The Pitters' Place

Make your own! http://traveltip.org/countries_visited.php

Costa Rica? Nice. What brought you there?

sikax wrote:Costa Rica? Nice. What brought you there?

A short-term mission trip, during spring break in college. I don't remember what part exactly, but it was out in the country.

Gypsy-Vanner wrote:

What?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... plane.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

So my profile says 100% for each continent however the total at the bottom is 99.54%. I think this is proof that we can't know anything with 100% certainty.

And either Daily Fail is wrong or the map people are wrong. Is there 201 countries or 215 countries?

I believe the number of countries is not a clearly-defined thing. There's the number of countries that the UN recognizes as countries. Then there's other places that call themselves countries. Like Taiwan, for example. Some would say it's a country, others, like China, says it's China.

It looks like the map site lists most of the disputed areas. Probably so as not to piss anyone off. They list "Gaza Strip" and "Spratley Islands" instead of leaving it to simply Israel and China/Philippines. Virtual autonomy.

Taiwan is a country. Because it's in my system as a country and since it's "my" system then it must be right. I declare there are 215 countries. Fact.

Gendo wrote:I believe the number of countries is not a clearly-defined thing. There's the number of countries that the UN recognizes as countries. Then there's other places that call themselves countries. Like Taiwan, for example. Some would say it's a country, others, like China, says it's China.

I have friends from Taiwan. They say it's a country. I don't think we need The Council of Evil errr I mean the UN to decide which of us are countries.

Dr_Liszt wrote:

Gendo wrote:I believe the number of countries is not a clearly-defined thing. There's the number of countries that the UN recognizes as countries. Then there's other places that call themselves countries. Like Taiwan, for example. Some would say it's a country, others, like China, says it's China.

I have friends from Taiwan. They say it's a country. I don't think we need The Council of Evil errr I mean the UN to decide which of us are countries.

True, but we also wouldn't want to just recognize as a country any group of people that wants to call themselves their own country. Not saying that Taiwan is an example of that, but there's good reason, for example, that a state in the US can't just declare that they are now their own country.

When the U.N. was first set up, Taiwan was the China that was recognized as a country. Also, the Taiwan government doesn't consider itself a separate entity from mainland China, it considers itself the rightful government of all of China.

Hmm... fun app.

http://traveltip.org/visited.php?thesalmonmofdoubt

There you go

Wait - how did you guys get the map to post?

I've been to the US and Mexico. Posting the map would be a little underwhelming.

thesalmonofdoubt wrote:http://traveltip.org/visited.php?thesalmonmofdoubt

There you go

Wait - how did you guys get the map to post?

You don't even need to create an account, just right-click the map and copy the image URL.

TurboSloth wrote:

Welcome!

thesalmonofdoubt wrote:http://traveltip.org/visited.php?thesalmonmofdoubt

There you go

Wait - how did you guys get the map to post?

Um, are you and Turbo the same person?

I think Salmon might have made an error somewhere, because his map is an exact match to Turbo's, and if I remember correctly, Salmon's been to at least one or two countries in the Middle East.

*edit* And you apparently caught that as I was typing.

Ok - this looks more like it

BruceSmith78 wrote:I think Salmon might have made an error somewhere, because his map is an exact match to Turbo's, and if I remember correctly, Salmon's been to at least one or two countries in the Middle East.

*edit* And you apparently caught that as I was typing.

Yup - no idea what I did wrong but I think its fixed now.

I've been to a few places that are different from Turbo - A couple in the middle east (Egypt, Jordan, Israel) and quite a few in Asia ... and not that you can see it on the map, but Obviously I've been to Malta like - heaps of times.

I think if you want "bragging rights" about travelling and you decide to use this sort of device as a way of showing it, then you really want to pick your destinations based purely on the size of the country... You could spend a year doing a tour of all the island/city states of the world and it's not really going to register, but if you just take in Russia, China, America and Canada it'll look really impressive!

Never been out of Europe yet; unless you count the Canary Islands as belonging to Africa.

The word country gets applied way too liberally. And why do the makers of this map seem to think that Vancouver Island seceded from Canada?

Country is a rather fluid term. People from Scotland will tell you that it's a separate country from England, despite the recent hilarious referendum result. Still, I doubt the inhabitants of the Spratly Islands would have raised much of a stink if they'd been excluded from the list.

OpiateOfTheMasses wrote:I think if you want "bragging rights" about travelling and you decide to use this sort of device as a way of showing it, then you really want to pick your destinations based purely on the size of the country... You could spend a year doing a tour of all the island/city states of the world and it's not really going to register, but if you just take in Russia, China, America and Canada it'll look really impressive!

Yeah, I quite agree. I think a better way to look at it would be to consider the number of cities instead of countries. But, of course, it will remain a "bragging rights" contest as even then the chart can never measure 'depth'... or how intimately one got to know the city; people will mark a city as visited even if they were passing through it.

Edit: Yikes, I didn't quite realize how old this thread was until after I posted...

http://traveltip.org/visited.php?islandmur

don't know how to do this