Making Light:  Logic Puzzle (Open Thread 90) ::: September 06, 2007, 12:51 PM

On the Miss Teen South Carolina particle, Aimee Teegarden asked the
contestant, "Recent polls have shown a fifth of Americans can't locate
the United States on a world map.  Why do you think this is?"

I suspect that part of the reason is that a fifteenth of Americans are
under five years of age, and a thirtieth of Americans are visually
impaired.  I don't know the percentage who are hearing impaired, or
non-English speakers, if the "recent polls" were conducted in spoken
English.  There may also be respondents who didn't pay attention to
the question, or who found the poll intrusive in their lives and made
it go away in the simplest way possible.  Does anyone know what recent
polls these are?

Greg London (370, before the current unending pointlessness) referred
to how the video communicates Ms. Upton's pain in answering the
question.  While I have no doubt that was painful (see her NBC "Today"
show appearance), I was impressed with the poise, smoothness, and
apparent conviction with which she delivered her statement.  I was
shocked at how well she didn't show her pain on the video.  On NPR's
"Wait, Wait..." show, they joked that she is shortlisted for Attorney
General.

Of course, the real losers here are the pageant winner and first and
second runners-up.  Nobody know their names, while the fourth-place
finisher is all over the news.