Geography Olympics

More than 46,000 Americans have taken part in this online geography competition started by a man with a mission: Roger Andresen, who quit his job as a fibre optic engineer two years ago when he realized most Americans have never heard of Nauru and don't know Cameroon is in Africa.

Working from his home in Georgia -- the U.S. state, not the country -- he created a jigsaw puzzle with pieces shaped like the countries of the world and launched what he calls the "world's biggest ongoing geography puzzle" on the Web.

This is a pretty cool idea.

"Geography is just a building block for understanding what's going on in the world," said Andresen, whose family includes Christian missionaries and who has travelled to 44 countries.

"Being the world's superpower we should be informed voters," he said. "Sitting back and not worrying about these things is terrible, and it might be why the rest of the world doesn't care for us."

Check out the Yahoo! News article here, and play Geography Olympics here.

Now all that's left is to wait for the Olympics committee to sue Andresen for using the word "Olympics"...;P (I swear that happened to somebody, like the Paralympics or the Special Olympics or something, but I can't find a link about it...)