I think you turn left after Afghanistan

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Most American young people can’t find Iraq on a map, even though U.S. troops have been there for more than three years, according to a new geographic literacy study released on Tuesday.

Fewer than 4 in 10 Americans aged 18-24 in a survey could place Iraq on an unlabeled map of the Middle East, a study conducted for National Geographic found. Only about one-quarter of respondents could find Iran and Israel on the same map.

Sixty-nine percent of young people picked out China on a map of Asia, but only about half could find India and Japan and only 12 percent correctly located Afghanistan.

[Link] via Truthdig.

Lunatics in charge of asylum

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One thing mysteriously missing from the discussion about the managerial chaos at the Home Office is the fact that this is the organisation which is going to oversee (and ensure the security of) ID cards.

And the Chinese for ‘lap dog’ is…

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Good Morning Silicon Valley has an entertaining swipe at Google’s quest for a Chinese name for its local service…

Google’s running into a vocal backlash in China, and it has nothing to do with its cooperation in state censorship. No, the issue that has galvanized thousands of Chinese to sign an online petition is the search sovereign’s choice of a Mandarin name: Guge, represented by the ideograms for “valley” and “song” (see “Unfortunately, access to the lyrics of ‘Valley Song’ is restricted in China”). Google felt the name conveyed the harvest, “the sense of a fruitful and productive search experience in a poetic Chinese way.” The image that came through to many, however, was closer to a stroll in the country than a hunt through cyberspace. “Google gives us an individualistic feel, yet Guge sounds traditional and rural … in other words, it’s outdated,” wrote one blogger. Then there’s the problem of near-homophones. One Web site operator said, “When I first heard the name Guge, I couldn’t help laughing. It sounded like fool, funny and fart.”

The NoGuge.com site is collecting suggested alternatives, and the leader is Gougou (dog dog), which is how Google is already widely known in China. The company says those folks are barking [sic] up the wrong tree: “Names such as gougou (dog dog) could not reflect the responsibilities of a corporate, brand or product name, nor do they reflect fully our goals and mission.” Other suggestions include Goule (enough), Gugu (auntie), Gugou (ancient dog), Gege (elder brother) and one that may strike a little too close to the bone, considering Google’s concessions to the government — Good Gou (good dog).

How about “Running Dog”? That was one of Mao Zedong’s terms of general abuse for capitalists.

Coming next: steam-powered automobiles

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Microsoft’s new ‘feature’:

The newest feature of Microsoft’s next-generation Vista operating system, due in 2007, attempts to clean up the Web, restoring some of the best principles of graphic design from the pre-Internet era. On April 28 Microsoft and The New York Times Company unveiled a prototype of the Times Reader, a browser-like program that gives New York Times designers the ability to more closely reproduce the newspaper’s distinctive look and feel on a computer screen, regardless of the screen’s size or format.The software takes advantage of WinFX, a completely new system for rendering user-interface graphics that Microsoft is developing for Vista. It’s distinct from the Times’ recently redesigned website, but the Reader nevertheless has many of the features of a Web browser, including hyperlinks, navigation buttons, and a search function. It’s also designed to stockpile content for offline reading and to make it easy to annotate, e-mail, or blog about the stories displayed…

It’s amazing, sometimes, how stupid clever people can be.

Jeff Jarvis has some sharp things to say about this.

Who fought the law?

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My oblique reference to the Grateful Dead spurred a flood of erudite emails from readers questioning the accuracy of linking the band with the song I fought the law but the law won. In fact the song has a very interesting history — see the excellent Wikepedia entry about it. It’s been recorded by numerous bands, including the Clash and Green Day. But my favourite rendition is the Grateful Dead’s, because they sing it as though they had indeed fought losing battles with law enforcement agencies, possibly in relation to narcotic substances. Apple cheekily used the Green Day version in their SuperBowl ad for iTunes.

The real Iranian crisis: Dubya’s poll ratings

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Lovely (and astute) rant by Josh Marshall. Sample:

With respect to what’s coming on Iran, what is in order is a little honesty, just as was the case with the Social Security debate a year ago. The only crisis with Iran is the crisis with the president’s public approval ratings. Period. End of story. The Iranians are years, probably as long as a decade away, and possibly even longer from creating even a limited yield nuclear weapon. Ergo, the only reason to ramp up a confrontation now is to help the president’s poll numbers.

This is a powerful message because it is an accurate message. We have many challenges overseas today. Chief among them, as one of the Democrats’ senate candidates puts it, is “refocusing America’s foreign and defense policies in a way that truly protects our national interests and seeks harmony where they are not threatened.” The period of peril the country is entering into isn’t tied to an Iranian bomb. It turns on how far a desperate president will go to avoid losing control of Congress.

Go to his heart. Go to his weaknesses. Though the realization of the fact is something of a lagging indicator, the man is a laughing stock, whose lies and failures are all catching up with him.

To the president the Democrats should be saying, Double or Nothing is Not a Foreign Policy.

The great bulk of the public doesn’t believe this president any more when he tries to gin up a phony crisis. They don’t believe he’d have much of an idea of how to deal with a real one. Enough of the lies. Enough of the incompetence and failure.

No buying into another of the president’s phony crises.

So who’s making the money out of Web 2.0?

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Bandwidth providers, says Nicholas Carr…

The way the Web 1.0 dot-com pioneers used pricey computer gear, the Web 2.0 digital-media pioneers use bandwidth. They devour huge gobs of it. YouTube, Forbes’s Dan Frommer writes, is probably burning through a million bucks a month in bandwidth costs, a number that’s going up as rapidly as its traffic. Follow the money. In this case, as Frommer reports, the trail will lead you to Limelight Networks, which YouTube uses to stream all that user-generated content – like 200 terabytes a day – back to us users. Once again, it looks like it’s the suppliers – in this case, the content delivery networks – that are positioned to be the most reliable money-makers as more and more investment pours into the creation of our vaster, user-generated wasteland.

‘Don’t be hypocritical’…

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… should be Google’s new motto, now that it has given up on “Don’t be Evil”. The company’s lobbyists have been creating a bogus stink in Washington, complaining that Microsoft is up to its old tricks by making MSN search the default in Internet Explorer 7.

It’s not often I feel sympathy for Microsoft, but this one of those times. Google’s whinge is ludicrous. Here’s Good Morning Silicon Valley on the issue:

Right now you may be fighting tears, more likely from convulsive laughter than sympathy. For starters, users can choose; I made Google the default search engine with a couple of clicks right after I downloaded IE7. Not simple enough, says Google; users should be forced to declare their search affiliation the first time IE7 runs. Mind you, Google has benefited for quite a while from being the default search engine offered in the Firefox and Safari browsers, but the company’s now willing to let those users make an upfront choice as well. For its part, Microsoft says, “The search box in IE7 is not Microsoft’s. It belongs to the user.” MSN is not really the default, says the IE team; the browser just picks up whatever preference the user had set in IE6’s AutoSearch options.

Nicholas Carr has a nice take on this:

But what’s the most powerful and influential default setting in the search world today? It’s not – at least yet – in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. It’s on Google’s home page. I would guess that a strong plurality, if not a majority, of web searches are done through Google’s home page, at least in the United States. As “Google” has become synonymous with “search,” people head to its home page as much out of habit as anything else. It is, quite simply, where you go to search the web. But Google doesn’t give you any choices when you arrive at its home page. There’s a default engine – Google’s – and it’s a default that you can’t change. There’s no choice.

If Google wants to fully live up to its ideals – to really give primacy to the goal of user choice in search – it should open up its home page to other search engines.

Amen. Sauce for the goose… and all that.