Map Africa In 130 Seconds

Over the weekend, my son and I played snapping-mapping games at www.coolmath-games.com.

Updated score posted 5:06PM EST

It's a little bit addicting, but definitely not a time waster... Because you learn the names of nations.  It always nags me to not be completely sure whether Angola borders South Africa (nope, Namibia in between), and where the Z nations (Zambia, Zimbabwe, SwaZiland, MoZambique) lay south of Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire).  Highly recommended.  They have Snap-maps for Asia, Europe, and state puzzles for Canada, Mexico, USA, Australia.   I am finally coming to grips with the names of former Yugoslavia.

This belongs in the blog because Americans need to be better at geography if they are going to be good environmentalists.




The Basel Convention is so out of date it's not funny.  I mean rule of law is great, but tying environmental law to "OECD" when Singapore has the second or third highest GDP per capita in the world, and R2 stakeholders refuse to allow hard drives to be recycled in Signapore (where Seagate, the hard disk manufacturer is based)... I mean, this is a joke.  This is why we absolutely have to call on the universities, ASU, MIT, Memorial U, UVM, Dartmouth, Middlebury College, and others to rescue Fair Trade Recycling.  Allowing people to depict Penang Malaysia as a primitive wire burning village is so ridiculous... Passing Shenzhen on the way to Guiyu, and not mentioning Foxconn, it's like confusing NASA with a Star Trek convention.

Anyway, play the game and try to beat your time.  I started the weekend at 470 seconds for Africa, my last time was 134.1 seconds.  It would be great if they developed games which allowed you to learn population (Africa has about 1 billion population,  about 20% of the population lives in either Nigeria or Egypt), GDP, average age of country, women to men ratio, etc.  There are about 100 cities in China with populations of over 1 million (compared to fewer than 2 dozen in the USA), but I doubt I can name more than 5% of them.  There are so many better ways to select recycling partners than "OECD".  I'd nominate the relative education level, voting rights, and emancipation of women over Basel Signatory status.

CountryAfrica Rank World Rank
Population
Nigeria flag - the most populous country in Africa.  Can you locate Nigeria on the map of Africa ?Nigeria112125,750,356
Egypt21776,117,421
Ethiopia31871,336,571
Congo, DR42458,317,930
South Africa52844,448,470
Sudan63239,148,162
Tanzania73536,070,799
Kenya83632,982,109
Morocco93832,209,101
Algeria103932,129,324
Uganda114426,390,258
Ghana125220,757,032
Mozambique135619,111,633
Madagascar145817,501,871
Cote D'Ivoire155916,944,598
Cameroon166116,063,678
Burkina Faso176513,574,820
Zimbabwe186812,671,860
Mali196911,956,788
Malawi207011,906,855
Niger217111,360,538
Zambia227311,025,690
Angola237410,978,552
Senegal247510,852,147
Tunisia25839,974,722
Guinea26859,246,462
Somalia27898,304,601
Rwanda28908,238,673
Benin29967,250,033
Burundi301016,231,221
Sierra Leone311055,883,889
Libya321065,631,585
Togo331085,556,812
Eritrea341194,447,307
Central African Rep.351283,742,482
Liberia361323,390,635
Mauritania371342,998,563
Congo, Rep381352,998,040
Namibia391462,014,026
Botswana401491,639,231

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