"Amid all the hand-wringing, one question is never asked: could the Miami poll hunk be right? Does it really matter if someone who will probably never go to Siberia can’t find it on a map? After all, if you really need to know, you can always just look it up, right? Well, one problem with that is the obvious one: people can look it up, but that doesn’t mean they will. We live in an increasingly inter-linked world where developments an ocean away affect our daily lives in countless ways. A collapsing Greek economy might affect my 401(k) and delay my retirement. A Taliban cell in Pakistan might affect my personal safety as I walk through Times Square. A volcano in Iceland might affect my plan to fly to Paris during spring break. These aren’t hand-waving hypotheticals used in chaos theory classes, like that damn butterfly in China that’s always flapping one wing and thereby causing a Gulf Coast hurricane. They are concrete and direct."

Ken Jennings. Maphead, p. 50.