stewardship of the company he built, its assets and how best to serve his employees and investors. And his very unorthodox bet has paid off big time!
Dr. Peterson does a great job of walking Mr. Saylor through his childhood, education and career path to tease out what motivates him and what skills he developed.
Michael Saylor hit a real wall at the start of the pandemic. He noticed that, in the prior 7 years, if he would have taken his company’s assets and invested them in Alphabet, Meta, Apple and Microsoft he would have increased shareholder value far more than what he and his employees had in the same time period; working long, hard hours to design and build amazing systems. And, due to the advent of remote work he felt he was at risk of losing his engineering talent to those companies, as his one advantage, quality of life in MicroStrategy’s geographic community, no longer mattered. His engineers could stay in the area and work for more money for one of those firms.
So he used the downtime of the pandemic to steer his engineer’s brain toward finance and monetary policy. And went deep into the rabbit hole, learning, “historically, nations’ currencies default every 30 to 40 years. And, the best performing currency of the last 100 years, the U.S. dollar, lost 99.9% of its value in that time frame.”
5 years ago MicroStrategy’s stock was trading at $12.40/share. Today it’s at $427.48! Well done, Mr. Saylor!
They don’t discuss this in the podcast, but how many Americans know that the U.S. outlawed private gold ownership? Between 1933 and 1974 it was illegal for U.S. citizens to own gold! (Except for some unique exceptions around jewelry.)
I knew the dollar has been devalued over time, but 99.9% in the last century?! And we are the “most stable” of current, world currencies.
This is something else I’m trying to wrap my head around. In an episode of the Red Pilled America podcast I learned details of Bretton Woods I was unfamiliar with*.
The U.S. values its gold reserves at $42.22 per ounce. If we valued it at today’s price this asset would go from around $11 billion to $877 billion! I understand doing this overnight would create a lot of instability and could cause damage to the dollar and the price of gold, but why are we paying interest in $866 billion more debt than we need to? Isn’t there some way to rectify this?
*Or, likely learned in order to pass a test when pursuing my Economics degree 500 years ago and quickly forgot.
Mrs. Whatsit,
Sounds a lot like my son who has grown to a fine man, husband and father.
I don’t think ripping the band-aid off is the right approach. There are illegals in the U.S. doing a lot of needed jobs (construction, agriculture, hospitality) and if that all stopped tomorrow it would be very detrimental.
However, I also don’t believe these are jobs “Americans won’t do,” and I am skeptical that only opening them to citizens would cause huge cost increases.
When I went to the University of Illinois in the ’80s I met “farm kids” for the first time. Most of them did agricultural work over summer break. “Walking beans” and “detassling corn” were two, common duties I recall hearing. I, on the other hand, did work in the city over summer break; restaurants, gas stations, construction, hotels… What my rural friends were doing can’t be different from what migrants do today, can it? U.S. teen-agers were willing to do that work then and, I assume, they earned minimum wage, like I did in the city. And in the city I was doing hospitality and construction.
This was all very normal then, and in decades prior.
miguel @3:58pm,
That section about Grok and Tesla is very interesting; paging Dr. Huxley and the other neophiles interested in AI…
We should rip two band-aids off. (1) balance the budget and (2) expel the illegals.
Man, Rufus, you’re old! 500 years ago! Economics in the time of Richelieu must have been quite something 😀
In the geography contest, I thought sure that India crossed the equator. No. Also that Equatorial Guinea (duh) would be there. Also no. But I did at least get Gabon and both versions of the Congo. It looks like a good follow-up trivia question might be: which country capital is closest to the equator? Kampala, Quito and whichever town on Nauru is the capital there seem to be the candidates.
MORE WINNING!!! US Budget posts $27 Billion surplus in June thanks to tariffs – CNBC Video
Wendy – “To be completely honest, I’ve never heard of Kiribati, population 119,000.”
Not to worry – climate change submerged it long ago. No, really. One of the hundreds of predictions of climate scientists that have come true! Honest. The UN gave them millions in return.
Just kidding. Except for them getting millions. They did.
“Name All the Countries that Lie on the Equator”
I dunno, expecting total honesty from an entire country seems like too much to ask, especially when it’s hot out.
Elon Musk posted something interesting yesterday about how engineers who work for him can expect to be worked unbelievably hard but also given a chance to do their best work. He believes other companies sideline the brilliant young engineers, give their credit to more mediocre guys with seniority. They’ll get paid a lot and probably have more leisure, but miss the glory and the fulfillment.
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Without looking at a map? Hmmm. Ecuador, Peru, Brazil, Gabon, French Congo, Belgian Congo, Uganda, Kenya, India, Indonesia…
I correctly guessed Ecuador and Congo and incorrectly guessed Malaysia. I’m surprised I got that much though as I’m not that great with geography usually.
…and Ecuador is sort of a cheat since it literally means “equator”.
I’m pretty confident one of my sons would have nailed this in Junior High. Went to state and nationals in geography. For those of you unfamiliar with geography bees, questions aren’t just about locations. They involve national parks, natural resources, demographics, religions, terrain, city names…
I lived with him and I still don’t know how he absorbed and retained what he did.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Geographic_Bee
I guess it was inequitable my son knew more geography than other kids. Who knew?
Some people are map people.
Other people make their living claiming by saying—with chin in hand and knitted brows—that “the map is not the territory”…
I’ll stick with the map people…
Well those are very silly people (they may work for garmin)
What do you see here,:
https://www.sciencefocus.com/news/earth-trapped-void
Other silly people
https://x.com/ProfMJCleveland/status/1943715947019120923
I know ground hog day all over again
I tend to be a visual person, with some visual memory capability. I was never good enough to pull that quiz off. Maybe this guy is?
I have been trying exercise my memory in recent years, & among other things, I find mnemonics to be helpful.
The internet tells me Ecuador, Colombia, Brazil, São Tomé and Príncipe, Gabon, Republic of the Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, Kenya, Somalia, Maldives, Indonesia, and Kiribati. I would have missed many of those. To be completely honest, I’ve never heard of Kiribati, population 119,000.
Nor did I have any notion of where São Tomé e Príncipe was: just off the west coast of Africa, nowhere near Brazil. Somalia just clips the equator at its southern tip, while Lake Victoria just touches the equator at its northern tip.
I mentioned these guys before: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5iJSXaVvao&list=PLfxy4_sBQdxy3A2lvl-y3qWTeJEbC_QCp
Map Men!
If any of you have any interest in geography and Monty Python style humor you’ll find their videos very entertaining. And educational. They’re entertainucational!
about that promise
https://hotair.com/tree-hugging-sister/2025/07/11/yall-got-took-there-was-never-going-to-be-any-rebuilt-pacific-palisades-n3804690
Rufus T. Firefly, I have an eight-year-old grandson who just might be able to do it. I’ll ask him next time I see him. He has one of those detail-obsessive minds that in my experience small boys sometimes have, leading to passions for things like dinosaurs, sea creatures, Pokemon etc. He got interested in flags, which led to getting interested in countries, which led to getting interested in globes and maps, with an offshoot towards art (he likes drawing the flags onto maps of the world.)
I, on the other hand, love maps but would not have done well at all on this particular challenge!
About a month ago I listened to Jordan Peterson’s interview of Michael Saylor of MicroStrategy fame. That conversation has stuck with me. Really interesting guy, Mr. Saylor. He took a unique (and very open minded) approach regarding the stewardship of the company he built, its assets and how best to serve his employees and investors. And his very unorthodox bet has paid off big time!
Dr. Peterson does a great job of walking Mr. Saylor through his childhood, education and career path to tease out what motivates him and what skills he developed.
Michael Saylor hit a real wall at the start of the pandemic. He noticed that, in the prior 7 years, if he would have taken his company’s assets and invested them in Alphabet, Meta, Apple and Microsoft he would have increased shareholder value far more than what he and his employees had in the same time period; working long, hard hours to design and build amazing systems. And, due to the advent of remote work he felt he was at risk of losing his engineering talent to those companies, as his one advantage, quality of life in MicroStrategy’s geographic community, no longer mattered. His engineers could stay in the area and work for more money for one of those firms.
So he used the downtime of the pandemic to steer his engineer’s brain toward finance and monetary policy. And went deep into the rabbit hole, learning, “historically, nations’ currencies default every 30 to 40 years. And, the best performing currency of the last 100 years, the U.S. dollar, lost 99.9% of its value in that time frame.”
5 years ago MicroStrategy’s stock was trading at $12.40/share. Today it’s at $427.48! Well done, Mr. Saylor!
They don’t discuss this in the podcast, but how many Americans know that the U.S. outlawed private gold ownership? Between 1933 and 1974 it was illegal for U.S. citizens to own gold! (Except for some unique exceptions around jewelry.)
I knew the dollar has been devalued over time, but 99.9% in the last century?! And we are the “most stable” of current, world currencies.
This is something else I’m trying to wrap my head around. In an episode of the Red Pilled America podcast I learned details of Bretton Woods I was unfamiliar with*.
The U.S. values its gold reserves at $42.22 per ounce. If we valued it at today’s price this asset would go from around $11 billion to $877 billion! I understand doing this overnight would create a lot of instability and could cause damage to the dollar and the price of gold, but why are we paying interest in $866 billion more debt than we need to? Isn’t there some way to rectify this?
*Or, likely learned in order to pass a test when pursuing my Economics degree 500 years ago and quickly forgot.
Mrs. Whatsit,
Sounds a lot like my son who has grown to a fine man, husband and father.
https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/dumb-cars-friday-july-11-2025-c-and
I don’t think ripping the band-aid off is the right approach. There are illegals in the U.S. doing a lot of needed jobs (construction, agriculture, hospitality) and if that all stopped tomorrow it would be very detrimental.
However, I also don’t believe these are jobs “Americans won’t do,” and I am skeptical that only opening them to citizens would cause huge cost increases.
When I went to the University of Illinois in the ’80s I met “farm kids” for the first time. Most of them did agricultural work over summer break. “Walking beans” and “detassling corn” were two, common duties I recall hearing. I, on the other hand, did work in the city over summer break; restaurants, gas stations, construction, hotels… What my rural friends were doing can’t be different from what migrants do today, can it? U.S. teen-agers were willing to do that work then and, I assume, they earned minimum wage, like I did in the city. And in the city I was doing hospitality and construction.
This was all very normal then, and in decades prior.
miguel @3:58pm,
That section about Grok and Tesla is very interesting; paging Dr. Huxley and the other neophiles interested in AI…
We should rip two band-aids off. (1) balance the budget and (2) expel the illegals.
Man, Rufus, you’re old! 500 years ago! Economics in the time of Richelieu must have been quite something 😀
In the geography contest, I thought sure that India crossed the equator. No. Also that Equatorial Guinea (duh) would be there. Also no. But I did at least get Gabon and both versions of the Congo. It looks like a good follow-up trivia question might be: which country capital is closest to the equator? Kampala, Quito and whichever town on Nauru is the capital there seem to be the candidates.
MORE WINNING!!! US Budget posts $27 Billion surplus in June thanks to tariffs – CNBC Video
https://commoncts.blogspot.com/2025/07/more-winning-us-budget-posts-27-billion.html
Wendy – “To be completely honest, I’ve never heard of Kiribati, population 119,000.”
Not to worry – climate change submerged it long ago. No, really. One of the hundreds of predictions of climate scientists that have come true! Honest. The UN gave them millions in return.
Just kidding. Except for them getting millions. They did.
“Name All the Countries that Lie on the Equator”
I dunno, expecting total honesty from an entire country seems like too much to ask, especially when it’s hot out.
Elon Musk posted something interesting yesterday about how engineers who work for him can expect to be worked unbelievably hard but also given a chance to do their best work. He believes other companies sideline the brilliant young engineers, give their credit to more mediocre guys with seniority. They’ll get paid a lot and probably have more leisure, but miss the glory and the fulfillment.