Titbits

Yesterday I wrote about the fatigue Lost was suffering from only for me to read to day in the news that the cast of Lost have signed on to not 3 not 4 but 5 more seasons of Lost. Some may call this death wish by television
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The new trend these day is supposedly 'overheard' blogs. For those of you not in the know these are blogs dedicated to reporting on conversations overheard in the daily commute. Angela Gunn of the USAtoday fame had also noted that these blogs are arranged into cities such that each city may have its own characteristics; New York, DC, Chicago, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Ann Arbor, the UK, Utah and Stanford
A month ago I wrote an article about the demise of social interaction and I believe we are seeing the effects of this. The rise and rise of reality TV goes to prove my point. We prefer interaction from a distance (behind a computer or TV screen).
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Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wrote to George W. Bush this week offering solutions to the current impasse between the two nations. The International Herald tribune has excerpts from the letter. However this version strips away all the diplomatic language.
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I thought the first rule of war is to know who your enemy is and where they live. However the US do not seem to have grasped this concept. According to National Geographic report one-third of respondents to its survey [young americans (18-24)] could not pinpoint Louisiana on a map and 48 percent were unable to locate Mississippi and this is in their own country. I guess its thus not surprising that 6 in 10 could not find Iraq on a map of the Middle East. How can a country be at war or rather engaging in hostilities with another and the youth who are the next military drafts don't know where that is?
Other findings were

• Fewer than three in 10 think it important to know the locations of countries in the news and just 14 percent believe speaking another language is a necessary skill.
• While the outsourcing of jobs to India has been a major U.S. business story, 47 percent could not find the Indian subcontinent on a map of Asia.
• While Israeli-Palestinian strife has been in the news for the entire lives of the respondents, 75 percent were unable to locate Israel on a map of the Middle East.
• Nearly three-quarters incorrectly named English as the most widely spoken native language.
• Six in 10 did not know the border between North and South Korea is the most heavily fortified in the world. Thirty percent thought the most heavily fortified border was between the United States and Mexico.