1) San Francisco Chronicle: Fun jobs
2) The Economist: Paparazzi
3) The Economist: Holidays in France
4) Los Angeles Times: ATMs in high school
5) New York Times: Wedding of Kristol and Olson
6) Slate/Dear Prudence: hubbie's masturbation, hubbie's pre-dump,...
7) Slate/Gizmos: Find your car
8) Salon/Ask the pilot: Extract on America, CNN, and the world

Among the many laborers celebrating today's holiday is a small cadre of workers whose job descriptions include things like tasting ice cream, doodling cartoons and driving race cars. 

While thousands of Bay Area residents trudge off to work, grimace through their toil and somehow summon the strength to do it all over again the next day, a fortunate few are in jobs that even they admit barely resemble real work. 

They are wine buyers and video game testers. They are independent bookstore sellers and hotel resort lifeguards. They are self-satisfied souls who can't wipe the smiles off their faces. 

And they can't wait to get back to "work" Tuesday. 

"Labor Day is just a holiday from our holiday job," said Ricky Nierva, a character art director for Pixar Studios in Emeryville. "I've got a total dream job. That's the beauty of it. When I wake up and go to work, I don't dread it." 

A day at the office for Nierva consists mostly of sketching cartoons. He's created many of Pixar's memorable characters, including the cast of this summer's hit "Finding Nemo." 

A cartooning fiend by the age of 3, Nierva received an arts degree in animation and luckily found a way to turn it into a profession. 

Even now, he's not sure that what he does qualifies as work. 

"I've done this my entire life, and I get paid for it," Nierva said. "The joke with my friends is, they always ask, 'How's work?' and I say, 'Is that what you guys call it?' " 

If Nierva sounds like a big kid getting away with something, he's not alone. 

Mark Wolocatiuk, chief racing instructor at the Jim Russell Racing Drivers School at the Infineon Raceway in Sonoma, knows the feeling well. 

GIVING RIDES AT 120 MPH 

"I do feel like I'm getting away with something I shouldn't be doing," Wolocatiuk said. "When I'm driving around corners, giving rides to people at 120 mph, it feels like you shouldn't be able to do that." 

Not that he's complaining. His job feeds his insatiable need for speed, something he acquired at age 13, when his dad let him drive the family car in the desert. 

He said he'd be hard-pressed to feed his addiction trapped inside a cubicle. 

"I couldn't be a mortgage broker," said Wolocatiuk, 44, who got his start as a semi-pro racer. "If I'm in an office all day in meetings and stuff, it's hard for me. I go through withdrawal." 

Having a cool job can be relative. It all depends on being able to do what you love and get paid for it. 
 

'ALMOST NOT A JOB'
Sky Shadowkat, an independent bookseller at Phoenix Books in San Francisco's Noe Valley, gets to spend her days surrounded by books. A lifelong book lover, she can't believe her luck. 

"Being able to work with books all day, it's almost not a job," Shadowkat, 33, said. "Even the smell of books is a high for me. You can tell a good book by the smell. The smell of the ink and glue, it's something that takes you to another world." 

Unlike most people who work at giant bookstores like Borders or Barnes & Noble, Shadowkat is intimately involved in the buying and selling of books. She evaluates used books brought in by sellers and decides how to spend the store's money. 

"If you're a book buyer at a big store, you're just picking out of a catalog -- you don't get to talk to people about books," she said. 

Those blessed with a cool job are often a misunderstood lot. People expect them to never complain about their jobs, as if they're not entitled to gripe. 

David Song, a 26-year-old game tester with video game giant Electronic Arts in Redwood City, said he gets no sympathy from friends about the rigors of his job. 

"After a long day of testing, the standard response is, 'Please! Don't even talk about your day. You play games all day! Ohhh . . . are your thumbs sore?! ' " Song said. 

He lucked into his gig after seeing a listing on Electronic Arts' Web site last year. A gamer since childhood, Song can't think of a more perfect job for him. 
 

MIND-BLOWING TWIST OF FATE
That's not to say that he's told his parents what he does. They just wouldn't understand, he said. 

"My parents think that I test software. I don't think they would understand playing video games all day. They probably wouldn't think it was a real job," Song said. "I played it so much when I was a kid, their job was to limit my access to video games. Now that I play it all day, it would just blow their minds." 

Wilfred Wong, 52, e-commerce cellar master for Concord-based Beverages & More, knows he has a great job. As chief wine taster and buyer for BevMo, he tries 8,000 wines annually, flies to Europe several times a year and is on a first-name basis with the best vintners in the country. 

But there is more than a little work involved, he insists, something people don't always understand. 

"People think it's all gravy, just get on a plane to France and wine and dine at Boulevard or Masa's -- and I do do a lot of that," he said. "But they don't know that I'll make 400 changes to our (review) signs in a week. Each day I'm researching 30 wines on the Web. I'm at a computer sometimes from 7:30 a.m. to 7 p.m." 

And to top it all off, he doesn't actually drink any of the wine he tastes. He just spits it out. 

"If I drank all the wine I tasted, I'd be bombed after the first 20 minutes, " he said. 
 

A TAN BEFORE TEACHING
Having a dream job doesn't mean you're not without responsibility. As head lifeguard at the Claremont Resort & Spa in Berkeley, Lisanne Franchi knows she can't afford to get distracted while on the job. 

"It's fun, but it's a lot of responsibility. It goes both ways," Franchi said. "You have to be on point and make sure that you don't have an accident." 

Franchi, 23, grew up swimming in Napa and later worked as a lifeguard at the University of Oregon, where she went to college. She took the job at the Claremont while studying for her teaching credential at St. Mary's College in Moraga. 

While she still has plans to teach one day, she's perfectly happy working by the pool for the time being. 

"I still want to be a teacher, but it would definitely be more stressful," Franchi said. "And I definitely wouldn't have the tan I have now.'' 

John Harrison, official taste tester for Dreyer's Grand Ice Cream in Oakland, doesn't usually partake of the ice cream he's testing. He's another one who ends up spitting most of it out. 

But he's nonetheless gained 25 pounds since he started tasting for Dreyer's in 1982. 

Call it an occupational hazard. 

"I've gained a few pounds, no doubt about it, but you got to be a little portly. People wouldn't trust a skinny ice cream taster," Harrison, 61, said. "My wife doesn't buy that, though." 

Harrison, who comes from a long line of dairy producers, feels blessed. Everywhere he goes, people's faces light up when they hear what he does for a living. It takes only minutes before they start asking for Harrison's job. 

That's one of the few downsides of having a dream job. Everyone else wants it. 

"It doesn't take people long before they say, 'I can do your job. When you gonna hang up the taste buds?' " Harrison said. 

E-mail Ryan Kim at rkim@sfchronicle.com. 

The market for celebrity snaps is booming. Hide now

SUMMER in the news business brings a drought of words but a flood of pictures, particularly when a starlet in a bikini (or, even better, out of it) is involved. For paparazzi photographers, who make their living from snapping celebrities, it is the busiest time of the year.

Readers like their starlets startled, in the form of pictures taken without the subject's consent. The market for these in Britain has grown sharply since early last year, with the launch of new magazines like Northern & Shell's New! to compete with EMAP's heat and IPC Media's Now. These titles have increased their circulation at the expense of old-style celebrity magazines that feature posed photographs. EMAP's fame-focused magazines alone now sell almost a million copies every week.

Prices reflect exclusivity, newsworthiness and the subject's fame. Details are rarely released, but range from a few thousand pounds to the £150,000 ($235,000) believed to have been paid this year for one set of particularly gawp-worthy snaps. Oddly, pictures of stars in mundane settings (shopping for groceries for example) are worth more than those boring ones set in exotic night-clubs.

Barriers to entry in the market are low (a camera and quick wits). Coupled with high rewards, that has attracted newcomers. Darren Lyons of Big Pictures, a specialist agency, says he now has 22 regular photographers and 400-600 freelancers. The general public can sell pictures too, though only 5% of those he sees are saleable.

Competition encourages effort and ingenuity. The traditional way is a combination of chutzpah and patience—some paparazzi will wait by a subject's doorstep for a fortnight. But it is often more efficient to rely on tipsters such as security guards, doormen, chauffeurs and restaurant staff. 

Is it becoming more intrusive? Not according to the Press Complaints Commission, the media self-regulator. The number of complaints upheld about paparazzi pestering has halved in the past five years. One reason is that more celebrities are collaborating with their pursuers. It strikes many people as more than pure luck that Jason Fraser, one of the best-known and most controversial paparazzi, has such a knack for catching David and Victoria Beckham, when the famous footballer and his wife are supposedly unawares. Another agency puts semi-celebrities on a boat in the south of France and then photographs from a distant camera with a long lens to give the picture the right feel.

The victims in all this are not the subjects—who for the most part are getting exactly the coverage that they want to keep their brand value up—but the starstruck readers. They think they are paying for a candid glance at a celebrity in real life, when in fact the product is as manufactured as a PR handout. 

Over time, such misapprehensions are likely to erode. The best test of authenticity is a simple one: if a picture shows the subject looking old, fat, gaunt, sad, drunk, ugly or silly, it was most likely taken against their will. Whether that is worth paying to look at is another matter.

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August isn't what it used be. Blame electronics

THE traditional mass exodus from France's big towns in August ends in an almost as traditional mass killing on the roads this weekend, as the entire nation—it seems—tries to drive home on the same day in time for the start of work again on September 1st. But less traditionally, an increasing number of political and business leaders are wondering whether they really got away on holiday at all.

Not that they didn't get away, as most of France still does; some companies force their staff to take much of the month as holiday whether they like it or not. But was it really on holiday? The elite can no longer enjoy the summer in the same carefree spirit as their parents did. A virus has entered their lives: electronics.

It comes in two shapes: the mobile phone, le portable, and the laptop. What it lives on is mondialisation—the globalisation of politics and business. Worldwide, there are these inconvenient people, unaware of the benefits of France's civilised month of rest, who insist on staying at their desks—or putting bombs under those of other people who have done so. Worse, ever more such people are to be found even in France. So the boss has to stay in touch even from the beach. The technology enables him do it; other people push him and expect him to do it.

Big corporate happenings these days seem to arise just as the nation is supposed to enjoy its month of rest. This summer the government had to bail out an ailing engineering group, Alstom, while France's aluminium champion, Péchiney, was hit by a hostile bid from a Canadian rival, Alcan. 

Nor does politics stop, as it ought to. One boss who forgot to keep in touch, the health minister, Jean-François Mattei, is fighting for his political life due to his failure to save thousands of old people from succumbing to the heatwave. The interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, had to settle a dispute between farmers and party-goers over the location of the annual Teknival rave festival. The foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, had to slave away at France's response to the planned settlement of the row over Libya's bombing of an American plane over Lockerbie. And President Jacques Chirac, holidaying in Quebec, found he had to issue a statement of regret over the murder of a French actress—then had to face complaints for not doing the same about the heatwave. 

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EL CAJON, Calif. — Tired of having parents turn in checks that bounce, Grossmont High School officials did something few other schools have dared to try. 

They adopted a no-checks policy and installed an automated teller machine on the outside wall of the old gym, right next to the school finance office. 

Now, students hungry for dollars to buy dance tickets, yearbooks or just about anything are excited to have somewhere to go for quick cash. Less thrilled are parents, who wonder whether teenagers can handle the responsibility.

Grossmont High is not alone. Nearby West Hills High School installed an ATM last week. And a third San Diego County high school is considering purchasing a machine this fall. 

Industry watchers say ATMs — already common at college campuses — could quickly become a trend on high school grounds, as providers look for new places to expand the market.

"Convenience stores and gas stations already have them, so all the logical places are relatively full," said Ann All, editor of the online trade publication ATMmarketplace.com. "High schools are a very nice, largely untapped market niche."

The machines are also a way for schools to raise funds. Grossmont High School paid about $10,000 for the ATM, but will receive $1.25 of the $1.50 service fee on every transaction. And after the machine is paid for, the student body can spend the profits on the school. Though the machines were designed for parents, teenagers are expected to do their share of banking — and spending. 

Nationwide, teenagers are expected to spend $176 billion this year, compared with $141 billion five years ago, according to Teen Research Unlimited.

"Everybody knows that teens have disposable incomes, so it sort of makes sense," said Rob Callender, senior trends manager for the Illinois-based research group. 

One-fifth of teenagers have debit cards, with older teens even more likely to have them, Callender said. Only 4% of students 12 to 15 years old have cards, compared with 57% of 18- and 19-year-olds. He added that debit cards can be educational tools because teenagers are less likely to get into large credit card debt with debit cards. 

The decision to buy a cash machine at Grossmont High School started with the bounced checks. The school received more than $2,000 in bad checks last year, including $360 from one family, finance technician Sue Honeycutt said. Despite repeated letters and phone calls, Honeycutt was unable to recover the bulk of the money from about 40 of the checks. So the school decided to refuse personal checks for school supplies and events and to accept only cash or money orders.

Then, to make it easier for parents to pay, the Associated Student Body voted to purchase a machine. Principal Theresa Kemper said the machine is primarily a convenience for parents, staff members and students but is also a way to bring the community into the school. To prevent security problems, the school decided to limit banking hours to between 7 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. At the end of the school day, Honeycutt removes the money and takes the machine offline. A surveillance camera also monitors the machine.

Even so, some teachers said they worry about students' safety. "If they are withdrawing a large amount of money, it puts them at a higher risk," said English teacher Heather Spross.

Larry Stanton, who sold the machine to Grossmont, said that even though campuses have a built-in clientele, he doesn't anticipate a large number of transactions. "We'll watch it and see how schools do," he said.

The head of the ATM Industry Assn., Lyle Elias, said he also plans to pay attention to the school machines. Since the ATM was installed at Grossmont in the middle of August, there have been nearly 80 transactions and about $6,000 has been dispensed, said Stanton of Cash Systems in Studio City. About $4,200 of that was withdrawn on the first day of registration. 

During the first week of school, the students said they were excited about the teller machine. 

"We were all kind of surprised We never expected an ATM at school," said Jamie Crooks, 16, who has his own debit card and plans to use the machine when he needs cash. When asked how much money he had in his account, Crooks laughed and said, "$20."

Noelle Schlotman, 17, has a job at Taco Bell and a joint bank account with her mother. She said the machine is handy because she doesn't have to go to a gas station anymore to withdraw cash. "It is kind of weird at school though," she said. 

Debra Sesma said she thinks the machine is a bad idea and she has no intention of getting her 15-year-old daughter a debit card. "Let's face it," she said, "adults can't even take care of their money. Teenagers can't either. High school is not the time to be experimenting with ATMs." 

Another parent, Theressa Ryles, said she believes that teenagers won't gain an appreciation for money if they can withdraw cash at school whenever they want. "They need to learn that money doesn't just grow on trees," she said. Ryles said she doesn't want her teenage children to have debit cards but she isn't comfortable with the alternative either: sending them to school with bundles of cash to make school purchases. 

Standing behind his mother, 16-year-old Cliff said he planned to convince his mother to get him a debit card. "I'm gonna get one," he said.

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Mrs. Olson, 31, is a producer of radio and television commercials at Deutsch, an advertising agency in New York. She graduated from the University of Pennsylvania. Her father is a member of the board of directors at Richards, Layton & Finger, a law firm in Wilmington. 

Dr. Olson, also 31, is a neurosurgery resident in his fifth year at Columbia-Presbyterian Center of New York-Presbyterian Hospital in New York. He graduated from Stanford University and received his medical degree from Duke. His mother, Ann C. Olson, is a counselor at Minter Creek Elementary School in Gig Harbor, Wash. His father owned Aaberg & Feek, an industrial and automobile parts supply company in Bremerton. 
 

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Dear Pru,
My husband and I have been married for eight years and have a young family. He is a wonderful husband and father. We both have stressful jobs, but he is very active in helping to raise our two children (3 and 1). I am seven months pregnant, which doesn't leave "us" a lot of free time. So in the last year or so, our sexual relationship has been OK, but not what it once was. We are a religious family, which means we abstain from pornography and even R-rated movies. We also believe that "self-gratification" is a no-no. My husband has always had a fairly strong appetite (time permitting, two or three times a day wouldn't be too much for him). As you can imagine, three babies in four years has definitely taken a toll on my time and energy so that keeping up with him is not as easy as it once was. I thought I was still fairly active, but I think that my husband's thirst isn't being quenched. I have not exactly caught him red-handed, but I woke up one night to find him fondling himself. He's also spending a lot more time in the bathroom with the door locked. I'm trying to rationalize it, calling his needs natural, realizing that he has a stressful job and maybe it's a good tension reliever for him. The bottom line, though, is that I feel he is being hypocritical about the morals we believe in (i.e., we all need to control our appetites to make us better people). I also feel he is cheating on our marriage, just as if he was with another woman. I love him so much that I want his needs to be satisfied, but I want to be the one to satisfy them. What do I do? 

—Jealous Wife

Dear Jel,
If you want to be the one to satisfy him every time he, uh, has needs, just make yourself available two to three times a day, simply ignoring your pregnancy, your job, the two kids, and whatever else makes up your day. Self-gratification, you should know, is in no way cheating and is certainly not analogous to being with another woman. Your concerns are not all that unusual, but the wild card in your situation is the religious angle. Prudie does not wish to tangle with your pastor—or anyone else's—but regarding self-gratification as sinful is a benighted idea. It is an entirely normal thing to do. (And for whatever it's worth, no one's sex life is what it once was.)

—Prudie, progressively 
-*-*-*-*-
Dear Prudence,
My husband and I have been married for six years and have one child, though we've known each other for more than a decade. We've survived many things in our relationship because I have never given up hope that we could make things better. Recently, very close friends of ours broke up after six years of marriage, and now my husband has been hinting that he doesn't want to be married to someone in the music business, which has been my profession since before we met! I am not jealous by nature, but I sense that our woman friend "likes" my husband, and he has made it known that he finds her very attractive and a "great catch"; also that our male friend is a "jerk" for letting her go. "If it had been me," he said, "I would have jumped on that a long time ago!" What a coincidence that her marriage breaks up, and now my hubby doesn't want me anymore. I've seen them get very cozy when she's been here for dinner, but I don't want to confront him for fear he'll become explosive and start a horrible fight. Should I get a lawyer or wait?

—Disenchanted and Confused

Dear Dis,
Although it does sound as if this woman's handwriting is on your wall, it would be precipitate to engage a lawyer without any discussion. Perhaps it is only your husband's subconscious speaking, but Prudie thinks even that voice should not be ignored. His new displeasure with the music business is a sign that he in fact may be looking for an excuse to head for the door. Because you are fearful of an explosive fight, be very controlled when you bring the subject up. This means no hollering and no frying pan in your hand … though Prudie might be tempted to adopt both of these tactics. It is important for you to ask him, not tell him, what he is thinking. Should he deny any interest in rearranging his life, give it a little time to see if his vocal admiration for this woman abates. Women know, my dear, when something's up—no pun intended—so take some time, and then decide what you want to do.

—Prudie, searchingly
-*-*-*-*-
Dear Pru,
I have been going with "Larry" for four years. We really should be married by now, but he likes things the way they are. Which is not exactly my biggest problem. I wouldn't mind the "going with" part if only he were more considerate. He's a lot of fun and very good to me, but he's immature in more areas than he should be at the age of 34. I've thought of breaking up, but I actually like my life with him. I would just like him to make our relationship BETTER. Any suggestions?

—Solution-Challenged

Dear So
Given the big picture as you describe it, Prudie thinks this chap is worth continuing with. Time usually will graft on maturity, and the being considerate part is discussable. You might want to try launching your stealth upgrading program using humor: Get your fella a copy of Me vs. Everybody (by Slate's own Dahlia Lithwick and Brandt Goldstein). This clever and hilarious collection of "contracts" for relationships will provide a great way to start talking … once you stop laughing. It's the price of two cappuccinos, Garry Trudeau loves it—as does Prudie—so what are you waiting for? 

—Prudie, confidently

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Bad news for joy riders: Our days are numbered. Some day soon we'll take the car out to "get groceries," with the usual side trips along the way to the music store, the espresso joint, the computer store, the pub. (Why not? It's 1 p.m. already.) When we come home three hours later, we'll find the Spouse holding up a printout that looks like one of those Family Circus cartoons, where Billy leaves a dotted line all over the neighborhood on his way to picking up a quart of milk on the next block. In this case, the dotted line is the path of our supposed grocery trip, and we are busted.

The company supplying this evil, marriage-destroying technology is a San Diego-based startup called Networkcar, which gave me a demo of their product, installed in a late-model Ford Taurus. Networkcar's $995 black box mounts out of sight under a car's dashboard. It sports one antenna for receiving GPS positioning signals and another for transmitting data over Cingular's wireless network (the same network used by Blackberry PDAs). A third wire jacks into a standard ODB II online diagnostics port that's been built into most U.S.-sold cars since 1996 and is used by mechanics to do smog certification and other tests. Every two minutes, the box reports the car's position to Networkcar's database servers. Diagnostic data is uploaded every 20 minutes.

Once the hardware is installed on a new or used car by one of Networkcar's auto-dealer partners, you (or your impatient other at home) can log into a password-protected Web page at networkcar.com to check your car's current temperature, gas mileage, emissions control, or its location and velocity via GPS. The site will even plot a history of your driving speeds. Networkcar reps say the technology has led to the recovery of at least one stolen vehicle already, and a future enhancement will e-mail you if your car leaves your neighborhood. After the $1,000 entrance fee, the service is free for the first year and $9.95 per month afterward. 

If you can get past the initial shock of realizing your moves are being tracked to the nearest 20 or 30 feet, the benefits may be worth it. In California, Networkcar will automatically mail your biannual smog certificate to the state, saving you a trip to the mechanic at registration renewal time. The company hasn't gotten approval for that service from other states yet, but the device will at least tell you if you're up to spec before you get to the testing site. It will also e-mail you when your engine starts to misbehave—letting you know that it's time for an oil change or that your emission-control system's oxygen sensors are malfunctioning—with alerts that are much more helpful than that "service engine soon" light on the dashboard.

Car-tracking devices have been around for years, but Networkcar's innovation over the GM OnStar model is to put the information directly into the consumers' hands via the Web, rather than just displaying it to a customer dispatcher at a remote location. Networkcar lacks some of OnStar's more advanced features, such as the latter's built-in speakerphone on which an operator will call you if your air bag deploys. But like OnStar, Networkcar can dispatch roadside assistance to your precise location, and the Web site's level of detail makes the FedEx package tracker seem quaint.

Networkcar will no doubt be viewed as another Big Brother-ish intrusion at first. GPS units in cars have already been the focus of more than one controversy, including a Connecticut rental agency that billed customers for speeding based on the log from their in-car GPS navigation systems. Privacy advocates already worry that John Ashcroft will be logging into your account, and it seems inevitable that the company's logs will be subpoenaed in divorce cases to prove (or disprove) infidelity.

But for non-cheating husbands, being able to skip last-minute smog-test outings (plus using the nearest browser to look up where exactly we parked) seems well worth the privacy trade-off, especially once the initial price comes down. Our worst-case scenario will be having to confess we took the scenic route home.

Paul Boutin is a Silicon Valley writer who spent 15 years as a software engineer and manager.

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Why is the CNN News I watch overseas so much better than the watery slobber they show in America?

It never ceases to amaze and exasperate me how incredibly different -- and by that I mean intelligent and provocative -- foreign-aired CNN is from the one we see at home. It's at least as good as the BBC's news. Watching from Asia, the Middle East and Africa, one is able to see high-quality reportage free of the watery slobber that passes as headlines here in the States -- the latest heart-tug tragedy of a missing child, indulgent Hollywood profiles, and our daily dose of hysteria from Homeland Security. While not yet matching Fox in its lowest-common-denominator appeal, here's this huge and highly respected network that cannot even show its best product to the home audience for lack of interest. 

It's shameful and embarrassing to explain to a foreigner that no, the CNN shown in his country is not the same as ours because Americans, ensconced in our gated community of a nation, are too uninterested in the rest of the world, even as our tentacles of might and power slither into the very marrow of most of it. We are dangerously comfortable, half-asleep in our easy chair of influence and oblivion. 

This is what happens, maybe, when a country is at once inordinately young and wealthy. Like overgrown adolescents we bully around with no real understanding of the world at large. Too young to have developed any true culture, our chief exports are the crass diversions of mass entertainment and the gluttony of corporate profiteering: McDonald's, Madonna, Mobil and Microsoft. Our friends overseas, often with longer histories and richer contributions of their own, greet us with limited respect and patience. 

And if Americans are surprised to learn what's showing on CNN in Shanghai, São Paulo or Sofia, that's partly because we aren't there to watch. Anybody who's traveled beyond the safety zones of the Caribbean and Western Europe knows the relative rarity of the American abroad. By contrast, citizens of Europe, Japan, Australia and elsewhere, known for wanderlust (and frequently armed with a surplus of vacation time), are regulars to the far corners of the planet -- hiking the Himalayas, hacking through the tangle of the Amazon basin. 

During my swings through foreign countries I routinely come across guest books -- in lodges, temples and other tourist spots -- whose entries reveal the identities and nationalities of recent visitors. It's always the same: page after page of Brits, Swedes, Aussies, Kiwis and Canadians. Sometimes not a single American name is to be found in the book. When I spent a week in a lodge in Ecuador a few years ago, the staff was delighted to discover two separate groups from the States in attendance simultaneously, a departure from the normal deluge of Europeans. Ecuador, a good 11 hours from most E.U. countries, is about four from Florida. 

I've had colleagues -- airline pilots in some cases -- who had no idea what the capital of Spain is. I knew a man who repeatedly referred to the residents and language of Thailand as "Taiwanese," while another found no important distinction between Israel and India, referring to a Jewish coworker as "Indian" and bristling with annoyance when his mistake was pointed out. Each of these offenders was a college-educated U.S. citizen. 

But Americans too, at least until recently, were vacationing in record numbers. Where do we flock? To the drive-through safaris of Florida. To the world of Disney and its fiberglass replications of distant places. Why spend 10 hours on a plane when Epcot will do? Or Las Vegas, with its make-believe Luxor and scale-model New York skyline. 

When we do break out the passport, usually it's a trip to Britain, Italy, Spain or France. We perceive it's easier and somehow less threatening to stick with our NATO allies than venture into countries where skin is darker and tap water best avoided. Frankly, having been to about 50 countries now, I find just the opposite to be true. Most developing countries are very easy for the tourist to handle; and you'll endure less hassle navigating around a city like Kuala Lumpur than, for instance, a metropolis like Paris. Hotels and food are cheap, and getting around is a cinch. Need a taxi across town? It'll run you a few dollars. Need a driver or a last-minute tour guide for a day trip, just say the word and nine guys are lined up and bidding for your services. Turkey, Peru, Egypt, Malaysia -- everywhere it's the same, not to mention more exotic, more interesting, and often cheaper to fly to. For the cost of going to Europe you can see the ancient ruins of Turkey, the splendor of Machu Picchu, or the Taj Mahal. 

Surely it's unkind to begrudge a family taking its kids to Disney World or spending a long weekend in the Keys. This is a vast nation with plenty to see. But not at the expense of more valuable experience, or, worst of all, in a kind of xenophobic defiance. 

Recent events have us reevaluating our place in the world, figuratively and literally, politically and geographically, and if our preoccupation with war and terrorism are good for anything, maybe it's a heightened awareness of where, literally, we stand as Americans. In an era when an alarming number of us can't name the continents or find Africa on a map, geopolitics might do the job where education has failed. 

In the months before schoolkids, soldiers and politicians dusted off their Rand McNallys to locate places like Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan, CBS's "Survivor" was probably the closest thing to an atlas many Americans consulted. And while "Survivor" certainly took its hits from the culture critics, it wasn't the castaway cast's willingness to make a spectacle of itself that was most offensive, nor our voyeuristic tendencies to indulge them. Instead, the series demonstrated to new and embarrassing heights how deficient we are in geographic literacy. 

The first "Survivor," as I mentioned in last week's dispatch from Malaysia, was set on a small tropical island off the coast of Borneo. A stretch of Arizona desert or a patch of Appalachia would have served just as well, but obviously the producers intended to create a kind of faux-exotic atmosphere. On the face of it, traveling to Asia was a great opportunity to introduce some faraway culture and geography to millions of viewers, but they instead opted for overt phoniness. For starters, Pulau Tiga rests only about five miles off the coast and a mere 30 miles from Kota Kinabalu, home to 200,000 people and its own international airport. So much for remoteness. Tiga itself, otherwise visually unremarkable, needed some props and affects. Rather than exploit any of the island's geographically correct aspects, which might have included some tangible bits of Malay culture, the crew imported tiki torches. Tiki torches are Polynesian, not Malaysian. No big deal, you think, except that the islands of Polynesia are as far from Pulau Tiga as Romania is from New York. Imagine "Survivor" filmed in Colorado, with Viking hats and longboats thrown around as props. The result would be ridiculous, but 8,000 miles from a similarly egregious gaffe, we neither recognize it nor care. 

Then it got worse. CBS billed the show's second run as, "Survivor -- the Australian Outback." The cast had gone Down Under, and thus we should have found the contestants in the vast expanse of open dryness that separates the two coasts of the Australian continent. The Outback -- parched land, Ayer's Rock, stretches of arid brown interior. Tuning into the opening credits, however, you were treated to tropical lizards, pythons and lots of water. What is this? Keep watching and it's soon apparent that the entire show is set against a tropical backdrop. An Outback oasis? No, it's the Australian rain forest in northern Queensland, several hundred miles -- and 180 degrees in terms of both flora and fauna -- from anything that might be construed as the Outback proper. No matter. The Outback? Isn't that, after all, just some place in Australia? It sounds good, and nobody will know the difference anyway. Why not set the next run in Death Valley, but actually do the shooting in the Everglades? 

Whether you call it arrogance or ignorance, our country's failure to manifest a working knowledge of world geography results in a dangerous form of isolationism. Echoing the comments I made earlier, a German photographer I met in Morocco expressed it like this: "I do not understand your country. For a nation that controls so much of the world, its citizens seem to have little understanding or perception of it." That's a bold indictment, but one containing a large and consequential element of truth. Who can deny that any long-lasting leadership, whether political or economic, is dependent on a fundamental grasp of geographic and cultural realities? 

Collectively, as an industrial and economically powerful entity, Americans are intelligent and innovative, but often only in the closed-circuit, shortsighted goals we set for ourselves. The rest of the world is looking in, and preparing itself with a comprehensively indoctrinated worldview. In the schools of Dresden, Germany, and Singapore, the children know longitude from latitude, Occident from Orient, and Thailand from Taiwan. In and of itself, such knowledge won't help anyone design better computers or become better brain surgeons, but a narrow, relentlessly inward focus will result in both greater susceptibility to, and less respect from, our competitors, friends and enemies. It may not be popular to regard geographic literacy as a bellwether for a nation's abilities, but surely it is critical to our standing in the world, and will influence and legitimize our contributions to it. 

Do you have questions for Salon's aviation expert? Send them to AskThePilot and look for answers in a future column. 
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About the writer
Patrick Smith is an airline pilot. 

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