real life meets the internet

[lucy24]

I don't have the stomach to watch TV news. Never did. I figure if something important happens, someone will eventually tell me about it. Or I'll look out the window and see a mushroom cloud. Or something.

So I'm cleaning up my IP lists and I discover that the Netherlands Antilles has dropped off the face of the earth. In its place is a three-way split between Curaçao, Bonaire-plus-some-stuff-that's-probably-longer-that-the-circumference-of-the-island, and Sint Maarten.

Imagine that.

Isn't Curaçao that weird stuff that tastes of oranges? Or am I thinking of Grenadine?

:: wandering off to make sure St Vincent hasn't been renamed ::

[graeme_p]

I wonder how many websites update country lists on forms regularly enough to keep up with things like this?

Curacao is the blue stuff. Grenadine is the red stuff that sinks to the bottom of a tequila sunrise.

[g1smd]

Many website lists fail to show South Sudan or several of the newer -istan republics in what used to be the southern USSR.

[lucy24]

There are MORE stans? ###. Just when I'd got the list of five* memorized.

When I was in grad school, a classmate predicted that in ten years' time Europe would consist of six countries: The Common Market, Norway-- and the other four would be Yugoslavia. He was damn close :)

Many website lists fail to show South Sudan

South Sudan? Double ###. Just the other day I spent far too long trying to find Swaziland on the globe. I was looking in the right area, it's just a lot smaller than I thought.

wikipedia says the Netherlands Antilles broke up in 2010, so the various free lookups really have no excuse.

Anyway, it turns out I was thinking of Cointreau. Oops.


* Kazakh-, Kyrgyz-, Tajik-, Turkmen(i)- and Uzbekistan. Each one poorer and more corrupt than the last, as far as I can make out.