People: Second Chance for Miss Teen South Carolina
SMARTER THAN A FIFTH GRADER? So by now you must have seen the train wreck of an answer that Miss Teen South Carolina Lauren Caitlin Upton gave at the Miss Teen USA pageant when asked why she thinks one fifth of Americans can't locate the U.S. on a world map. (If you were living under a rock yesterday you can watch it here). It's pretty bad when you see a corny host like Mario Lopez straining to hold in his laughter, after all this is a dude who hosts 'Pet Star.' The worst part of it is that Upton is already being rewarded with fame for her blunder.
And so the media frenzy began this morning: Upton appeared on 'The Today Show' to have a second stab at the question she flubbed.
"Personally, my friends and I, we know exactly where the United States is on our map," she said proudly. "I don't know anyone else who doesn't. And if the statistics are correct, I believe there should be more emphasis on geography in our education so people will learn how to read maps better."
Afterwards, host Ann Curry burst into an applause so exuberant it resembled something along the lines of cheering for a kid who successfully recited her ABCs. [People; YouTube]
» UPTON SHOULDN'T FEEL SO BAD: Sure, her mistake was embarrassing, but at least she wasn't replaced by a monkey like Jessica Simpson. [Fametastic]
» MEDIA IS SO META. After yesterday's reports that Owen Wilson was hospitalized after attempting suicide, the actor requested that the media respect his privacy. The media responds by writing about said request. [Free Ride/Express; Reuters via WaPo]
» NO SMALL FEAT: Umm ... what? Former bodyguards of Siegfried and Roy claim the duo secretly buried an elephant under a building (second item). [NYDN]
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Addison Road
but she *still* didn't answer the question! the judge asked *why* 1/5 of Americans couldn't find the US on a map...
*sigh*
By jen , Posted August 28, 2007 3:04 PMOh I know, poor dear. She even had time to rehearse her answer this time.
By Kris Coronado , Posted August 28, 2007 3:20 PMAphrodite actually became a map!
Anthropomorphic maps were generated by configuring the body of a god or goddess over the area to be mapped. The name of each part of that body became the name of the area or feature under that part. This produced a scale 1:1 map-without-paper on which the name of a place automatically indicated its approximate location and direction with respect to all other places on the same map whose name was derived in this manner.
The linguist Dan Moonhawk Alford (deceased) and the anthropologist Stan Knowlton described the maps of Napi (aka The Old Man, creator of the Blackfoot Indians) and his wife (The Old Woman) in Alberta, Canada. I have described similar maps in Asia minor (Hermes) and north Africa (Aphrodite). Each toponym - body part correlation on these maps is a record in the databases on the BPMaps discussion group website at
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/BPMaps/
You are cordially invited to join this very quiet group (about 2 emails / month). Read message #7 entitled "Attributes of body part maps". Examine the Aphrodite database to fully understand this limerick.
Aphrodite as an Anthropomorphic Map
The goddess we call Aphrodite
Is not just an old Grecian deity.
The Phoenicians did make
Her a map. It's not fake.
Her body is cartograffiti.
The Punic war destroyed her face,
The Romans left nary a trace.
But her hair is still there,
In Sahara, that's where.
And her chin's a Tunisian place.
Mt. Atlas is her first verTebra.
Her backbone is now Gulf of Sidra.
Her heart is in Libya,
Her left leg, Somalia.
Her breast is in Chad wearing no bra.
The Greeks called her liver Egypt, an'
Her kidney was Biblical Goshen.
She's bent at her waist,
Now Misr-ably placed.
The Red Sea was her menstruation.
As a kid I did think the Red Sea
Was an English map typo: lost E,
From Reed Sea in Hebrew.
But that could not be true,
Mare Rubrum 'twas Latin, B.C.
Aphrodite with Hermes did sin,
We know this is true 'cause within
Her "snatch" we call Sinai
His "zaiyin" does still lie.
It's known as the desert of Zin.
Best regards,
By Israel Cohen , Posted August 29, 2007 8:57 AMIrael "izzy" Cohen,
BPMaps moderator
Perhaps...she's running for president...?
By D Johnston , Posted August 29, 2007 5:53 PM