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Maphead_ Charting the Wide, Weird World of Geography Wonks - Ken Jennings [121]

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“The Road to Understanding Maps,” Current Directions in Psychological Science 18, no. 6 (December 2009), pp. 310–315.

20 something innate: This no-longer-fashionable notion was most famously advanced in the “natural mapping” theory of James Blaut.

20 hundreds of other: David Woodward and G. Malcolm Lewis, The History of Cartography, vol. 2, book 3 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), p. 4.

21 “cognitive map” was first coined: By the Berkeley behavioral psychologist Edward Tolman.

21 animals can perform: Many of these wayfinding examples are drawn from Colin Ellard, You Are Here: Why We Can Find Our Way to the Moon but Get Lost in the Mall (New York: Doubleday, 2009). The shear water anecdote is the subject of Rosario Mazzeo, “Homing of the Manx Shearwater,” The Auk 70, no. 2 (April 1953), pp. 200–201.

22 The frillfin goby: Stéphan Reebs, Fish Behavior in the Aquarium and in the Wild (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2001), p. 84.

24 both dogs and chimpanzees: This experiment was first performed by Emil Menzel at SUNY–Stony Brook. See “Chimpanzee spatial memory organization,” Science 182, no. 4115 (November 30, 1973), pp. 943–945.

26 “laid out like a map”: “Log of Glenn’s Historic Day Circling Globe,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Feb. 21, 1962.

26 allegorical maps: Many of these beautiful maps are reproduced in Katharine Harmon, You Are Here: Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Architectural Press, 2003). Matt Groening’s homage is found in the largest book I own: Kramer’s Ergot 7 (Oakland, Calif.: Buenaventura Press, 2008).

30 “Third Culture Kids”: “Third Culture Kids: Focus of Major Study,” Newslinks 12, no. 3 (January 1993), p. 1. Now that the president of the United States is himself a TCK, the term seems a little less exotic.

31 “To be rooted”: Simone Weil, The Need for Roots: Prelude to a Declaration of Duties Toward Mankind (Boston: Beacon Press, 1955), p. 42.

CHAPTER 3: FAULT

32 “To the people of Bolivia!”: Steve Neal, “A Casual Approach Amid Controversy,” Chicago Tribune, Jan. 9, 1983.

32 David Helgren sprang: The best account of Helgren’s fateful brush with fame is the article he himself wrote on the subject: “Place Name Ignorance Is National News,” Journal of Geography 82 (July–August 1983), pp. 176–178.

35 kidnapped a young woman: This was the notorious Gary Steven Krist case. His victim, Barbara Jane Mackle, lived to retell the story in her book 83 Hours till Dawn (New York: Doubleday, 1971).

36 Nouvelle Géographie: Quoted in “Old Maps and New,” Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine 94, no. 577 (November 1863), pp. 540–553.

37 Henry Kissinger told: In Years of Renewal (New York: Touchstone, 1999), p. 72, quoted in de Blij, Why Geography Matters, p. 13.

37 “Over the last”: www.snopes.com/politics/obama/57states.asp.

37 “the importance of”: Lourdes Heredia, “Spain Puzzled by McCain Comments,” BBC News, Sept. 18, 2008.

37 Africa was a country: Frank Rich, “The Moose Stops Here,” The New York Times, Nov. 16, 2008.

38 Al Franken’s favorite: A YouTube search for “al franken map” will return at least three such clips, spanning over twenty years.

38 “I personally believe”: Rebecca Traister, “Miss Dumb Blond USA?,” Salon.com, Aug. 29, 2007. Upton later spun her geographical ignorance into a contestant spot on CBS’s globetrotting reality show The Amazing Race; she and her boyfriend, Brent, finished third.

39 “in the great majority”: Andrew Dickson White, Autobiography, vol. 1 (New York: Century, 1905), p. 258.

39 “Geographic illiterates”: Howard Wilson, “Americans Held Lax on Geography,” The New York Times, Jan. 2, 1942.

39 1950 study: Kenneth J. Williams, “A Survey of the Knowledge of Incoming Students in College Geography,” Journal of Geography 51, no. 4 (April 1952), pp. 157–162.

41 fifteenth-anniversary follow-up: “Fifteen Year Follow-up Geography Skills Test Administered in Indiana, 1987 and 2002,” Journal of Geography 108, no. 1 (January 2009), pp. 30–36.

41 recent National Geographic polls: The National Geographic Society and Roper conduct

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