A few days ago we watched this (subtitled!) video for the Miss Teen America pageant, in which Miss South Carolina is asked (by a girl named Aimee Teegarden! Who finds these people and how do beauty pageants get so many of them?) why 1/5 of Americans can’t locate the US on a map.
Her response was curious at best, but the point she made was that too few Americans have maps, and we also need to help South Africans and the people in the Iraq.
This on its own is probably not worthy of rantage, but this – inspired by Miss South Carolina’s epiphany – kind of is.
Maps for Us is a collection of maps that have been compiled by and for the children of the US. Thus far it includes a map of chromosome 3 in humans, Brazil in tattoo form, a character map, bigfoot sightings, beer excise taxes, a phrenology map, and Fox’s 2005 NFL affiliate game coverage map.
Oddly, there isn’t a map that shows the US in the context of the rest of the world, which is what her whole weird shpiel was about, unless you count the map of Pangea, where you can kind of make out where the US might be.
This one by far is our favorite.
