Studying Geography, sort of

Recently, I decided to further my education by expanding my knowledge of geography and climatology. I figured I'd pick up where I left off back in school, and start by playing Where in the World is Carmen San Diego?, which jogged my memory on a few things. One is that putting punctuation in a title is just stupid. I was also reminded of how well the early games that are only a few kilobytes still hold up in terms of actual game play, like they perfected the maze game in Pac-Man, and any improvement was just distracting from the purity of the original. But it was also good to learn a few things from Carmen San Diego about the geography of the Soviet Union, the importance of hitting the bank to change your currency before traveling from say Paris to Rome, and to learn a ridiculous amount about Comoros, which is a destination in about every god damned game. I was also interested to find that Carmen San Diego's organization V.I.L.E. has a significant presence in Iraq, and her henchmen always seem to pass through Baghdad after a heist. That got me anticipating News Corp releasing Where in the World is Osama bin Laden?, where kids can learn about geography by deciphering clues about Osama bin Laden's travels they glean from interviewing people in various cities he's been to. Something like this:

Bank Teller:
He said something about visiting a stable democracy to congratulate the liberators. (Go to Baghdad)

Imam:
He left in a plane with a hammer and sickle flag on the wing. (Go to Nantucket Island)

People's Commissar Ted Kennedy:
All I know is he was looking forward to a free and fair election with no voting irregularities. (Go to Miami)

Then I thought I'd watch An Inconvenient Truth, and see what Al Gore's been up to for the last few years. Al Gore is surprisingly engaging, in a way he hasn't been since the night he took Ross Perot to school over NAFTA. He couldn't have done more to finish Ross Perot if he'd shoved his head in a bucket. It's also interesting to find that Al Gore, like President Bush, has an orthographical blind spot, and can't quite figure out how the word “arctic” is pronounced. Where President Bush adds extra vowels to nuclear, Gore will not suffer an inconvenient consonant, and has to just say “ardic” and hope nobody notices. Personally I think that warming up the oceans enough to cause a hurricane in the South Atlantic a good thing. A system of ocean currents that made it impossible for a hurricane to hit Florida but not Angola or Argentina was not equitable, and I think climate change should be Fair and Balanced. Glaciers melting in South America? Take your ski vacation in Colorado and quit whining about drinking water.