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Susan Sessions Rugh: ‘The Golden Age of American Family Vacations’Elyse Franko asks the author of “Are We There Yet?” about the rise and fall of the family vacation, segregation in travel and how family trips are changing today ASK ROLF
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Break Bread and Brie in FranceGreat cheese abounds in the land of Gaul, but dig in and you risk committing any number of faux pas. Terry Ward explains how to partake of the nation’s famed fromage with savoir faire. THE LIST
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BOOKS
‘The Worst Guidebook Writer Ever’?Lonely Planet author Robert Reid reviews Thomas Kohnstamm’s “Do Travel Writers Go to Hell?” and weighs in on the controversy surrounding it |
TRAVEL BLOG6.1.07
Straight Men Are Better Map Readers Than Straight Women, Study Says*
The researchers collected data from 109,612 men and 88,509 women ages 20-65. They “looked at what’s called mental rotation,” according to an AAP story in the Sydney Morning Herald. “This is our ability to mentally visualise an object from different perspectives.” To be sure, it’s welcome reinforcement for those much-lampooned men who don’t like to ask for directions—and it perhaps means more circular motion for those who travel with them. * Update, 3:34 p.m. ET: We also unearthed a story in the Taipei Times that revealed this in 2005: “Through history women have been the butt of smirking male jokes about their alleged inability to give directions or to read road maps. Now, researchers at the Ruhr University in Bochum, Germany, have discovered that a woman’s spatial ability, and hence her ability to read maps, actually increases during her menstrual period.”
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Categories: Weblog • Geography for Fun and Profit • Global Village 
Permalink • Comments (3)
COMMENTSThere was a bit from one of the Narnia books (Prince Caspian?) that always stuck with me. The four kids are walking through the woods and the two girls have gotten all turned around. Edmund makes a comment about how boys always have a map in their heads, and Lucy has a comeback about the map not leaving room for much else. On a somewhat related topic - can I use the inadequacy of straight female mental rotation abilities to explain my parallel parking skills? By on 6.1.07 at 11:20 AM
I’m sure this very relevant (to what exactly?) study was also government funded. Waste? What government waste? By Mike on 6.1.07 at 12:25 PM
Hmm. So, should straight women who can read maps begin questioning their sexuality? ;) By rachel on 6.18.07 at 04:58 AM
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So are bisexual men, gay men, gay women and bisexual women. In fact, that’s the map-reading hierarchy according to a 
