My Travel Geography IQ

This Traveler IQ was calculated on Monday, November 17, 2008 at 05:16PM GMT by comparing this person's geographical knowledge against the Web's Original Travel journal's 3,320,716 travelers who've taken the challenge.

This is a cool site for testing your knowledge of places around the world. I did very poorly on the extra credit. I was not prepared for the vagueness of the hints. I know most of my capitals and countries, but am not so hot when it comes to famous places, and secondary populated places.

Country VS Realm VS Region

One of my pet peeves is the misidentification of a realm or region as a "country."

For example, what raised my ire was an Apple iTune podcast description for the show, "travel geography." The premise of the show invites people who have traveled abroad to discussion their journey. A description of the show is posted to help the listener decide what to listen to.

In one case, a two-part episode description invited listeners to learn about the travels of a few people who had traveled across the "country" of Asia.

The "country" of Asia? You've got to be kidding me. And associated with a podcast called, "travel geography," no less.

Maybe they meant "China" or "South Korea;" or maybe they meant to say the "realm of Asia," rather than "country."

A 'country' typically is thought of to be a political area on the landscape, where the area is governed by the people that inhabit the area, and others outside the area recognize the sovereignty of the area. Such as Germany, or Portugal, or Uruguay.

A 'realm' is a large area that encompasses many different countries, contains a great number of people, and is a mostly inhabitable territory. Such as Asia, Africa, or Latin America.

A 'region' can be defined by a number of subjective characteristics. Regions can also vary by scale. A region could exist at a very local scale, such as around a town or city. A region could exist at a national scale. US states that receive a good deal of sunlight and also receive a number of retirement migrants are part of the Sunbelt. States that are perceived to have strong religious faith fall into the Bible Belt. These are perceptual regions. They encompass a number of administrative units, i.e. states, and are a subset of the larger "realm."

By the way, one of the best iTunes podcasts is The Amateur Traveler. The guy that does this does a great job.