According to Wii data, more Swiss people have swam in the ocean than Italians & Greeks combined?
I mean seriously, think about this.
The Everybody Votes Channel on the Wii menu had a recent global survey:
Have you ever been swimming in the ocean?
Yes or No.
I thought this could be interesting, both for the USA and worldwide. In America, while visiting the beach is a popular vacation destination, most of the country is land-locked and hundreds or thousands of miles from the coast, and a lot of people won't travel that far for a vacation. Then again, the biggest population centers are on the east & west coasts, so a large fraction of people don't have to go very far at all to get to the ocean. I voted that a majority would say "yes", and I ended up being right -- the actual number was something like 78%, if I recall.
But unlike other polls on the Wii's EVC (I'm too lazy to type that out right now (but not too lazy to have a parenthetical remark longer than the bit I was eliding (where was I?))), this one was global in scope, not national, so the dynamics are broader than just North America. You have to account for where people live, which countries are likely to have lots of Wii users that would be voting on this kind of silly question, etc.
I figured the global results would be similar to my guess for America -- "yes" -- on grounds that while a lot of the world is landlocked, a lot of the landlocked places are thinly populated & not necessarily economically advanced enough to have lots of Wii users. Moreover, a lot of the places where the Wii should be expected to be popular -- Japan, Korea maybe, the UK & Ireland, plus western Europe -- are either islands, or otherwise still close to the ocean. So, again, "yes".
Okay, we get it, so what's the point?
Get to the point already.
Predictably (a ha! a ho!), "yes" was the worldwide winner. And when you drilled into the national breakdown of the results, in most countries, "yes" was the winner locally as well.
- Switzerland is a land-locked country, ringed by towering mountains, savage Visigoths, and fierce Gauls. And yet it looks like something like 85% or more of the population has been in the ocean.
- Italy is a long, skinny peninsula, hemmed in by towering mountains to the north, the snarling Gauls to the northwest, Archduke Ferdinand's Balkans to the northeast, and the serene, inviting waters of the Mediterranean and Adriatic seas on all other sides. Clearly, there's nowhere to go but swimming, right? And yet it looked like less than 30% had been in the ocean.
- Greece is a chain of peninsulas and actual islands that is, again, boxed in by mountains and the Archduke's Balkans to the north, and the warm, refreshing, and famed Mediterranean both all around and actually inside the rest of the country. And yet less than 20% had been in the ocean.
I mean, okay, sure, there's that whole myth about that guy and his crew getting lost for like a decade and having a hell of a time in just getting a ferry ride over from Turkey to Athens, but come on: (a) it was a long time ago, right, they didn't have GPS back then, (b) I'm pretty sure they weren't being serious about the Cyclops, Sirens, Scylla & Charybdis, etc. Urban legends, all, right? You can go back in the water now, it's okay.
I mean, hey, just look at Martha's Vineyard, right? They know it's safe to go back in the water
Comments
* Swiss people have more money and travel more.
* Greeks and Italians identify the Mediterranean as a sea, not an ocean.
* Italians and Greeks don't like al fresco swimming (because of polluted beaches, maybe?), preferring pools
* Swiss people are lying
The last one does seem a bit implausible. Still.