the western coast of Africa gives me fits...so many little countries!

Yeah. I can do them though, on a good day.

The world's northernmost desert wind.

well if it is any consolation Rick, I'm pretty good on most countries in the news (though central Africa trips me up and on a bad day I can embarrass myself in the Balkans and the FSU 'stans) but there are areas of the US where I get the states confused (hey, they are as big as countries). moving around a lot as a kid, I seem to have run into differences between state systems as to which year, and with what focus, geography was taught.  thus I learned a lot about Florida, can still draw the Great Lakes well enough to win a round of Pictionary, and did a special project on Uruguay (each child was assigned a country to write a report on)... but never did really get the hang of the region around Arkansas or the all years of various statehoods.

rote memorisation in general may be in decline as we all get used to having google, and google-earth, at our fingertips.  even at my age, I already use the www as a brain peripheral... kind of embarrassing to admit, but there it is... we say 'rote memorisation' as if it were a lowly thing, but it is I think a form of autonomy, crashproofing certain basic knowledge by burning it into brain-rom.  that autonomy seems to be eroding, for better or worse.

The difference between theory and practise in practise ...